Fearful Fringe

I'm always doubtful when someone calls something "the lunatic fringe", but as it was pointed out today on Huffpro, maybe that's what it takes to make a point these things are on the rise. The sad case of Dr Tiller actually started with his first mousy would-be assassin, Shelly Shannon, taking a crack at him in the early 90's. I recall this because working in rural Oregon at the time I not only was horrified by the local right-wing response from the community of 'reverse martyrdom' in trying to paint her like a Joan of Arc, but that she actually took vacation time to do this. Why hate so much when you can go to Maui for all that bellyaching? But as Wilde pointed out: The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity...
Rosanne Barr once had a great quote about the type of haters who took time to complain to TV guide about a recent cover of her - "Oh, you know - it was no one normal that wrote in to complain. I guess one good thing was that it took time away from them picketing abortion clinics"... Then it was the lunatic fringe. Now, it's practically a jihad of "Prayer Warriors" and people who are on the militant edge. Sorry to be grim, but I don't see much distancing happening on the right on this... Watching a frontline special on the Taliban in Pakistan training small children to run into crowds with bombs strapped to them is not a far cry from Shelly Shannon. I'm not breaking windows or disrupting marriages to get my rights, and the fact that now the freaks forming the human-fence outside of abortion clinics now have access to guns. The whole thing is tragic - and yet it somehow sickly resembles this film...