Michigan Lawmaker Vilified for Backing Health Bill Quits Race
That's the headline in my print edition* of the Times today, as the newspaper details yesterday's retirement announcement from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI.)
What's curious is that the Times never details how Stupak was “vilified” after he voted in favor of the health care bill. What's odd is that the Times never once mentions, for instance, that Stupak's life was famously threatened after he placed his “yes” vote:
“Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing mother f***er... I hope you bleed out your a**, got cancer and die, you mother f***er,” one man says in a message to Stupak.
Recall it was the Stupak death threats, some of which were captured on audio, that seemed to set off the radically hateful right-wing response to the passage of the health care vote. It was the Stupak death threats that were the first troubling signs that something had gone very wrong with the political process and that some far-right activists had crossed the line into vigilantism.
And yet in the Times recounting, there's no mention of the threats on Stupak's life that were made. In fact, there's no mention of any of the hateful attacks that were unleashed on the Democrat after the health care vote.
*The Times' online headline to the same story is slightly different.