TALL TALES. One of the big reasons why I really miss Norbizness's blog is his "The Left Is Attacking The City" posts, in which he chronicled the most egregious blanket statements made by conservatives about "The Left" -- a creature which, like the Loch Ness Monster, is known mainly by the descriptions of affrighted drunks. (e.g., Michelle Malkin's "How the left is faking an epidemic of hate crime." We are? I don't see it on my calendar.)

Had Norb not departed like Daniel "D-Day" Simpson for whereabouts unknown in 2008, what fun he might have had with National Review's Socialistfinder General Stanley Kurtz. It seems Glenn Beck's attacks on the aged and formerly obscure academic Frances Fox Piven have made her famous enough to receive death threats, and some people have complained about this -- which just shows, Kurtz cackles as sudden flashes of lightning illuminate his secret laboratory, that the The Left has made a "Strategic Blunder":

The hope of silencing Beck in the wake of Tucson has lured the left into a strategic blunder. They’ve decided to turn Piven into a martyr. Yet in doing so the left has tied itself to Piven’s wild writings and over-the-top radicalism... It’s not Beck who’s tarring the left with the Brush of Piven’s radicalism. They’re doing it to themselves.

Actually, comrades, I think where we went wrong was not knowing who the fuck Frances Fox Piven was in the first place. Had we been aware, we might have preemptively denounced her, or at least refrained from trying to defend her from the threats of patriotic mouth-bretahers, before Kurtz made his play. But our ignorance has left us open to attack as unwitting accomplices. Just being of (or in, or around, or in proximity to) The Left makes us responsible for her opinions, in much the same way that Republicans are responsible for the opinions of their fellow party member Ted Bundy.

(When and if Piven is assassinated, I predict the shooter will be non-partisan crazy. You can take that to the bunker!)

UPDATE. In comments, Xecky Gilchrist: "Who's this Piven? I thought we were all worshiping Ward Churchill, still."