Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the far-right Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the conservative Washington Times, devoted his latest piece to denouncing the Middle East peace meeting at the Naval Academy in Annapolis today. That’s not particularly surprising.
What is surprising is just how far Gaffney was willing to go. Robert Farley calls these the three most “hyperbolic paragraphs ever,” and he may very well be right.
It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today’s so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.
Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Miss Rice’s conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia.
This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease the Nazis and Fascists nearly 70 years ago, however, the damage will not be confined to the rapee. The interests of the Free World in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction.
Steven Taylor, hardly a liberal, responded, “That has got to be one of the most rhetorically charged paragraphs I have read in a while, and I live in the Blogosphere! We have not only rape, but gang-rape and not just Hitler, be Mussolini throw in as well! What, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was busy when Gaffeny was writing the paragraph? Heck, why not throw in Stalin, too, and add totalitarian communism into the mix. It’s easy if you try!”
Don’t tempt him, Dr. Taylor.
Farley added:
Frank Gaffney has utterly destroyed Godwin’s Law. Future generations will have to use “Gaffney’s Law”, in which Hitler, Mussolini, the gang rape of United States Navy Academy cadets, and the destruction of Israel will all have to be mentioned in order to achieve the level of “inflammatory rhetoric”.
I do hope that at least someone will note that the unruliest of the unruly in the Netroots have only rarely accused Condoleezza Rice of gang rape…
Quite right. Reading Gaffney’s unhinged column, I kept thinking of Karl Rove’s recent admonishment of liberal blogs. The man the president affectionately calls “Turd Blossom” lamented the “angry and vitriolic people” who now have “a voice in public discourse” thanks to the Internet. He added that “angry kooks” argue from “anger,” and undermine democracy by wallowing in “the dark side of the web.”
If the netroots community is dangerous, how might one describe Frank Gaffney and the Washington Times?