i vaguely remember reading something about an eye, and a beam being in it, and another eye...well, whatever; i'm sure it wasn't important

Now that McCarthyite (No, wait! McCarthy was a Patriot! Must keep wingnut memes straight!) noted communist infiltrator and pederast Harry Reid has had the temerity to suggest that Mitt "Mitt" Romney's refusal to release his tax returns stems from the possibility that he didn't have to pay any taxes despite his obscene wealth, wingnuts the world over are OUTRAGED at this baseless attack against a political figure without any evidence to back it up. I thought, in the spirit of comprehensively tackling the problem of unsubstantiated allegation being treated as serious accusation when leveled against those seeking high office, I would helpfully list several other instances of exactly the same sort of thing that have been foisted upon the public over the last couple of decades. Unfortunately it's not comprehensive, but at least it gets us started:

• Bill Clinton ran coke through Mena Airport
• The Clinton Body Count
• Hillary Clinton had a lesbian affair with a Russian spy
• Hillary Clinton's lesbian lover is a terrorist agent of the Muslim Brotherhood
• Lesbian (?) Hillary Clinton had her lover Vince Foster murdered, also because he knew too much about the Clintons' super-illegal land dealings and also too crime of passion something something
• Pardongate
• Whitewater
• Wampumgate
• Travelgate
• Filegate
• John Kerry shot himself for a Purple Heart
• Swiftboating
• Climate change is all a giant conspiracy to something something RICH SCIENTISTS AND DEATH TO AMERICA
• Iraq was behind 9/11
• Iraq had WMD
• Birtherism
• Obama is a Muslim (or possibly the Antichrist!)
• Obama is a gay coke addict
• Eric Holder sold guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to increase support for gun control
• Obama supports reparations
• Obama won't release his transcripts because they prove he's a foreigner/he's stupid/he did gun-running for Muslim terrorists/he's a commie/whatever

None of this is to say that what Reid is doing is necessarily right, or good, just that, hey, this is the way politics is done nowadays and it's the people complaining loudest about Reid who are the ones who created this environment. The expectation that Democrats should be better than this even though Republicans are not, or that Democrats should unilaterally concede the "making shit up" ground to Republicans no matter how effective it proves to be, is naive at best, and comically ludicrous when it spews forth from the crowd that lies with impunity about every Democrat under the sun in order to score political advantage.



P.S. And, yeah, zOMG EVEN THE LIBERAL JON STEWART SAYS REID IS AN ASSHOLE! This is particularly not relevant for several reasons:

• Who gives a shit?
• Jon Stewart isn't particularly liberal.
• He ended that particular bit with a long look at all the whackaloon lies that have been invented whole-cloth by just one show on one right-wing TV network, but onward Fox goes without any concern over Jon Stewart's disapproval.

The only thing of note from Stewart's segment is the hypocrisy it takes for the right to suddenly pretend that they A) care what Jon Stewart has to say and B) are offended at unsubstantiated accusations being tossed at political figures.