Left wing embraces their inner Chomsky

By Rick Morris

If George W. Bush had "show up in one more viral video" on his to-do list before checking out of the White House, he succeeded. The gravy-training attention whore who chucked his shoes is probably getting electrodes strapped to his genitals right now. Hopefully, anyway.

And I say that as someone who's had plenty of criticism for "The Decider" over the years. But that illuminates the difference between critics on the left and those on the right. There is much glee and rejoicing on the left right now, drinking in Bush's humiliation with nary a thought to how the prestige of the country suffers from such a scene. Don't believe me? Check out the knuckle-dragging commenters at Huff Post who were clearly going all Al Bundy with the front of their trousers five seconds after hearing that the man who they hate more than they love anything in life got decisively upstaged.

Now that right there is mainstream on the left. Search through comments on any number of like blogs and you'll find the same misfits who celebrate the desecration of the American presidency.

What if the same thing happened to Obama?

I'm relatively certain that you'd find me -- and any number of like-minded folks -- who didn't vote for Obama in '08, won't vote for him in '12 and aren't happy about many of his plans ready to call in an airstrike on the home of anyone who would dare to mock an American president in such a way. To people like us, disrespect to a president -- and by extension, the United States -- is unthinkable and not anything to be tolerated much less vehemently embraced. As somebody else I frequently disagreed with (although voted for) once said, "Country first."

Are there those on the right who would be gleeful about Obama having to duck shoes in such a manner? I'm sure you could find them. But what this episode proves for the umpteenth time is that this kind of Chomskyite disregard of country is left to the sordid margins of the right, but is far more mainstream on the other side.