Nuts to That

Missing the point entirely--the point being that the media are overeager to emphasize the nuttiness/anger of right-wing Tea Party types but far more reticent and disinclined to make a big deal about the political leanings of violent left-wing filberts (like the Discovery Channel eco-loon gunman)--Michelle Cottle wants us to see all nuts as being pretty much one and the same:

...Like all good ideological warriors, I'm happy to throw around the terms right-wing nutter and left-wing nutter early and often. But one case where I think they should be more conservatively applied (no pun intended) is when we're talking about people who are literally -- as opposed to figuratively, functionally or strategically -- nuts.

As a political bludgeon, Lee [the eco-loon] doesn't even rise to the level of James W. vonn Brunn, the elderly, paranoid anti-Semite who shot up Washington's Holocaust Museum, or of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. In both those cases, you can argue endlessly about the degree to which the mentally ill perpetrator's actions were influenced by his swimming in a toxic sea of like-minded haters. But Lee wasn't part of some broader community whose goal it is to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth. As far as we can tell, no one listened to his rantings or swapped conspiracy theories with him. He was a lone crazy who had to actually pay homeless people to take part in his protests.

Admittedly, it's hard to pass up an opportunity to score points for your political team by trying to wrap every disturbed individual to come down the turnpike around the opposition's neck. But, no matter our affiliation, we need to be able to recognize real insanity when we see it.

Sometimes, a nut is just a nut.

Au contraire, Michelle. All nuts are not the same. More often than nut, er, not, the nut in question is an angry left-winger or jihadist--a distinction, a specificity, we ignore at our peril.