Gentlemen, You Can’t Blog Here, This is the War Room!

Jim Geraghty spots this howler:

“I understand the idea that, even if Loughner had no idea who Sharron Angle is and even if he never saw Palin’s infamous cross-hairs map, it still makes sense to encourage political leaders to ditch violent rhetoric,” writes Salon news editor Steve Kornacki at the site’s War Room blog.

The first step in encouraging political leaders to ditch violent rhetoric? Stop calling your blog the WAR ROOM.

“Oh, the sweet sweet irony…” Bryan Preston adds, alongside a screencap of the blog, at the new PJ Tatler.

Speaking of irony, Michael Silver of Yahoo, and formerly of Sports Illustrated, like many sportswriters, has long been a wannabe political pundit; in recent weeks particularly after the midterm elections, one can count on a liberal sucker punch every week in his NFL column. Naturally, this week was no exception:

The attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six others (including the 9-year-old granddaughter of former Philadelphia Phillies manager Dallas Green) at a political event outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. In a culture with increasingly vitriolic partisan rhetoric – including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s placing of Giffords in crosshair targets on a map she posted on her Facebook page – this was a terrifying reminder that our society is in need of a heavy dose of decency and perspective. Instead of arguing about whether there’s a basis for claiming a correlation, I hope that we’ll all take a step back and consider toning down the inflammatory extremism and address our disagreements with grace and mutual respect. And I ask that you join me in extending thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.

Don’t you love that line, “Instead of arguing about whether there’s a basis for claiming a correlation,” immediately after smearing Palin?

I certainly do hope we’ll consider toning down the inflammatory extremism. For that reason, I hope to see Silver call for a ban on such language as:

• The Blitz
• The Bomb
• The Crackback
• The Red Zone
• The Special Teams Gunner
• The Shotgun
• The Suicide Squad
• Tackle
• The Trenches

The new standard of discourse among Silver’s fellow leftists is apparently “How will it affect the behavior of an obviously crazy person who may or may not hear it?” Therefore, please let me know when these elements of jingoistic warlike language are eliminated both from Yahoo’s NFL columns and the sport that they cover, and we can move on from there.