Jonah Goldberg goes in search of swastikas

Funny if it weren't so sad.

Conservatives like Goldberg claimed Nancy Pelosi got it all wrong when she claimed anti-health care mini-mob members showed up with swastikas. The nerve of that woman! In fact, Goldberg wrote an entire name-calling column about Pelosi was sooooo wrong about the swastikas comment. She was “lying.”

But then Goldberg got emails this morning confirming that, yeah, that's what some mini-mob members did:

So he went to work [emphasis added]:

Alan Colmes, for instance, says this is proof that Pelosi told the truth. But, wait a second. This is a single picture of a swastika. It also happens to have that red line through it. By this standard, similar anti-smoking signs are pro-smoking and anti-KKK protestors with the KKK crossed out with a line are also pro-KKK.

Pelosi's comment very clearly gives the impression that these protestors [sic] are carrying swastikas in a very different way.

Rather than doing the adult, common sense thing and actually agree that introducing Nazi references into the health care debate is, y'know, wrong, Goldberg, professional apologist and fact-checker's nightmare, tried to explain how the Nazi stuff wasn't really that bad.

By the way Jonah, this was from an Austin mini-mob. Can you please explain how this protester was “carrying swastikas in a very different way”?

Goldberg claimed Pelosi was “lying” when she referenced swastikas. That she engaged in “dishonesty, slander, and idiocy.”

And now we know the entire premise of Goldberg's column has been shown to be false.

UPDATED: Glenn Greenwald details the glaring double standard that Goldberg and friends are engaged in after they spent the Bush years emphatically denouncing any Nazi reference in our public debate.

UPDATED: Huffington Post has more evidence that Goldberg must have missed before he penned his trenchant column claiming Pelosi was “lying” about mini-mob swastikas.

Here's a young mini-mob man with an Obama T-shirt that reads “Hitler Gave Great Speeches Too”:

And here's a precious snapshot of a mini-mob kid in a stroller carrying a Nazi-flavored sign:

UPDATED: A belated reminder that Goldberg is incensed that it was Pelosi who introduced the deeply divisive notion that Obama critics were in any way connected to Nazism. That it was Goldberg who thought it was a “slander” to unfairly tag anyone in American politics with a Nazi reference.

Whatever.