Fox Excuse Machine: the right trivializes, questions, dismisses threats of violence

Media Matters

Amid reports that several Democrats in Congress have been the targets of death threats, racial and anti-gay epithets, and have had their offices vandalized for their votes on health care reform, several Fox News personalities have been quick to first condemn the threats but then immediately make excuses for the threats. Others have appeared to dismiss the seriousness of the threats.

Doocy: "So why are people angry? Maybe because they didn't want this bill?"

Kilmeade: "Are Democrats using" threats of violence "to their advantage to marginalize Republican opposition?"

Carlson agrees it's "disappointing" that Democrats are making threats so public and says "they should just stop discussing it all together."

Beck: Obama is "poking and prodding" people to commit violence. ... "They need you to be violent. They are begging for it."

Hannity: "So do you think that this is just an effort to smear conservatives?"

Cupp: Democrats "want us to feel sorry for them that they've gotten a couple of ... angry voicemails."

Fox Nation: "Are Threats Really Elevated, or Are Dems Playing Politics?"

Fox Nation: "Was Tea Party Story a Racial Rant or a Set Up?"

Charles Krauthammer: "I'm sure a lot of this is trumped up. ... You are always going to have a kook and a nut here and there."

Stephen Hayes: "This happens all the time," "counterproductive" for GOP to condemn them again.

And the blogs.....

NewsBusters: "The Media's Myth of Right Wing Violence."

Confederate Yankee: "[H]ave a swing" at "your Congressman" instead

Gateway Pundit: "Suddenly the State-Run Media is Horrified that Politician's [sic] Home Addresses Are Published on the Internet."

Big Journalism's Walsh: Media "never once stops to question whether the Alinsky Party is, you know, exaggerating or even lying."

Big Government: "We doubt these threats are actually real and, certainly wouldn't condone them."