Wait! Glenn Beck isn't a populist! He says. Today.

Beck brought on his best Wingnut Super Friends, Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg, to whinge on Beck's Fox News show about the horrible torch-bearing mob that has been unleashed in the direction of those poor AIG executives.

Mind you, it only seems peripherally to have come to their attention that the leading pitchfork-bearers are Republicans. The guy who wanted the execs to commit suppuku? Chuck Grassley, a Republican. Indeed, most of the violent populist rhetoric directed at AIG seems to be coming from the right.

And of course, it's obvious that this is all just a pose, a bit of demagogic opportunism for Beck and Friends. What makes it obvious? That the Friends are Malkin and Goldberg.

The ironies of Michelle Malkin in particular decrying others for targeting individuals and holding them up to public ridicule, exposing them to threats in the process, are so rich you almost have to savor it. As you watch her in action in this clip, recall that this is the woman who:

1. Sent her flying-monkey readers after a pair of student protesters in California.
2. Indulged in a long and phony "investigation" into the supposed "nonexistence" of an Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein who was reporting news she didn't approve of -- in the process endangering Hussein's life.
3. Harrassed a 12-year-old boy and his family for having the audacity to publicly advocate a liberal policy proposal.
4. More recently, she pulled a similar stunt on a poor black woman who had the audacity to ask a liberal question of President Obama.

Indeed, we're wondering when she's just going to start up her own radio station and call it Radio Rmalkin.

Then there's Jonah Goldberg, author of a book whose entire thesis is that liberals are innately totalitarian fascists who inevitably want to enslave us all. He's also previously written that Joe McCarthy was right.

Beck's Super Friends are in fact the people Most Likely to Lead A Right-Wing Lynch Mob in the wingnutosphere. Obviously, they're just put out that this particular mob isn't one they assembled.