Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest Pt 2 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

Charles Lane’s  brief claim to fame was a stint at a gone-to-seed once great magazine where, as editor, he discovered that one of his writers was “making shit up”. For years he has traded on this brief moment in the sun like Erik Estrada making a living appearing at car dealership openings. In Lane’s case he landed at sinecure at Fred Hiatt’s Halfway House of Neocon Sophistry (where writers, ironically, “make shit up“) where Charles has toiled in relative obscurity since he’s not good enough for a regularly scheduled column but useful enough in Hiatt’s eyes for an occasional “deep thought” piece… web only, don’cha know.

Yesterday, after recuperating from an exhausting 3 ( three !) posts in two days he pronounced “Meh, on both of your houses” but mostly on the liberal’s  house because they have been uncouth and simply awful and this embarrasses him as  man who makes a living pretending to be one (a liberal, not a man. This isn’t science fiction):

Yet today in Wisconsin, anger and vilification are once again the order of the day — and the incivility emanates from the progressive end of the spectrum, including, no doubt, many of the same people who blamed right-wing vitriol for creating a climate of violence in Arizona. Union-backed demonstrators, furious at Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s plans for reining in public-sector unions, equate him with Hosni Mubarak and Adolf Hitler, in disgusting mimickry of some Tea Party members’ inflammatory linkage between Obama and the evil dictators of history. (See Photo no. 10 in this gallery) or Photo 13 in this gallery .

Stop to clutch pearls. Maybe retire to the fainting couch and watch a little Lifetime TV.

And, of course, thousands of teachers have abandoned their classrooms to join a boisterous crowd intimidating and obstructing the elected state legislature in Madison — in scenes reminiscent of the Tea Party’s mobbing of Democrats on Capitol Hill during the health-care debate.

This is hypocrisy on an epic scale. I can’t think of a more overwhelming refutation of the claim that incivility is the unique province of the American right — as opposed to what it really is and always has been: a two-way street with both right and left lanes. No wonder so many Americans in the broad center of the political spectrum are turned off by both parties and their sanctimonious “bases.”

High Broderism alert. Break out the “Tip & Reagan sitting in a tree” Sacred Chant of Comity.

One certified progressive, Joe Klein, has had the courage to make the case against the unions’ attempted short-circuiting of democracy, and for Walker’s legislation. Klein brilliantly and succinctly describes the conflict between liberal goals such as quality education and apolitical governance on the one hand, and public-sector unionism as currently practiced on the other.

Joe Klein and other six-figure legacy pundits do not want middle class workers to rise above their station and they should just shut up and stop complaining about it. The last thing American needs is a schoolteacher from Sheboygan Falls making a decent living. The next thing you know, she’ll be putting on airs and acting all hoity-toity and then the  seminars at the Aspen Institute will get  overcrowded and ruined just like Sundance and, besides, Steve and Cokie don’t have enough place settings for everyone at Sunday brunch.

If the brave Gabrielle Giffords could speak normally, what would she say about these events? I hope she would agree with me: This is a sad moment for liberalism, for the Democratic Party, and, really, for the whole country.

Yes Charles, the peasants are revolting. But in light of your invoking  Gabrielle Giffords name for no discernible reason other than an awkward appeal to cheap emotion, they can’t touch you when it comes to being truly revolting.

What a dick.