SO, WHAT DOES FIT THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR'S DEFINITION OF "LYNCHING"?

You probably know that Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator is being justifiably attacked for a vile article in which he claimed that Shirley Sherrod lied when she said, in her now-famous NAACP speech, that a relative named Bobby Hall was "lynched" by a white Georgia sheriff named Claude Screws. Lord said this was a lie because, well, Hall wasn't hanged, he was merely beaten to death outside a courthouse by the sheriff and his men while he was wearing handcuffs.

That, to Lord and the Spectator, is not "lynching."

So I was wondering what the Spectator actually does consider "lynching." I looked it up, and here's some of what I found:

The Ox-Bow Incident is a strangely appropriate book for our time, just as it was when totalitarianism writ large ruled much of the world. Today, it speaks to a rampant McCarthyism of the Left that routinely practices character assassination on its political adversaries. As I read the story I couldn't help but reflect on the lynch mob mentality present in our contemporary public life, especially in the mainstream media. Its recent Sarah Palin smear campaign tells us who they are.

--Bill Croke, "Hang 'Em High," American Spectator, July 21, 2009

Just last month Senate Democrats prided themselves on signing an anti-lynching resolution. John Kerry even said it was a crying shame the statement didn't have 100 co-sponsors. Liberal coverage of the resolution was universally supportive. So what happened? First opportunity these pure at heart forces had they set off to lynch Karl Rove, all because he supposedly had directed his gaze at one of their women, a hot Vanity Fair-certified blonde bombshell [Valerie Plame].

--Wlady Pleszczynski, "Operation Overrove," American Spectator, July 18, 2005

The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush. They cannot impeach him because he hasn't done anything illegal. But they can endlessly tell us what a loser he is and how out of touch he is (and I mean ENDLESSLY) and how he's just a vestigial organ on the body politic right now.

... no one elected the media to anything. If we let them lynch the man we elected as President we are throwing out the Constitution with the war in Iraq. In the studios and newsrooms, there is a lynch mob at work.

--Ben Stein, "The Lynching of the President," American Spectator, January 25, 2007

What's behind the shameless demagoguery and character assassination being heaped on climate change "deniers"? ... Why has the green rhetoric escalated to lynch-mob proportions?

--Patrick J. Michaels, "Losing It," American Spectator, December 11, 2006

In 1991, when President George H. W. Bush was preparing to run for reelection, ... Gary Sick ... alleged that during the 1980 campaign, candidate Ronald Reagan had dispatched his running mate George Bush to negotiate a deal with the Iranians to delay release of the American embassy hostages they were holding until after the election....

The watchword among the liberal lynch mob was that even though there was no evidence to support it, the very seriousness of the charge required a complete investigation. So both the House and the Senate each did such a complete investigation, finding nothing.

--Peter Ferrara, "Obama Can't Be Trusted on National Defense," American Spectator, September 17, 2008

For the leaker who hid while the political lynch mob hoisted his president and Scooter Libby, there has to be a special reward. There's only one name for it: the Armitage Award.

--Jed Babbin, "A Special Place in Hell," American Spectator, September 18, 2006

Note: for the record, no rope (or any other weapon causing bodily harm) has been used by the "lynch mob" assailants of Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, climate-change denialists, or Scooter Libby.

All of them survived their attacks -- unlike Bobby Hall.