The Fox Nationalists are just livid over an article that invokes what they regard as hostile language. Never mind that their own community is populated by rhetorical thugs and assassins. What they discovered on a blog about disappearing plankton has them in a full faint. And they attached a headline that fully expresses their dismay: Daily Kos: Climate Skeptics Should Be Euthanized.

The article Fox Nation links to is on the blog for the book “Green Hell.” The book purports to reveal “how environmentalists plan to control your life” (oh my) and was written by Fox News’ “Junk Science” columnist and Global Warming denier, Steve Milloy. Before becoming an apologist for polluters, Milloy was an apologist for tobacco companies. He’s made a career of attempting to persuade people that poison is good for you. In this case Milloy’s ire was raised by a column written by Steven Andrew at the The Examiner.com under the ominous title “Studies show dramatic decrease in plankton.” Scared yet?

Let’s take a look at all the things Milloy got wrong. First of all, he repeatedly refers to Steven Andrew as Steven Alexander. Secondly, Andrew was writing this column for The Examiner and not for Daily Kos, so it can hardly be attributed to Daily Kos, as both Fox Nation and Milloy did. Thirdly, Milloy falsely claimed that the posting was removed. In fact, it was just edited to satisfy Milloy’s tender sensitivities. Fourthly, Andrew never advocated either euthanasia or suicide for Milloy or anyone else. He merely invoked a humorous reference to the iconic film Soylent Green. It was a reference directed at the befouled state of the environment in the science fiction film with an ironic aside:

“If only the Soylent Corporation were publicly traded, or better still, if only Milloy and his buddies could check into one of the company’s lovely medical suites for a short nature movie and a glass of wine.”

This is really no more objectionable than someone suggesting that Rush Limbaugh eat some shrimp caught in the Gulf Coast after Limbaugh declared that the oil spill there was no big deal. The point would be simply to embarrass Limbaugh by challenging him to stand by his ridiculous assertions, not to poison him.

Milloy described Andrew’s remarks as “intolerance” and said that it is the reason he fights so vigorously against the “greenshirts.” But if he is so concerned about intolerance, why hasn’t ever ever condemned Bill O’Reilly for wanting to strangle journalists, or Glenn Beck for fantasizing about choking Michael Moore to death?

The answer, of course, is that Milloy is hypocrite who couldn’t care less about the rhetoric he is pretending to be offended by. For him, and for Fox Nation, this is just an opportunity to bash an opponent and to spread more of their anti-climate propaganda. It doesn’t take a astrophysicist to figure that out.