Frank Rich Covers All The Bases

Back in October, Frank Rich referred to conservatives as rabid communists, in an article titled, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”

By the middle of the last month, they were rabid anti-communists:

As if to underline the McCarthyism implicit in this smear campaign, the Cheney ally Marc Thiessen (one of the two former Bush speechwriters now serving as Washington Post columnists) started spreading these charges on television with a giggly, repressed hysteria uncannily reminiscent of the snide Joe McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn.

Late last month, though, after referencing the rabid anti-communist communists (and this is Rich, err rich) slurring the president, they morphed yet again:

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.

On this we can agree: I’m not a fan of the leftwing Lyndon Larouche gang who infiltrated the Tea Parties last year — but like Rich, they’re for socialized medicine as well. And I can’t believe anyone would compare the president of the United States to Hitler.

Well, except for Frank Rich, who made the same comparison himself back in 2003:

Showtime, the cable network, boasts that no fewer than three journalists, including the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, were involved in assuring the accuracy and balance of the docudrama ”DC 9/11: Time of Crisis,” first shown last Sunday while the actual George W. Bush was addressing the nation. But this film, made with full Bush administration cooperation (including that of the president himself), is propaganda so untroubled by reality that it’s best viewed as a fitting memorial to Leni Riefenstahl.

Whoops.

But hey, Communist anti-Communist Nazis: Rich has all the bases covered. (Well, except for referring to conservatives as the Taliban. But Rich got that one out of the way back in 2005, along with a reference to the Salem Witch Trials, naturally enough.)

Clark Hoyt, the Times’ ombudsman, writes that his paper “Squandered Trust,” noting that “The Times continues to hurt itself with readers by misusing anonymous sources.”

Their public sources aren’t doing them any favors, either.

(Incidentally, Rich wouldn’t like the comparison, or the everyday Americans in the video under it in this new post from Jimmie Bise one bit. Which slur would he recycle if ever read it?)

Update: But wait, there’s more! Roger Kimball spots this week’s slur against Republicans from Rich:

All of Frank Rich’s columns are special. They do a lot to make The New York Times the paper it is today.  But Rich’s Welcome to Confederate History Month yesterday is something extra special even by Rich’s standards.

Huh; tell me again which party Lincoln belonged to? And as Roger notes, which one Robert Byrd (and Woodrow Wilson before him) belongs to?

As Roger notes, “The Narrative” that Rich supports “is showing the strain.” Fortunately, Rich has plenty of other equally shopworn cliches in the ad hominem Rolodex to recycle once this one’s worn out.

Related: “A mighty pale newspaper.”