One can always count on the setup “one part of [xxx]’s post is particularly illuminating” as the marker for the most noxious gas in a piece. What comes next is sure to be drive-by.

Any chance us non-Jews could benefit by proximity to your presumptive protective umbrella against charges of insufficient vigilance against anitsemitism that you wish to extend to Jews? That’s probably asking too much, but what about some help against charges of antisemitism itself?

Spencer, I wish you a meaningful day of atonement. As you spend this day, I hope you are aware of our Christian love for you, for your righteous, brilliant (as in shedding of much light) anger against this sleazeball Gerson. God abhors dishonestly, most of all in Her name, and your tone is entirely appropriate.

Amazing that so much sleaze can rest in one body and brain, and then be given such a large bullhorn by the WaPo.

That’s gonna leave a mark. Well, it would, if Gerson weren’t an oblivious jerk. But then, he is… otherwise he wouldn’t have worked for Bush as long as he did.

Michael Gerson should be in prison.

There, I said it.

It’s not that he downplays the right wing hatred being spewed by Limpbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly and the rest of that sorry crew. He doesn’t even recognize its existence, sort of like a fish doesn’t know about water because it is all that there is for him. Gerson’s articles have all been very similar to the stuff that spews forth from Faux TV but written in a more refined way, the same thing in different clothing. Therefore he isn’t even aware that what Faux TV projects is in any way wrong, hateful, misguided, etc. This is the stuff he breathes.

Perhaps he should read the comment section of the Jerusalem post more closely, where muslim haters romp freely through moderated discussion-threads. OH, I forget, anti-islam feelings are rational, while sceptiscism to Israel is anti-semitism. Lieberman just went out and declared my country, Norway, for officially anti-semitic. I guess answering that charge will make me anti-semitic in Gersons eyes unless I agree.

Deflection and projection, divide and conquer is the name of the game for hardcore members of the Republican Party. Deflect the focus from the evil within your ranks and project it onto any other target besides oneself. This is a common technique used by many on the right to justify their immoral and divisive actions. Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, and all the other entertainers feed their listeners a steady diet of hate speech, and for Gershon to deny it shows his complicity in the use of these divide and conquer tactics. Instead of developing viable alternatives to progressive/liberal policies, the republicans, in general, want to exploit the minds of the weak to generate votes. Their party needs a complete overhaul, but the major players have enough clout to prevent it, purging moderates from the party. Pretty small tent in spite of what Steele had to say earlier this year. The majority of them accept lying as justification for swaying public opinion instead of being willing to work hard on policy alternatives.

Deflection and projection, divide and conquer is the name of the game for hardcore members of the Republican Party.

People like Gerson and Brooks are operatives with a specific task — talking to the centrist and apolitical members of certain normally-Democratric groups. If they can shave off 1 or 2% of some important demographic, they’ve done their job. They don’t have to convince everyone.

I’ve wondered whether Gerson wasn’t hired because Brooks is Jewish. The hard core may have been offended by a non-Christian designated conservative.

Gerson’s original argument has some merit — message boards are indeed polluted with racist screeds. I myself worry more about more subtle screeds — disinformation with links to WorldNet Daily, etc. Not all of the bad actors in our culture are so helpful about flagging themselves with racist slurs and the use of the caps lock.

But still, the basic argument is that comments sections and message boards matter. On this point I agree with Gerson more than Klein. Lies proliferate on Twitter, and if you try and respond to them all (I know this from personal experience) they’ll suspend your account for spamming. I’m not as sanguine about Gerson’s own suggested solutions, though.

One solution he offers is more monitoring, but there are problems with aggressive monitoring too. The lag in posting time prevents conversation (you might spend half the day waiting for your reply to appear), and the poorly paid grunts that do it get a power complex.

For example, (another thing I know from personal experience) you can’t suggest Roland Martin’s support for Roland Burris may have been influenced by his race and expect your comment to be posted in Martin’s CNN message board. And if you point out to Jack Cafferty on his Cafferty File board that right wing craziness is mouthed on CNN itself — by guests on Lou Dobb’s show, AND by Lou Dobbs — the administrator will delete all references to Dobbs before he posts your edited comment.

Yet another thing I know from personal experience: if you happened to notice that Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire was bulleting no news about the Prop 8 fight in California, and asked him to, he not only didn’t do it, not only deleted your posts when you tried to discuss the matter under any other topic, but banned you from posting at all.

The second solution Gerson suggests is that nobody should be allowed to post under a username — you should have to sign everything with your own identity. That idea chills me to the bone. Maybe Sicilians should have to do that before they criticize the Mafia on message boards; I wonder how that would work out.

If your next door neighbor believes abortion doctors should be shot on sight, and you do not, you can express it anyplace now on the internet without your neighbor finding out and leaving cow’s blood on your stoop at night. I’m not sure at all that making people own up publicly to all their own comments is the way to avoid intimidating behavior in society.

What I’m most worried about regarding anti-Semites and the Internet isn’t so much the anti-Semitic railing on regular websites but the use of specifically anti-Semitic blogs and boards to cluster and organize. It’s not that anti-Semites are going to convert everybody on the message boards of respectable news organizations, but that lonely anti-Semites in Oregon will meet lonely anti-Semites in Utah, and they’ll organize retreats and get-togethers, and uh, activities….

And although that may be a drop in the ocean of the Internet, I don’t think such sites should be dismissed too easily. Also, factually speaking, when Gerson brings up the Holocaust Museum shooter (in what he thinks is his aha! moment) he’s bringing up an individual whose blogging on the Internet WAS under his own name, and who WAS therefore known by name to law enforcement organizations and the Southern Poverty Law Center. We don’t have preventive detention in this country (well, we’re not supposed to), but thanks to the Internet, the guy was at least on the radar.

Finally, yes, I agree with Klein in taking hate radio more seriously than I take the Father Coughlins of the Net. Limbaugh and Savage and Liddy are often just as bad as all but the worst neo-Nazis and Klansmen on the web, and their audience is much larger. When you look at polls, and at how many Americans now think Obama is foreign born or a secret Muslim, it’s shocking. These things may circulate on message boards, but they circulate on right wing radio and TV too, to bigger effect. Gerson may not want to talk about that, and may want to whitewash his compatriots, but it’s still true. If he condemns it one place, why so ostentatiously refuse to condemn it everywhere?

And don’t tell me more people don’t believe what they hear on Rush Limbaugh’s show more readily than what they read an anonymous poster screaming on the Net. Limbaugh addresses great big Republican groups, who cheer him to the rafters. The Washington tea party protesters kept saying they were there because of Glenn Beck. Why is Gerson defending as free speech from Beck or Limbaugh what he wants an administrator to delete when Joe Anybody says it?

Glenn Beck isn’t a racist because Klein disagrees with him. Glenn Beck is a racist because he claims the white race is being victimized and targeted by Barack Obama’s concealed hatred of the white race. He’s not a Nazi because he disagrees with us; we disagree with him because he’s a Nazi. It’s a bit like telling Jesse Owens his only problem with Hitler is that he insists on being Jesse Owens.

Hate speech is a seamless robe worn now by far too much of the right, and it’s harder than ever to tell the mainstream on the right from the fringe. Gerson can’t obscure that by making artificial distinctions between the hate speech of syndicated speakers and the hate speech that appears at the sufferance of privately owned message boards. It doesn’t smell any better just because somebody’s getting paid for it.