On the June 20th edition of the John Carlson Show, the host repeated a time-honored tradition in talk radio:

1. Find a short post made by a random user of a liberal blog
2. Misconstrue the meaning of the post
3. Paint all liberals as evil people who agree with the deliberately misconstrued meaning of the post
4. Shake, stir, and dispense manufactured outrage to the right-wing masses

The post in question was a 6-line diary made by a user at Daily Kos who expressed outrage at the torture and murder of two Marines in Iraq and attempted to point out how the Bush administration's support for torture has undermined our moral authority in the world. Carlson claimed that the user thought the killings were "quaint" and directly equated US military actions in Iraq with the barbarous behavior of the terrorists and insurgents we've been fighting there. He then went on to paint that misconstrued view as representative of most liberals in America.

Unfortunately, John seems to have missed a few details in the post. Evidently he didn't have time to follow the link behind the word "quaint" as used in the posting, which highlighted the Bush administration's use of the word to describe the Geneva Convention and its restrictions on torture during times of war. Carlson didn't seem to see the author's outrage at the torture and killing of the Marines. Evidently Carlson also missed the update added to the diary that apologized for the original tone of the post and added more detail on the author's thoughts on how the Bush administration's discarding of international laws on torture has weakened our nation's moral authority. And finally, I guess Carlson didn't have time during his 3 hours of show prep to read the numerous comments in the diary that strongly disagreed with its original tone.

CARLSON: The left-wing in america, the liberal Democrats in America, the John Murtha crowd in congress blames America first. So if there is this kind of outrage as these soldiers are tortured, they say 'Who are we to talk we have Abu Graib. We sometimes transfer soldiers, or uh transfer Al Qaida to other countries who torture them.' Or, 'Who are we to talk, we've been accused of things at Gitmo. Here's the difference between those two things. First of all, we are dealing with terrorists. They were dealing with helpless soldiers who were covered by the Geneva Convention. The second thing is, let's not forget, these guys are not the bad guys. The left wing makes no distinction between US soldiers who are caught and insurgent terrorists who are caught. Remember, they are the ones who are making jihad on everyone else.

Later in the show Carlson claimed that regular listeners should know that he never blows anything out of proportion or manufactures false outrage. Nah, never.