I haven't felt the need to post about...

...the whole "Liberals = crazy and hateful because a couple anonymous posters made hateful comments about the Cheney assassination attempt" thing because, well, it's silly. And beyond that, Greenwald has done a great overall job of stressing, point-by-point just how silly it is. However, there's just no questioning how sad and dangerous this whole issue is. And Greenwald's latest on the issue points out exactly why:

So Ann Coulter appeared as a featured speaker today at the Conservative Political Action Conference -- the preeminent conservative event of the year -- and called John Edwards a "faggot." Her speech was followed by an enthusiastic round of applause from the upstanding attendees.

Last year at the same event, she warned Arab "ragheads" about violence that would be done to them and called for Supreme Court justices to be murdered -- and received standing ovations. Everyone knows what a rancid hate-monger she is, yet (or rather: "therefore") she continues to be invited to the highest-level "conservative" events, be drooled on with admiration by presidential candidates like Mitt Romney, and have little right-wing warriors wait in line around the corner to get her signature on their copies of the books she wrote.

But that's all fine. There are much more important topics to discuss -- like the anonymous commenters at Huffington Post and the bad words said by the bloggers hired for low-level positions by the Edwards campaign. Those are matters of the gravest importance meriting the most solemn condemnation and righteous outrage from all decent people. Those HuffPost commenters have uttered terrible thoughts, and that shows the anger, venom and hatred on the left, among liberals. It is cause for great alarm -- and for headlines.

But the single most prestigious political event for conservatives of the year is a place where conservatives go to hear Democrats called faggots, Arabs called ragheads, and Supreme Court justices labeled as deserving of murder -- not by anonymous, unidentifiable blog commenters, but by one of their most popular featured speakers.

And after she does that, she is cheered wildly by an adoring conservative movement that has made her bigoted and hate-mongering screeds best-sellers, all while they and their deceitful little allies in the media, such as Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, write idiot tracts about how terribly upset they are by the affront to decency from HuffPost commenters [in between writing obsequious, tongue-wagging profiles of Coulter's most radical ideological allies, such as Michelle Malkin, who penned a lovely defense of the internment of Japanese-Americans, for which even Ronald Reagan apologized (but, I believe, she never cursed while doing so, which is what matters most)].

...

The more Ann Coulter says these things, the more popular she becomes in this movement. What this is about is that she reflects exactly what sort of political movement this is. She reflects its true impulses and core beliefs. If that were not the case, why would she continue to receive top billing at their most prestigious events, and why would she continue to be lavished with rock star-adoration by the party faithful?

This is such a no-brainer issue. The difference is impossible to miss, unless you're intentionally miss it. Anonymous idiots on message boards...well, they ruin message boards. Just ask rational fans of any sports team. You can't post on a sports message board anymore because the idiots are 10x more vocal than the non-idiots. It's the same with politics. So some HuffPo commenter said he was disappointed Cheney wasn't killed. That's so far beyond "non-issue", you can't even see it. Never mind that the comment was removed quickly (and yet you can go see something worse on LGF any time of day)...if this were 1999, and somebody tried to assassinate Al Gore, Ann Coulter would not only have said something even worse than "Darn, I wish they'd gotten him"...her appearance fees for conservative events would have doubled after making such a comment. N.O.N.-.I.S.S.U.E. Until conservatives get held to even 1/1oth the standard that liberals do, this is not an even playing field.

In other words, I agree with Greenwald.