“I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon,” Alan Pyke of the liberal group Think Progress wrote last week. “The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.”
These cruel, despicable words should drive a red-hot railroad spike into the casket of the notion that liberals are open-minded, tolerant people. Pyke shares the same arc of the political spectrum with those who effectively blocked commencement speeches last spring by former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University (due to her diplomatic support for Operation Iraqi Freedom), ex-Muslim freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for being too candid about militant Islam), and even International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde at Smith College (thanks to her collaboration with “imperialist and patriarchal systems,” as her critics claimed).
These are the same people who want to stop center-Right political groups from running ads critical of Democratic incumbents within 60 days of elections. This same mentality fueled the IRS’ political abuse of free-market and tea-party groups that applied for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. As Lois Lerner, the apparent leader of this mistreatment campaign, described conservatives in a recently discovered e-mail: “We don’t need to worry about alien terrorists. It’s our own crazies that will take us down.” She also called these law-abiding Americans “assholes.”
One would expect better of Pyke, who is Think Progress’ deputy economic-policy editor, no less. Instead, he took to Twitter — that increasingly reliable font of wisdom, reflection, and self-restraint — to express his death wish for Ailes, the man who has kept Fox (with which I am a contributor) at the top of the cable-news heap.
Evidently, Pyke was dissatisfied with FNC’s coverage of the mayhem in Ferguson, Missouri. Pyke is perfectly qualified to play media critic without writing that those with whom he differs should drop dead.
As Breitbart’s Charlie Spierling reported Thursday, Pyke described himself as “reflexively a**holish.” By going light years beyond the boundaries of decent discourse, Pyke has confirmed his self-assessment and piled shame upon Think Progress.