Howard Fineman is currently in a position at the Huffington Post where he could ostensibly crush me. But I don't care. His latest post about the Jon Stewart "Rally to Restore Sanity" contained arguably the most ridiculous "both sides" false equivalence of recent memory.
Even though [Arianna Huffington is] backing Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity," and even though I now work for her, I had dismissed the event this Saturday on the Mall as self-indulgent, time-wasting comedy.
Until now.
The reason is that I watched two videos: one, of a thug named Tim Profitt pressing his shoe onto Lauren Valle's skull; the other, of Joy Behar calling Sharron Angle a bitch who's going to hell.
See how that works? A thug from the Rand Paul campaign (along with several others) assaulting and injuring a woman at a political rally is the same as a comedian making a snarky remark on television about Sharron Angle. Both sides are obviously crrrrraaaaazyy!
Fineman could have written the same things with just the Tim Profitt crap as his example. There was no need whatsoever to include an example "from the left" -- because there really aren't any similar examples on the left. But I suppose all of the villager hipsters are drawing these "both sides" false equivalences, and the only way to seem like one of the cool kids is to play along.
Ugh.