Opinion: Oh yeah? Heil this!
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| Spare the ‘Heils’ -- he’s dead. (Associated Press) |
The cyber-knives are out for Pamela Pilger.
She’s the Nevada woman who yelled “Heil Hitler” at an Israeli Jew last week, apparently infuriated by his praise for that country’s national health care program and gold-plated care for its soldiers. (The Israeli seems to have been concerned about how the U.S. treats its veterans, not the relative merits of nationalized health care.) Pilger, wearing an Israeli defense forces shirt, blasted the speaker (and by extension all those other Nazi-sympathizing Jews in Israel) for failing to realize that universal health care is the first step to a socialist master plan.
Seriously, shouldn’t you have to pick one camp and stick with it? Either you get to wear pro-Israel gear or you shout hateful, racist words to Jews. Not both. Anyway, the appropriate reaction to the Pilger video would have been this: recoil, shake head, pass to sane friends, renew commitment to improve nation’s education system. Period.
But no. Bloggers have sicced the masses on her. Her personal information is now all over the Internet with exhortations to contact, berate and excoriate her. And happy commenters report back that they have done just that. A few proudly note they have rebutted her anti-Semitic ravings with explicit sexist vulgarities.
This is such a bad move. Not only is it counterproductive – it won’t further the cause of healthcare reform legislation -- but it is also a terrible misapplication of the power of Internet.
It’s using a bomb to attack an ant.
Semi-literate right-wingers have been behaving badly for weeks, hurling all kinds of invective around to see where it sticks. And lefties have been longing to retaliate. Now Pilger, with her confused cruelty, wanders into the crosshairs. Does that make her fair game? An angry mob is still a mob, even in cyberspace.