A new standard is being established in politics: if you challenge — or worse, humiliate — your liberal betters, you will be exposed, scrutinized, and — if necessary — destroyed.
We saw it with “Joe the Plumber.” This guy was minding his own business, playing with his son in his front yard, when Barack Obama made an unscheduled campaign stop in his neighborhood. This was no setup, this was no plot — Obama came to Joe, who asked him an uncomfortable question, to which Obama gave an even more uncomfortable answer. That was that. Within days, we knew everything there was to know about Joe — how he wasn’t a licensed plumber, how he’d had some tax problems, and — most shocking of all — “Joe” wasn’t his first name, but his middle name.
All for asking a question.
The tactic worked pretty well, and now it’s being applied to a Connecticut firefighter who had the gall to file a lawsuit that, at one point, crossed the bench of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The People for the American Way — a leftist advocacy group — is urging journalists to “look into” Frank Ricci, the lead complainant of the New Haven firefighters who sued the city after passing a test for promotion and nevertheless being denied the promotion because the city discarded the results due to racial-quota considerations. (Of the twenty who passed, nineteen were Caucasian and one was Latino.)
The People for the American Way certainly seems well-named. It has apparently become the “American Way” to engage in character assasination against individuals who succeed in standing up to their liberal betters — to expose and scrutinize every aspect of the lives, employing even the media to bring them down.
Sorry, Mr. Wurzelbacher and Mr. Ricci. You thought you could ask questions or stand up for your rights? You should have known better.
