Let’s start out with the story as told by uberlib Kate Sheppard:
A new report from the Governor’s Highway Safety Association is getting lots of press today because some reporters, rather bizarrely, have tried to blame the increase in pedestrian deaths in 2010 on First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign.
Yes, you read that right. See the original piece in The Examiner and the followup in the Daily Caller.
The reporters in question posit that perhaps the increase in the number of pedestrians struck by cars last year, after four years of decline, is because people are out exercising more, choosing to walk when possible instead of hopping in the car. TBD has a good post in which the GHSA’s executive director, Barbara Harsha, explaining that she never said that at all. The group isn’t sure exactly what caused the uptick in deaths—and they certainly can’t pin it on Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative.
Now, do I think for a single second that Michelle Obama’s initiative should be blamed for the spike in pedestrian deaths?
No.
Then again, I don’t think like a liberal.
Sarah Palin got widely blamed for Jared Loughner’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and many others in Tucson Arizona for no other reason than that she had a map that “targeted” vulnerable Democrats – Giffords included – for political defeat.
It wasn’t just the far-left that did this; even supposed “mainstream” journalists were all over themselves denouncing Sarah Palin for her inciting violence.
They didn’t really give a damn that Democrats themselves routinely used the same sort of maps to “target” Republicans:
Nor did they think it worthwhile to mention that Bob Beckel – the Democrat strategist who ran Walter Mondale’s campaign – claimed that he invented “targeting” maps. And that, therefore, the worse thing Republicans did was respond to this act of hate and violence by fighting back.
Nor did they decide it was worthwhile to mention the fact that not only did a leftwing group “target” Gabrielle Giffords for defeat because she wasn’t liberal enough for them, but they actually used the word “dead” in reference to her:
The website Daily Kos has also deleted a diary about Rep. Gabrielle Giffords entitled “My Congresswoman Voted Against Pelosi, Now She’s Dead To Me,” but so far has not deleted a post by founder Markos Moulitsas that lists Giffords’ district among those on their “target list,” and noted that “Not all of these people will get or even deserve primaries, but this vote certainly puts a bulls eye on their district.”
We have since learned that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between Sarah Palin and anything that Sarah Palin said or did or posted and Tucson gunman Jared Loughner.
But that didn’t stop the rabid left, did it?
But allow me to think like a liberal, for a second…
Okay, I’m back from the sudden urge to vomit that overcame me. My stomach is now as devoid of its contents as my mind of rationality. I now return to my experiment of thinking like a liberal.
If we apply the left’s “guilty until proven innocent” tactic on Michelle Obama, where do we end up?
With all due respect, there is FAR more evidence linking Michelle Obama to the traffic deaths of pedestrians (after all, she did encourage people to get out there and walk, and she should have known that many people who were stupid enough to take advice from her in the first place would be too stupid to survive an encounter with the real world).
It seems obvious that, applying liberal methodology, we should immediately brand Michelle Obama a mass-murderer. And we should continue to denounce her until we do a study and determine that every single pedestrian killed had never once heard her instruction to “move.”
And, of course, if so much as one pedestrian causality ever heard Michelle Obama say “let’s move,” then obviously Michelle Obama as much as killed that poor victim.
And all we need to condemn Michelle Obama for her “Let’s Murder” initiative is to apply the same standard that the left applied to Sarah Palin.
Start Thinking Right 