Guy Who Dissed The Troops Five Years Ago Writes About Something Else, Wingnuts Outraged

OMG you guise!!! There is a man out there in America who does not love The Troops! And he is still allowed to write things for a living! Even though The Troops have bled and died for his right to have written a blog post titled "Fuck the Troops" in 2008! And Politicojust published an article by the guy, on a completely different topic -- Murphy is also the guy who prank-called Scott Walker in 2011, pretending to be David Koch, which is what the article is about. Murphy's Politico piece doesn't even contain the word "fuck" at all, which is something of an achievement for anyone writing about that fucking fuckhead Scott Walker.

And so the professional journalists at Dead Breitbart's Shelter For The Terminally Enraged did a massively butthurt exposé of the terrible things that Ian Murphy wrote in 2008. Sure, they mention the piece Politico ran Monday, once, but mostly the Breitbart piece is a copypaste of the most button-pushing parts of Murphy's "virulent anti-American soldier screed," aimed at trashing Politico of course -- Murphy has now been transmogrified into "Politico reporter Ian Murphy" or "Politico columnist Ian Murphy," and by god, Politico or any other publication that runs anything else by Murphy is going to hear about this forever, because raining perpetual wrath upon the Unholy is pretty much these guys' mission statement.

Murphy is not especially worried; following the predictable outrage outbreak, he got into a good old-fashioned Twitter Feud, and his timeline is a thing of obscene beauty today. Breitbart horcrux Matthew Boyle collected some of the most horriblest, starting with this perfectly reasonable observation:

“I love how whenever I do something, a bunch of people attack me for a 5 year-old article they haven't read. Literally, love it.”

And of course, things escalated; somebody accused him of having an adolescent obsession with the word "fuck," and Murphy replied 

“Fuck is a rich, versatile word. And at least I don't worship ‘teenage' trickle down nonsense. Reagan fucks Satan in hell.”

Murphy has, in the interests of complete accuracy, issued a correction, noting that he suspects it's the other way around, and that "Reagan's a total demon-bottom. I hear." He has also pointed out that Satan is a fictional character. 

And then, Murphy did the Worst Thing Possible: He insulted a soldier! (And we mean a real, good, American soldier, not a gay soldier, who it's OK to boo at.) When a Genuine American Veteran tweeted "hey write what you want, it is a free country, people like my brothers and myself gave you the right to spew your hate,” Murphy and the vet, Matthew Laas, embarked ont he following colloquy, as transcribed by Boyle:

Murphy responded by asking in a tweet filled with profanity: “Bullshit. What the fuck have you ever done to protect my free speech?”

Laas responded:  “besides fight, bleed, and kill those who would rather cut you throat than look at you, for the past 16 years?”

Murphy tweeted back:  “So nothing, is what you're saying. Who'd you kill? People who threatened my free speech. Dude. Come on.”

Laas then responded over two tweets. “It is not about who I would or have killed, it was about who and what I was protecting, and continue to protect,” he said,   adding:  “military service is not about what is at the end of the barrel, but what is at your back.”

And so on. Breitbart annex TruthRevolt catalogued other examples of Murphy's "onslaught," in which he kept saying mean things about "the work of America's military" -- mostly variations on Murphy's point that whatever The Troops have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to do for the last decade, it's pretty likely that Free Speech would still be around without those wars:

Who died for what now? It's a great slogan, but it's absolute nonsense.

And of course, the TruthRevolt piece closes by triumphantly repeating the cliché:  

The fact that he is only able to show such disdain toward the troops because of the work of the troops themselves, who for over two hundred years have stood as a bulwark against tyranny is utterly lost on Murphy.

Beg pardon? Could you guys maybe explain how exactly the First Amendment was rescued by our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan? We're pretty sure that's the question Murphy was asking, and just repeating "They bled and died to keep you ungrateful commies free!" really does not answer it. Yes, yes, al Qaeda is full of bad terrorists and Saddam Hussein was a bad person. But neither posed any threat at all to the right of Americans to say "fuck" on the internet.

For his part, Politico reporter Ian Murphy mostly seems amused at the campaign to get him "fired" from a publication that he sold a freelance piece to:

So you know, I wrote ONE thing for Politico. Ever. Never will again. Stop trying to get me fired. I don't work there.

At last report, The Troops appear to have weathered Murphy's vicious attacks with no apparent damage, and Matthew "Friends of Hamas" Boyle is still employed by Breitbart.

[ Breitbart / Twitter / Breitbart again / TruthRevolt ]