The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes may win the coveted award for Most Ridiculous Pro-McCain Spin of the Weekend for his labored effort to implant an "angry left" meme:
This morning at a McCain rally here, a bearded young man in the crowd responded to a McCain critique of Barack Obama by shouting: "You're a liar John!" He then hoisted a young woman with an antiwar poster onto his shoulders and began yelling antiwar gibberish as McCain tried to continue his speech. When McCain supporters ripped up the woman's sign, she unfolded another one and the spectacle continued.
Andrew Sullivan makes the sadly necessary point that calling someone a "liar" isn't really comparable to calling him an Arab terrorist, socialist, stuffed monkey, etc., let alone to calling for his death.
But what struck me was the way Hayes obliviously suggests that the protester's perseverance after McCain supporters tore up her sign proved how angry she was. I mean, imagine how enraged it would have proven her to be if the McCain supporters had really roughed her up.
--Christopher Orr