THE SALAHIS OF THE RIGHT

A handful of schmucks tore pages out of a Koran in D.C. yesterday:

A small group of conservative Christians tore some pages from a Koran in a protest outside the White House Saturday to denounce what they called the "charade of Islam" on the anniversary of 9/11.

"Part of why we're doing that, please hear me: the charade that Islam is a peaceful religion must end," said Randall Terry, a leading anti-abortion campaigner, and one of six people who took part in the protest.

Another activist, Andrew Beacham, read out a few Koran passages calling for hatred towards Christians and Jews, and then ripped those pages from an English paperback edition of the Islamic holy book....

It seems to be extremely upsetting to a lot of right-wingers that Andrew Beacham is bring described in media reports as a tea party guy. Well, he apparently identifies himself that way, and while he may no longer be a teabagger, he used to be an organizer of teabag events.

But that's a side issue. What's really going on here is that Beacham is an attention addict -- a serial anti-abortion provocateur who, along with his pal Randall Terry, recently attacked an effigy of Lindsey Graham as part of a protest of the Supreme Court nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Beacham is inordinately fond of issuing advertisements for himself -- here's a press release he sent oyt last September after he heckled Preident Obama at the University of Maryland, and here's a press release he sent out prior to yesterday's stunts (in which, yes, he ID'd himself as a "Tea Party leader from Indiana").

And I'm sure I don't have to tell you about Randall Terry's incessant bids for attention over the years; I recently wrote about his latest comedy and musical stylings.

Teabaggers? Maybe not. But what matters is that these guys are the Salahis of politics, people who'll do anything for attention. And I mean anything, even if it endangers U.S. troops or tears America apart. (Fortunately, there never seem to be enough Terryites to have that kind of impact, at least not these days.)

But, really, how does that make these guys any different from Murdoch and Ailes, from Gingrich, from Beck and Palin, from Spencer and Geller? Rabble-rousing is, quite literally, their business. And business is good.