UPDATED: White powder terrorist of Jon Stewart, Letterman, Pelosi...

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 2:06 PM on November 13, 2006.

Yes, it appears that Chad Conrad Castagana, the man "suspected of mailing more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Jon Stewart and other high-profile figures," was a conservative and a commenter on conservative blogs. Unless there are two Chad Castaganas:

He also appears to have been a frequenter of Right Wing sewer, The Free Republic.

Heavens. What does it mean?!

Hardly anything; let the witch hunt end here, please. Liberal blogs, not a monolithic entity in the first place, aren't, as Fox's new talking head (former Maxim Pimp Greg Gutfeld) claimed, "sending the same message as terrorists."

Just as conservative blogs, like "Expose the Left," aren't necessarily promoting terrorism, as has been allegedly committed by Chad Castagana.

GLOSSARY:

Wackos attach themselves to any perspective and take it to the extreme. A**holes blame the most salient representatives of a given perspective for the actions of their most radical adherents for political gain.

UPDATE: Domestic Terrorism expert David Neiwert has responded to the evidence that's pouring in from all corners about Castagana and his love for Conservative commentators. Noting that prominent pushers of hatred are somewhat culpable, he writes:

[M]entally unstable types are almost always stirred up and driven to their insane acts by haters of various stripes, the kind whose voices seem each day to be growing louder in our public discourse. These cultural vampires have developed a real knack for inspiring mentally unstable people into horrific acts of violence.

Haters like the people Castagana claims as his heroes -- Coulter, Malkin, Ingraham, just for starters -- are constantly engaging in the worst kind of eliminationist rhetoric directed primarily at liberals. It is simply an inevitability that, when this kind of hate is broadcast to millions of people daily, some of them are eventually going to start acting it out in fashions precisely like this. And worse.

Absolutely agreed. My original post was a bit more contrarian than I would've liked -- although, to be fair, the full range of his love for the Tipsy Chicks had yet to be discovered.

Still and all, my point wasn't that every event takes place in a vacuum, that we're all independent agents, but rather that blogs, as opposed to other mediums (I sic myself) bear no more or less responsibility for their readers than networks, newspapers or magazines bear for theirs. Which is to say: some.

And on that note, I agree once more with Neiwert that it's past time to hold media executives and producers responsible for the voices they amplify... (C&L, Nitpicker, ExposeTheLeft, Orcinus)

Tagged as: conservatives, terrorist, blogs

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.