I haven’t come out with one peep about the death of Paul Wellstone. I read what Lileks, Misha, and a few others had to say about it, sure. I didn’t want to say anything myself because, well, honestly, I guess my feelings on the whole thing were probably best summed up by Arthur Silber the other day. My feeling all along has been that I should just let it go, that it was perhaps a little inappropriate to jump the guy before the body was even cold. Later, maybe, but not right away. I think it’s important for anyone who takes himself remotely seriously to be unstinting in hammering at how wrong the guy was always, and I find it difficult to respect someone just because he’s a nice guy or is passionate about his beliefs. But proper decorum would seem to me to dictate not attacking the guy when the grief of his family is still so raw, fresh, and painful.

But his family went and turned his funeral into a goddamned political rally (Michele has the best and most complete account of it I’ve seen so far). It’s completely shameful what they’ve done here, a noxious, self-involved orgy of bad taste. And you all should know by now that I consider myself something of an authority on bad taste. Both Trent Lott and Jesse Ventura walked out in complete disgust, and good for them. The Vice President traditionally is expected to attend these things, to lay aside partisan politics for a day and show a decent respect for the deceased, and especially for the loved ones of the deceased. In this case, Cheney was (not very politely, it appears) dis-invited.

Stephen Green wrote last night of his utter revulsion at this shameless parade of power-mad dimestore dictators. He was careful to be even-handed and threw a little heat the Republicans’ way as well. Lord knows I have my problems with them too, but I don’t think their behavior here comes anywhere close to the contemptibility of what Wellstone’s family and the Democrats have done. I simply cannot remember anything like this occurring in my entire lifetime.

One of the biggest ironies of the whole thing: the very man who caught so much heat from the press and many others during and after his campaign for office for his perceived lack of decorum, seriousness, and propriety – Jesse Ventura – comported himself with a dignity and probity here that the Leftist corpse-defilers can now only gaze at incomprehendingly, from far, far away.

I’ve said it before: these people have no principles whatever. None. They are all about power, plain and simple. It is so damned irritating to be smugly and continually lectured about the frightening lust for power and authoritarianism of the Bush bunch and Republicans generally by this collection of soulless, hypocritical, ethically-challenged head lice who can’t even conduct themselves with the barest sense of good manners at a blasted funeral, for God’s sake. Were these people spawned, hatched, and raised by lizards? Didn’t their mothers teach them anything?

And now, we come to the most reprehensible, buffoonish, paranoid, addle-pated chunk of festering smegma of them all: ladies and gentlemen, I give you the “wit” and “wisdom” of Mr Ted Rall:

George W. Bush and his henchmen stole the presidency. They threw thousands of innocent people into prison without even charging them with a crime. They’re gearing up to invade Iraq without bothering to come up with a substantial justification. Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States’ most liberal legislator?

This is “progressive?” This represents what those on the Left would consider “deep thinking?” It reads like a rightwing satire of discredited Leftist cliches. I’ve seen this rancid speculation presented by various numbnut Lefties here and there; it’s not surprising, given the kind of filth you can always find whilst poking around in a dungheap, and it’s usually best to just ignore the wailing of these mental cases. No serious-minded person would give this kind of adolescent shit-slinging a moment’s worth of sober reflection.

But Rall is someone revered by the Left, and he’s spouting this preposterous garbage in a major internet forum, the Yahoo News op/ed section. He doesn’t present even the merest shred of evidence to back up this “idea” – he just thinks that Bush and the Republicans are so awful, so eeeville, that he has no problem gulping down the most outrageous and defamatory conspiracy theories like so much Kool-Aid. Ted Rall, plainly and simply, is a complete and utter fool.

Later in his filthy diatribe he backpedals a bit, and I doubt he does so from any sense of propriety (he quite obviously has none at all) but most likely from fear of a (thoroughly justified) lawsuit:

Ironically, Paul Wellstone would have been the last person to suspect Republicans of such a monstrous crime. One of his final acts in the Senate was to praise the career of retiring Senator Jesse Helms, his ideological counterpart on the Right. Like most idealists, Wellstone thought the best of humanity, that people would do the right thing if the choices were properly and clearly explained. Wellstone wouldn’t have wanted to believe that he was assassinated.

Neither do I. So let’s hope those black boxes turn up.

Sure, Ted. Sure. In the paragraph immediately above this one, this creeping, crawling insect says this:

Ronald Reagan may have been a hard line conservative, but had Wellstone died during his watch you wouldn’t have heard liberals asking whether the Gipper had had him offed. Bush is different. Asking mailmen to spy on ordinary Americans, creating military tribunals for anyone deemed an “enemy combatant,” locking prisoners of war in dog cages, spending a decade’s worth of savings in six months, allowing journalists to die rather than provide them with help in a war zone, smearing Democratic politicians as anti-American, invading sovereign nations without excuse–these are acts that transgress essential American reasonableness. A man capable of these things seems, by definition, capable of anything.

This, like every last word surrounding it, is total bullshit. Reagan in his day was regularly portrayed by people like Rall as the most monstrous, murderous, completely evil man ever to have been spawned by woman. He was mocked as senile; some of them even gleefully spouted their sincere hope that the rectal polyps he was treated for during his Presidency would turn out to be cancerous.

And the “crimes” that Rall claims Bush is supposedly guilty of are actually perfectly debatable positions; at least, the ones listed here that aren’t out-and-out filthy lies are. There have been no prisoners locked in dog cages; there has been no invasion of sovereign nations without excuse; Bush hasn’t even smeared anyone as anti-American, although after all this I certainly would have a much more difficult time objecting to it if he did. These acts in no way transcend essential American reasonableness. The only ones doing that are Rall and his vile cohorts. And he’s not only defiling the very meaning of the words, he’s spitting on any sense of decency and any respect for debate as well. The truly anti-American representative of evil here, the one who thereby seems capable of damned near anything, is not Bush. It’s Rall himself.

Rall and his buddies are poisoning our national discourse with their hysteria, their lying, their outrageous lack of respect for the truth and for those with whom they disagree. They are truly not worthy of any respect themselves; they should be spanked vehemently and with extreme prejudice every time they poke their filthy snouts out from under their rocks. They should be sent to their rooms without supper like the bratty, spoiled children they are, until they’re capable of acting and speaking like adults. They should be stood in the corner until they learn to control the explosive diarrhea spewed forth from their toilet mouths. They are unserious, unlovely, and completely vacuous wastes of any rational person’s time and effort. I feel dirty just having read this raw sewage and spent this much time responding to it. Rall has far exceeded the bounds of rationality with this totally unsubstantiated blood-libel; he seems to have descended into irredeemable madness.

This is not debate. This is not dissent. This is a petulant demand for attention from a loathsome chancre, a blight on our national character. It’s the moral equivalent of jock itch, a particularly virulent type that you don’t dare scratch for fear of spreading it.

God, I need a shower.