Malkin gone wild.

Malkin is in a tizzy because Josh Marshall has called out the "grassroots" movement she loves so much as the crazy AstroTurf Republican hooligan fest which it actually is:

Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall bemoaned a fiscal conservative activist’s memo offering advice on how to “pack the hall..spread out” and challenge a politician early “to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda.” Horrors! “This amounts to a sort of civic vigilantism,” Marshall fretted.

No, showing up at a congressional town hall and booing a talking points-programmed political hack isn’t “civic vigilantism.”

I'm afraid it is if the purpose of showing up is to actively prevent any discussion from taking place. No-one is saying that they shouldn't turn up. No-one is saying that they shouldn't make their views known as clearly and as strongly as they possibly can. But town hall meetings are so representatives can listen and respond. Continually shouting "Just say no!" actually disrupts the very things that town hall meetings are supposed to achieve. There is no exchange of ideas there, rather one side are behaving like a mob and making sure that no opinion other than their own is even heard.

She prattles on:

That is what the anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-Bush mobsters did over the last eight years – and there wasn’t a peep about those brute tactics from Obama’s blogging pals.

Actually, if my memory serves me correctly, most people who wanted to protest during the Bush years were placed in "free speech zones" far from where the president could see them.

Now, no-one is saying that these insane tea baggers aren't allowed to attend, but if their purpose of attending is to disrupt the meeting and make discussion impossible, perhaps they would be better off in one of the "free speech zones" which right wingers had no problem with during the past eight years?

Or is there simply no limit to their hypocrisy?

Tags: Malkin, tea baggers, protest, town hall disruptions