James Wolcott: Pigeon Poop

As my faithful readers know, I draw many, if not most, if not all of my analogies from Seinfeld. And I'm about to do so again.

Yesterday we saw the backfire over Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. It was rather comic how, even in the condemnation of Robertson's statement, the man behind the mouth was diminuitized as a sort of quaint old garden gnome whose name recognition was all out of proportion to his influence. The State Department called his murdermongering "inappropriate" (pretty rough language there, sailor), but described Robertson modestly as a "private citizen." He's rather more than that. A former Republican presidential candidate and former head of the Christian Coalition, he isn't just some guy popping off at the end of the salad bar.