Hitting the nail on the head...

This new writer over at HotAir just wrote the most excellent summary of the hypocrisy of smears in this country that I have ever read:

Our culture praises tolerance as the supreme virtue, but intolerance has its uses, too. For example, decent people should not tolerate a tired, bitter old late-night comedian making jokes about raping the 14-year-old daughter of a politician on national TV. The equivalent joke about raping Barack Obama’s daughters would not be tolerated. To let something like this slide is to concede that Sarah Palin and her daughter are less worthy of respect - less human - than Obama and his daughters. People do not forfeit their humanity because they hold political views that elite liberal culture disapproves of. There are only two things decent Americans need to hear from David Letterman now: his heartfelt apology to Willow Palin and her parents, followed by his resignation. Any guest on Letterman’s show who wishes to be respected as a gentleman or a lady should make this demand to his face, until he finally gets the message.

I’m also intolerant of celebrities casually tossing off ugly religious bigotry during fluff interviews. Asked how she would deal with the villain of her Transformers movies, Megan Fox said, “I’d barter with him, and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?” A comparable remark about the black or Hispanic “anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America” would not have been tolerated. A similar insult directed at the even more anti-gay Koran-beating Muslims in the Middle East, who are known to actually murder gays on a fairly regular basis, would have ended her career. To tolerate this kind of idiocy against certain racial groups and religions, but not others, is to concede that certain racial groups and religions are inherently inferior and worthy of contempt.

Read the whole thing.