I was appalled to read Kevin Zieber's column last Friday, in which he charged conservatives not once, but four times, with wishing Democratic politicians dead while producing not one shred of evidence to back up his claims.
Take, for example, Zieber's assertion that Rush Limbaugh wished the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) dead. On the contrary, Limbaugh merely predicted that if Kennedy died before the Democrats' version of health care reform passed, they would manipulate his death to try to pass their bill. Limbaugh's prediction was accurate. The nation watched as Kennedy's funeral was transformed into a political circus, even using a small child as a prop to further the agenda of socialized medicine. Do it for Teddy has been used as a club to beat holdout senators over the head ever since, even by Kennedy's widow Victoria Reggie Kennedy.
Zieber goes on to blame Republicans for forcing the ailing senator (Robert Byrd] to appear for the vote. Defying all reason, Zieber seems to be saying that at least one Republican should have voted for the Democrats' bill just to spare Byrd the trouble of coming to vote for it. Apparently Zieber can find no blame in the broken promises of President Obama. Remember when he promised us bipartisanship? He has instead given us a government takeover of one-sixth of our economy with only one Republican vote in Congress. If we want to blame someone for forcing Robert Byrd back to Washington, let's blame a president who supported legislation so radically leftist that it could not capture the vote of a single Republican senator.
Zieber moves on and singles out Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), accusing him of a seemingly blatant call for Byrd's demise. The problem is that Zieber produced no such blatant call; rather, he quotes Coburn urging Americans to pray that somebody can't make the vote tonight. That's hardly a blatant call for Byrd's death! Maybe Coburn was simply hoping that Max Baucus would be too busy entertaining his alleged mistress to make the vote. Maybe he was just hoping Sherrod Brown's car wouldn't start. The point is that praying generally for a senator not to make a vote cannot be construed as praying for one particular senator's death.
Finally, Zieber notes the Psalm 109:8 phenomenon. That verse is being printed on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs. It reads: Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Zieber thinks this means that conservatives are praying for President Obama's death, because the following verse reads: Let his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow. The problem here is that this logo doesn't read Psalm 109:8-9. This is simply intended as a witty slogan hoping for Obama's defeat in the 2012 election, and Zieber has done nothing to prove that it is anything more.
Mr. Zieber made claims that he cannot back up about two individuals, Rush Limbaugh and Sen. Tom Coburn, as well as making outrageous generalizations about an entire group of people. Isn't that libel? The Post can do better than this, but we can at least be grateful that their editors are publishing this rebuttal and not letting Mr. Zieber's poor excuse for journalism go unchallenged.
Nate Nelson is a junior studying political science, member of the Ohio University College Republicans and former columnist for The Post. 4
Opinion
