Words, Action, Double Standards

A reader writes:

While O’Reilly, Hannity, and Glenn “the pot is boiling” Beck et al disavow implication in the George Tiller murder and the Holocaust museum shooting, Palin cries foul over jokes told by Letterman. Cupp on Hannity claims Obama is to blame and that if he were to denounce Letterman, Obama’s approval ratings would go through the roof (like they are not roof-high already).

I am struck by the disconnect here – either speech matters or it doesn’t; either it has power or it doesn’t; either you are responsible for what you say, or not.

How is it that conservatives who call others bloody-handed murderers and socialists/fascists and incite violence, claiming the need to defend “our” country against its democratically elected president, and claim it is only talk ...  then turn around and talk about the injustice done by a tasteless joke? If Obama should denounce Letterman, shouldn't Gingrich denounce Beck?

I'm not going to defend the joke - Palin's offspring have suffered enough by their mother's shameless political abuse of them - but my reader's point is a good one. It merely expects some modicum of intellectual honesty and consistency from the Limbaugh right. Not gonna happen.