Surber and Daily Mail promote violent rightwing fantasy meme

by: heath_harrison

Thu Nov 19, 2009 at 06:07:56 AM EST

In recent days, conservative blogs and Twitter feeds have been ablaze with the latest craze, the posting of the message "Pray for Obama - Psalm 109:8."

When you look up the scripture in question it reads, "May his days be few, may another take over his position."

While this may seem to some like harmless eliminationist rhetoric used by the extreme right for laughs, the verse immediately following makes the message far more disturbing.

From Beliefnet:

And before anyone excuses this toxic use of scripture as nothing more than the wish that President Obama not be re-elected to a second term of office, the next verse in the psalm reads, "May his children be orphans and his wife a widow".

In fact, the entire chapter is about the prayed for death of an evil person. Not to mention that anyone who knows enough Bible to have thought about this verse in particular, surely knows the entire chapter and appreciates its message. Pretty scary stuff

Rachel Maddow reported on it Tuesday night in a segment detailing the escalation of attacks by the religious right:

Given the fact that he's never heard a fringe-right message he didn't endorse, it's no surprise that Don Surber would cheerfully promote the bit on his Charleston Daily Mail blog, crediting it to his "favorite person in Houston."

If you're thinking we all need to lighten up and let Surber have his fun with using scripture for implied threats, you might want to hold him to the same standard he set a few years ago.

Back in 2007, The Huffington Post came under fire for comments by users on a news story about an assassination attempt on Dick Cheney that were over the line.

Surber saw these comments and cherry-picked them from the thread to write a column for print blasting the site.

Well, actually he didn't. Michelle Malkin did the heavy lifting. Surber, as usual, lazily rewrote the talking points of the rightwing media into his piece for the week.

The assassination attempt on Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan drew praise from a few members of the antiwar left. Have these people lost their minds? At the popular Huffington Post Web site, dozens of comments were posted. Right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin captured them and posted them at her Web site.

To date, rightwing sites like Free Republic and Lucianne.com (who get heavy promotion by Surber) have yet to have a Surber column dedicated to questioning the moderation of the vile comments they regularly allow. Funny how that works.

When Arianna Huffington cited Surber  among the rightwingers engaging in selective and canned outrage, he felt the need to write her the following self-righteous bit:

Dear Arianna:

Thanks for insulting my column by labeling it "faux fury." I have lived through the assassination of a president, the assassination of a spiritual leader, the assassination of a presidential candidate, the paralyzing wounding of another presidential candidate, the wounding of a president and two attempts on the life of President Ford. I take assassinations seriously.

So, basically, all it takes is his party losing an election for Surber to use his Daily Mail blog to actively promote the kind of message he used to condemn Huffington for not catching fast enough.

There was a time when the Daily Mail was a conservative, but respectable news outlet that could make the case for the Republican side without embracing the lunatic fringe and their tactics.

But by allowing Surber a forum to spread this sort of stuff, they're quickly joining the ranks of tinfoil hat sites like Newsmax and WorldNetDaily - and destroying any credibility the paper has left in rational circles.