Daily Caller Entertainment Editor Taylor Bigler apparently wants to punch several other members of the media. This afternoon, Ms. Bigler created a slideshow of the “Top 10 most punchable faces in media.” The slideshow was pegged to MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell’s response to Tagg Romney’s comment that he wanted to “take a swing at” President Barack Obama in which Mr. O’Donnell challenged Mr. Romney to “take a swing at me.”
“In light these feeble threats of physical violence [sic], we got to thinking about the 10 most punchable faces in the media,” Ms. Bigler wrote.
Journalism!
Ms. Bigler’s slideshow features photos of Mr. O’Donnell, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, Slate political reporter Dave Weigel, TIME senior political analyst Mark Halperin, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, MSNBC host Chris Matthews, The Daily Beast Washington bureau chief Howard Kurtz, National Review political reporter Robert Costa and, most interestingly given where the slideshow ran, Daily Caller co-founder and editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson.
None of the slides include any explanation for why their subjects have been deemed so “punchable” except for Mr. Matthews’, which declares, “Because when you say ‘Chris Matthews,’ you just have to yell it.”
Politicker reached out to Mr. Weigel to see how he felt to be included on what is, quite literally, a hit list.
“It’s nice, but next year I’m striving for the Most Stabbable slideshow,” he said.
Mr. Weigel apparently isn’t worried being included will result in his actually being punched.
“People saying angry things on the Internet doesn’t often translate to people doing angry things,” he said.
We also sent a message to Ms. Bigler to ask why she decided to express violent feelings toward her fellow members of the media. As of this writing, we have yet to receive a response, but in her introduction to the slideshow, Ms. Bigler seemed quite ready to defend her work.
“If anyone has a problem with this list, we’ll verbally punch you over Twitter or have some other type of non-physical confrontation. Be very afraid,” she wrote.
For our part, we’d rather not see the discourse around this election devolve into physical threats. There’s just eighteen days left until election day. Can’t we all just get along?
Update (10:58 p.m.): Ms. Bigler emailed us the following response to this story:
“Nobody has ever taken anything I’ve ever written this seriously before, so thanks? I want to make sure that my fellow members of the news media are able to sleep tonight after I expressed my violent feelings towards them, so they should take comfort knowing that I probably couldn’t do any serious damage because I’m very short in stature.Also, thanks to Dave Weigel for the great follow-up idea.”