Leftists are "passionate advocates" the Right is "nuts."

A Barton Hinkle on how to get good press: be a Left Wing "firebrand."

The late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was a man of the hard left—"the Senate's most liberal member," as Mickey Kaus once termed him in the liberal online journal Slate. Wellstone opposed the first Iraq War—and the second one. He was no friend of the Second Amendment—or the First. He thought the government should strictly control campaign ads by groups such as the Sierra Club and the NRA. Even The New York Times, which supports the rationing of political speech, called Wellstone's idea a proposal "of questionable constitutionality."

Wellstone died in a plane crash in 2002, and was immediate lionized. The Washington Post called him one of the Senate's "leading liberals. . . . Colleagues from across the political spectrum praised Wellstone as a passionate advocate for his beliefs." He was "a hero to the left," the paper said, noting "there was little doubt where his heart lay." To The New York Times, Wellstone was "a rumpled, unfailingly modest man," a "firebrand," and although "his opponents always portrayed him as a left-wing extremist," Wellstone was "so happy, so comfortable, so unthreatening that he was able to ward off the attacks." Rumor has it he once fed a crowd with five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.

Tea Partiers ... are "obstreperous," "flatly and dangerously wrong," and "not interested in governing." (These are all quotes from major media organs, not obscure blogs.) They're "crazy" proponents of a "dangerous delusion"—"ridiculous," "extremist," "ultraorthodox tax haters," players of "ideological games," "totally unrealistic," authors of "madness," etc. etc.

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