And the future is now!

Fort Worth Star-Telegram sportswriter Gil LeBreton “Compares Vancouver 2010 To Berlin 1936.”

Canadian pride at the 2010 Olympics equals the second coming of Hitler and the 1936 Olympics?

But of course! At least if you’re a “liberal” sportswriter on deadline and you see swastikas behind every display of civic pride.

And speaking of argument ad Hitleriam, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan really earns his paycheck from GE: “Ratigan Goes Nuts: Accuses Tea Party Organizer of Including People who Want to ‘Kill Blacks and Jews.’”

One of Glenn Reynold’s readers spots this:

In an MSNBC TV spot that ran during the Winter Olympics, Mr. Ratigan claimed that he wore a t-shirt that read “Question Authority,” a mantra that he claims informs his work as a journalist. Yet, with his harsh attacks against the Tea Party Movement, Mr. Ratigan zealously attacks the what has now become the nation’s foremost movement in questioning government authority. This Lincoln Steffens wannabe is nothing more than a ham and a phony.

As Glenn Adds, “Apparatchiks who pretend to be revolutionaries — that’s an awful lot of the press these days.”

And just to round-up these latest examples of the Reich Stuff, in the midst of the Lullaby of Broadway, they’re hearing the the rattle of the Axis, instead of the the rattle of the taxis, John Podhoretz writes:

I’m sure you’re looking forward to the new off-Broadway musical, “Signs of Life,” which offers what promises to be a wonderfully tuneful look at the Thereseinstadt concentration camp. But it turns out, according to tomorrow’s New York Times, that the musical really isn’t about the Holocaust after all, which is probably a wise thing, since The Producers got there first with its signature number, “Springtime for Hitler.” No, it turns out, the Holocaust exists as a dramatic trope to teach us lessons about America in the age of Bush:

That show, which had its premiere on Thursday, centers on Lorelei, an artist who agrees to create pretty pictures of the camp for Nazi propaganda but who, with other prisoners, schemes to get her drawings of the real horrors to the outside world.

“The message of our show is not ‘Killing Jews is bad,’ ” Mr. Derfner said. “It’s: ‘What do you do when you find out you’ve been lied to? What is telling the truth worth?’ In the last 30 years this question has been vital to American life and especially so in the last nine years.”

No, this is not, as they say, from The Onion.

As Malcolm Muggeridge said over 50 years ago, “We live in an age where it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not be enacted, promptly, before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.”

Update: At Big Journalism, a simple solution: whenever the Hitler card is played against conservatives, remind the attacker what exactly the word “Nazi” is an abbreviation for.