I said something negative about her at a family gathering once. The Republicans looked at me like I'd strangled a kitten. They think she's the bee's knees.

I went back and read a few of her recent columns. The context in most of them: Please, PLEASE, PLEASE lock the Tea Party crazies in the attic until after 2016.

But IIRC, in one column she also identified the problem with that strategy - those crazies were elected from very "safe" districts. Often districts where they clobbered the mainstream GOP candidate. So whenever the RNC tries to silence or sideline one of the lunatics, they get a stream of abuse from their even crazier constituents.

This should make for an entertaining election season. We're going to get lots of nauseating TV appearances by weasels like Lindsey Graham and Scott Walker trying to look "presidential." Followed immediately by some GOP loon demanding that we outsource the National Park Service to Wal-Mart or change the name of Washington DC to "Jesus."

Obviously the people behind the rumor campaign are scum, but what in the world would drive someone to commit suicide if people thought they were jewish? Still a human being.

If some assholes did that to me, I can't imagine reacting to it at all. Like, why would this rise to anything of importance for the victim? I don't understand. Is there some additional background to this that I am missing?

Methinks there must be more to the story. I didn't think the "Jew" label was such a kiss of death, at least not in this day and age, in this country.

Someone says I'm a Jew? No, asshole, I'm an atheist.

So what?

It's both a religious identity and a culture/ethnicity.

BUT, I think you're free to not identify with a culture/ethnicity if you don't want to, as well.
The whole thing is weird. I'd like to know more about why it happened.