It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

"STRANGE FRUIT" Discriminations has a lengthy post on the recent controversy over Senator Zell Miller's statement that Janice Rogers Brown is being "lynched" by Democrats who oppose her nomination to the DC Court of Appeals. The post notes that Democrats who express outrage at Miller's use of the term are being somewhat selective in their wrath and includes a significant number of instances in which "lynching" or variations thereof have been used with little or no protest. Examples:

I hate to use a charged term, but it's my heart talking here. I really think it was a political lynching that happened in the United States Senate
• Sen. Barbara Boxer in interview with CBS’s Bob Shieffer on John Ashcroft’s opposing the nomination of Ronnie White to the Circuit Court of Appeals.

“He orchestrated the lynching of an innocent man”
• Sen. Ted Kennedy, commenting on Dominick Dunne’s argument that Kennedy cousin Tommy Skakel was a murderer, USA Today, 1 April 2002

“Hate crimes are modern day lynchings”
• Sen. Ted Kennedy, Associated Press, 19 October 1999

Personally, I think that Miller went way over the top by describing what happened to Brown as a "lynching." After all, we're talking about a powerful California judge not becoming a Circuit Court Justice in DC (she presumably will stay on the bench in California) not violence done to her person or livelihood. But the selectivity of outrage (and the post lists many more than the excerpts I have included here) is yet another troubling indication of the partisanship that is tearing at the political fabric of the U.S. Note: this partisanship is entirely equal opportunity: both Republicans and Democrats, both left and right do it. It appears that very few are willing to forgo short-term partisan advantage for E Pluribus Unum.