"Sir, I say this with all due respect - you are a fucking moron."

[blogslut]

Read comedian Michael Ian Black's account of how he lashed out at an audience member, who compared Obama to Hitler, and how he kind of wishes he hadn't gone so overboard:

Hitler is just a buzz word. Which is actually part of my problem with him saying it in such a blithe way. In a weird way, by equating policy disagreements with a genocidal egomaniac, you're actually disrespecting Hitler. You're actually bringing his evil down to the level of the mundane, which we should never do. Obama is Hitler because he created a consumer protection agency? C'mon...

http://tv.gawker.com/5619204/michael-ian-black-goes-after-a-racist-obama+hater-during-his-set

[realisticphish]

1. honestly, it's something that needs to be said

and it's something that we on the left can be somewhat guilty of, though we had a much better case with Bush than the right does with Obama.

This is why the Godwin fallacy exists.

Hitler has become a synonym for "bad," rather than "evil." Or maybe "evil" now just means "thinks differently than I do," I don't know

[Selatius]

4. Generally, if the president leaves behind a massive body count, the comparison is more valid.

If people wanted to compare Bush to Hitler, they had much more of an argument in relation to the number of civilians killed in a war he started vs. a simple dislike for the person for purely political reasons, but more to the point, the reason people use Hitler comparisons today is precisely because three generations have passed between now and what really happened in the last World War. If the memory was still as fresh in the minds of people as it was for returning GIs who saw the death camps and saw the living skeletons that survived that machinery and smelled the human ash billowing from the smokestacks, there would be much, much less people even bothering to compare anybody now with Hitler. You can take that to the bank.

People have simply forgotten. All those who died in that war are simply dry numbers now. There's no memory behind those numbers, no terror, no pain, no anguish, nothing that could change your life for the rest of the days and make you wish you will never see such a thing again.

[Radical Activist]

2. Awesome rant.

"You're a fucking idiot. You're a fucking moron. You're the fucking problem with this country. You and your reflexive retardation."

[lafayettelonewolf]

3. Big azz K&R

Very refreshing!!! :D

[Crystal Clarity]

5. It'd be hard to NOT respond as Black did to such an absurd remark.

From about March of 09 on, I began to notice a disturbingly vicious tone coming from the right/far right. A tone so hostile that at first I thought it was only a few very vocal nutjobs... I mean come on; surely no one is taking them seriously...they don't make any sense!?!

But the Town Hall fiascoes that summer proved me wrong. I was shocked to see how mainstream this line of thinking had become. For me, the defining moment was when I saw an otherwise sane looking woman holding up an Obama/Hitler sign at Barney Frank's Town hall meeting.

With this in mind, I read the whole article and could SO identify w/the comedian. He says in his blog that he regrets his reaction to the audience member's shout-out. I think he's being a little too hard on himself. Seriously, what were his choices? He could've ignored the jerk, and perhaps w/the benefit of hindsight, that's what he should have done; but I think it'd be hard for any rational person (especially one of Jewish descent) to let that outburst linger in the room like the stench of a particularly vile cloud of flatulence.

IMHO comedian Black showed reasonable restraint in his response to such an absurd comment.