Bill Maher has a great take-down of the conservative obsession with Saul Alinsky. For those who don’t know him, Alinsky was a community organizer from the 1930s through his death in 1972. The Right (Reich?) would have you believe that he was some kind of radical, but he was anything but. I think there are two reasons that conservatives are so into him. First, he wrote Rules for Radicals. This book was very popular among student organizers in the 1960s. But what is more important, the book has been very popular among conservatives from the 1980s up to the present. I figure that they just project their own lack of any ethics onto poor Mr. Alinsky.
The second reason that Saul Alinsky has turned into the Devil for conservatives is that when he was younger, Barack Obama was a community organizer. And as all conservatives know: anything Obama does is by definition evil. Therefore, Alinsky is evil. I know the logic is twisted: Obama is evil because he follows Alinsky who was evil because he was a community organizer and we know community organizers are evil because Obama was once one. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Obama is evil because of everything he’s ever done. And because he is a follower of Alinsky. Even if he isn’t. And in that case: he’s evil because he isn’t!