Mark, You're No Ann Coulter
Topic: NewsBusters
One gets the feeling that NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein aspires to an Ann Coulter level of liberal-bashing, but he lacks the sophistication (let alone the gams or the little black dress) to pull it off. As a result, he comes off as even more mean and hateful as Coulter.

Fresh on the heels of smearing Chris Matthews as playing the anti-emitism card and his baseless attack of Ken Auletta as a Hamptons-inhabiting liberal elitist, in a July 7 post, Finkelstein bashes MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. His offense? Apologizing for saying that if Osama bin Laden were caught, "Democrats, George Bush's nemesis, would say 'Well, it's not really that big of a deal anyway, because Americans are dying in Iraq.'" Finkelstein wrote:

Really, Joe? If Hillary, Nancy and Harry woke up tomorrow, turned on the tube, and saw that OBL were caught, you honestly think they'd be happy?

What's the point here? Is Finkelstein think political discourse needs to be even less civil? Does he really think that such mindless, fact-free bashing of his political enemies (for Democrats are clearly beyond mere opponents to him) contributes anything useful?

Remember that Mark is not writing on a low-rent personal blog but the website of a multimillion-dollar nonprofit organization that the word "research" in its name and purportedly has at least minimal standards about said research.

Why does the MRC permit such irresponsible attacks from people like Finkelstein? Does the MRC have any standards at all? (On the other hand, we haven't seen far-right-wing Kahane supporter Cinnamon Stillwell there for a while, so there may actually be a standard or two).

UPDATE: And how could we forget Finkelstein's ultra-classless likening of Hillary Clinton to Kim Jong Il?

UPDATE 2: In a July 8 post, Finkelstein cites the ultra-slanted Horowitz-operated Discover the Network(s) to claim that the Center for Economic and Policy Research is "prominent supporter of, and apologist for, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez." High-quality research there, Mark.