The media continues to produce stunning bouts of false equivalencies while covering the wholly unprecedented mini-mob phenomena, as protesters storm town halls, turn them into free-for-alls and make sure public policy is not debated. As they hang politicians in effigy, swarm around their cars in the parking lot, issue death threats, and show up brandishing Nazi posters and loaded guns.

According to the WSJ's Jake Sherman, the right-wing is simply copying what liberals have done for years. (They always arrived at anti-war rallies armed, right?) Indeed, his article's headline says it all:

Conservatives Take a Page From Left's Online Playbook

There's nothing new in the ugly hatred and violence the mini-mobs have sparked, according to the Journal. It's just politics in America people. Both sides do it! (In fact, the Journal never even alludes to the mayhem unleashed by the right-wing in recent weeks.)

Sherman's false equivalency is doubly lame because he pretends that the conservative blogosphere has been a key player in whipping up the mini-mobs; that after trailing liberals for years, the mini-mob movement is the right-wing blogosphere's coming out party.

Except, of course, it's not.

As Peter Daou correctly pointed out at Huffington Post this week, the entire mini-mob crusade was built around the GOP's age-old media strategy--right-wing radio, Drudge and Fox News. i.e. It's 'Old Media.' In terms of new technology, the mini-mobs are very 1990's. And no matter how hard Sherman tried in his article to spin it differently, the conservative blogosphere has been a spectator in the mini-mob movement, not a leader.

UPDATED: The Journal held up Americans for Prosperity as an example of conservative “online activists” bubbling up from the grassroots. Really? the pro-tobacco industry Americans for Prosperity is grassroots?

I doubt it:

The AFP is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, behind the Cato Institute and the George Mason University Foundation...Koch Family Foundations is funded by Koch Industries. According to Forbes, Koch Industries is the second largest privately-held company, and the largest privately owned energy company, in the United States. Koch industries has made its money in the oil business, primarily oil refining. Presently, it holds stakes in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, forest products, and chemical technology.

Ironic: In an article about how conservatives are (supposedly) building a grassroots movement online, the Journal couldn't even find an actual grassroots organization to profile.