The Left’s So-Called Empathy [Mark Steyn]

National Review ^ | 1/7/2012 | Mark Steyn

[Servant of the Cross]

Lest you doubt that we’re headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within ten minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the “crazy things” he’s said and done.

Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America’s political class, but the “crazy thing” Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum’s “taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home,” whereupon he “played with it.” My National Review colleague Rich Lowry rightly slapped down Alan on air, and Colmes subsequently apologized, though not before Mrs. Santorum had been reduced to tears by his remarks. Undeterred, Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post columnist, doubled down on stupid and insisted that Deadbabygate demonstrated how Santorum is “not a little weird, he’s really weird.”

The short life of Gabriel Santorum would seem a curious priority for political discourse at a time when the Brokest Nation in History is hurtling toward its rendezvous with destiny. But needs must, and victory by any means necessary. In 2008, the Left gleefully mocked Sarah Palin’s live baby. It was only a matter of time before they moved on to a dead one.

Not many of us will ever know what it’s like to have a child who lives only a few hours. That alone should occasion a certain modesty about presuming to know what are “weird” and unweird reactions to such an event.

Excerpt, read more at National Review.

[NonValueAdded]

A serious Steyn pens a must-read article. I knew about Colmes smarmy comment but not about Robinson’s “doubling-down.” Eugene and his loved ones better pray the karma god was not listening at the time, the cosmos has a strange way of balancing these things out.

[okie01]

Just goes to show, the left loves humanity, but hates people.

An insightful comment.

It is akin to a similar -- and equally truthful -- observation about the left and race: Liberals love the black race, but are universally contempuous of the individual black.

Does anybody think that the average liberal personally admires and respects the Jesse Jacksons or Al Sharptons?

[Jim Scott]

Mark Steyn skewers the leftist scum that are so desperate to keep the Kenyan Marxist in power that they'll attack a man that they perceive as an enemy to Obama by ridiculing his actions born of grief and love for his recently deceased infant. This kind of gutter politics will be the hallmark of the Obama campaign. Leftist idiots such as Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson making the initial strike against Rick Santorum are simply doing what the left always does: engaging in the 'politics of personal destruction'. They have to. Obama is a colossal failure and has low public approval numbers so the left tries to marginalize his (possible) opponent, Rick Santorum, in a political preventive strike.

However, they clearly over-reached and if this kind of rubbish becomes the standard for the Obama campaign (always carefully executed by surrogates, never Obama or his associates) it will certainly cause a backlash. The left live in a world where dead babies are celebrated as a 'right' and cannot fathom why anyone would grieve over a newborn that did not survive when the same leftists push for 'partial birth abortion' laws to be repealed. Alan Colmes is a guttersnipe and is easily dismissed as such but he may have inadvertently shown America the depths the left will wallow in to win an election for a man who was not qualified to be president in 2008 and is far less so, in 2011. One hopes that Americans will be repulsed by this kind of indecent, scurrilous attack against a decent man, Rick Santorum.

[savagesusie]

“In 2008, the Left gleefully mocked Sarah Palin’s live baby. It was only a matter of time before they moved on to a dead one.”

Worth repeating-—how EVIL the MSM actually is.

[Matchett-PI]

Who the REAL weirdos are:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2829877/posts?page=22#22

[neverdem]

The left is so sophisticated and empathetic, is has to demonize Santorum's grief reaction. The left would mock an Irish wake if they had to, even if it was for Ted Kennedy.

Make no mistake, with Santorum as the nominee, it hits the left where they are the weakest, the white working class. They would prefer to wage their class warfare campaign against Mitt.

[grey_whiskers]

The left live in a world where dead babies are celebrated as a 'right' and cannot fathom why anyone would grieve over a newborn that did not survive when the same leftists push for 'partial birth abortion' laws to be repealed.

...and speaking of partial-birth abortion...

They hate Santorum for this, for his actions cause the demon-inspired slashes in their own souls (from the slaughter of their own children in the womb) to throb.

NO cheers, unfortunately.

[leapfrog0202]

[Publius6961]

You call me “tiny people” for doing so, what does it say about you?

It says about me that I would have missed another remarkable thread.
In case I was not clear, perhaps you can expand on the satisfaction you get, doing something of absolutely no value to anyone else. Self centered, are we? Makes you feel superior? What?

[Cymbaline]

It’s not hypocritical; it’s entirely consistent with their beliefs. The Left truely believes that they are superior to conservatives, not only in their political views but as human beings, that conservatives are worthy only of contempt, mockery and derision. And so they act accordingly.

It probably never even occured to Eugene Robinson or Alan Colmes that they were way out of line, or that they were mocking and making fun of another human being’s tragedy. So what? They’re only conservatives, after all. It’s not like they’re on the same moral plane as us anyway.