DEAN PETERS TELLS TOM DASCHLE TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP where his criticism of talk radio is concerned: produce the audio clips of out-of-bounds attacks, or admit it’s all a political ploy. He’s got some perspective on Daschle’s own attacks on opponents, too.

I note two things. One, that when I posted a while back about how Democrats blamed talk radio for Oklahoma City and right wing violence generally, some lefty bloggers said this wasn’t true. Well, Daschle’s doing pretty much the same thing now. Any comments, given that the earlier denials suggested that such a tactic would have been out of bounds? Second, most mainstream media don’t seem to be reproducing much of the actual shrill substance of Daschle’s remarks. The only place I could find that was WorldNetDaily, which I take as a pretty good sign that both the mainstream media, and WorldNetDaily, know that Daschle’s over-the-top remarks are more harmful to Democrats than to their targets.

My take: Limbaugh, et al., have been trying for months to provoke Daschle into saying something stupid. And they’ve succeeded.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston says that Daschle is partying like it’s 1995.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dr. Manhattan emails:

I agree that Daschle’s remarks were outrageous and counterproductive. One note, though – when he referred to “threats against people in public life,” my guess is he was thinking about the anthrax letter he received – he’s probably still convinced that it came from an American right-wing nutcase, even though there seems to be no more evidence for that than for any other scenario.

Interesting point. I’m not sure whether that makes it better or not (does he really think that Rush Limbaugh is somehow responsible for those?), but it does provide some useful perspective.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So does this, though.