The sadly obligatory Jimmy Hoffa/New Civility post

We know they'll close ranks and get back in line for the meat of the campaign season but please note the tone of the article which is a straight news piece from Mary Bruce and Jake Tapper* of ABC:

Despite President Obama’s repeated claims to change the tone in Washington, the White House had no comment this afternoon after Teamsters Union leader James Hoffa, speaking at an event before President Obama, said of Tea Party activists that, come November, Democrats should “take these sons of bitches out.”

Warming up the crowd before President Obama’s Labor Day speech in Detroit this afternoon, Hoffa warned the largely union crowd that the Tea Party was waging a “war on workers.”

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Hoffa told thousands of workers gathered for the annual event organized by the Detroit Labor Council.

“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march…Everybody here’s got a vote…Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” he concluded.

The Tea Party Express has called on President Obama to “condemn this inappropriate and uncivil rhetoric,” saying it “has no place in the public forum.”

Hey, we get warming up the crowd with some good ol' fashioned, fire-brand union rhetoric but wasn't that all supposed to change in the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting in Tucson this past January? Wasn't our post-partisan President supposed to lead the way to a "new civility" when it came to this sort of thing?

Back in 2008, as the article explains, John McCain fell all over himself apologizing for a similar warm-up act that dared use the then-Senator's middle name... a name the President himself now brandishes with great pride given the proper setting.

Oh, well... what would you really expect from a Chicago machine pol? Civility is for suckers, we suppose.




* That's probably not being fair to Tapper who has been about as consistent in his coverage of the White House and this administration as any pool correspondent.