ANNALS OF CONSERVATIVE VICTIMHOOD. The recent flotilla-killa mess brought us a new round of All-Youse-Liberals-R-Anti-Semites. It's not entirely fresh, but I wanted to make sure you saw Theodore Dalrymple's contribution to the genre, in his Pajamas Media defense of European banks against a Guardian columnist:

The article in the Guardian was therefore an exercise, not untypical of the genre, in scapegoating, that disregarded both the most obvious considerations and the deeper currents. In days gone by, it would have been the Jewish money-lenders who would have been blamed; to blame the banks seems so much more acceptable, generous, and liberal-minded, but the structure of the thought is similar.

So now, if you speak harsh words about anyone and some wingnut jumps out from behind a bush and yells "Anti-Semite," you'll know where he got it from.

Actually, Dalrymple's blargument closely resembles that advanced by many other conservatives this week: that if you make fun of Sarah Palin you are attacking all womankind.

It's the biggest gun in their arsenal anymore. When one of their young honkies was caught doing black dialect at CPAC, they demanded an apology -- from the reporter who pointed it out. When psychologists frowned on their gay-straightening rackets, they cried oppression. Even making jokes about them is wah, no fair.

Being a conservative these days is mostly about dishing out sob stories of your ill-treatment. They apparently intend to whine their way back into power.

UPDATE. In comments, herr doktor bimler: "So, [Dalrymple] is arguing that 'This banker-unfriendly talk makes me think of Jews and this is the fault of the liberals.' This is mendentious stuff, which is a combination of mendacious and tendentious but more intense than both."