Last week, Andrew Sullivan chastised “liberal American columnist[s]” for their apparent silence on the murder of Theo Van Gogh saying “Do you think if a member of the religious right had killed a Hollywood director they would have managed to say something?”. Of course an American religious nutjob killing an American director would be bigger news in America, but the relative silence on this particular incident when held against the hypothetical outrage on a fictitious incident just proves his point. Or something. This is an especially odd attack since, as far as I can tell, Van Gogh’s murder isn’t that big a story anywhere in America, not just in the liberal press. Today, much to Sullivan’s chagrin, Salon did a feature article on the Van Gogh murder.

Never one to let the facts get in the way of misguided rage, he now complains “Hollywood’s relative silence becomes all the more repulsive.” If Barbara Streisand and Tim Robbins take stand against this murder (as if something obviously evil like this needs to be repudiated), would Sullivan even bother listening or would he just complain that the Hollywood liberals should just keep their mouths shut? And if the Hollywood elite follows the liberal columnists in going public with their outrage, what group would Andrew choose next to implicate for their perceived tolerance of Islamofacism?