What is it with lefties and straw men?

I find myself asking that question once again this morning as I read Leonard Pitts (emphasis mine -- ed.):

(Glenn) Beck was promoting his “Restoring Honor” rally, which was held Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King famously spoke there. You'll notice he didn't define the “we” he had in mind, but it seems reasonable to suppose Beck was speaking of people like himself: affluent middle-age conservatives possessed of the ability to see socialism and communism in places where it somehow escapes the notice of others.
...
We” is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of “Bonanza,” lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.

Sure, it seems reasonable...if all you're looking to do is gin up another bitch-and-moan fest about those eeeeevil conservatives. But how about we take Pitts' reasoning here and turn it back at him?

We see he mentioned Harry Belafonte. I take it this is the same Harry Belafonte who compared Colin Powell to a house slave? So, using the logic and reasoning Leonard Pitts uses here, we can only reach the conclusion that Belafonte, Steve Gilliard, King Samir Shabazz, et al are the legitimate heirs to the leadership of the civil rights movement. Of course they're NOT, and I have little doubt that Leonard Pitts would call anyone crazy who suggested they were -- but if that line of reasoning is unfit to use one way, it's also unfit to use another. If Leonard Pitts had anything approaching intellectual honesty, he'd realize that.

UPDATE: For a much more lucid and insightful analysis of Beck's rally and motivations (that is, one NOT seen through Pitts and company's racial lenses), see here. The whole thing's definitely worth reading, but this is just one of the money grafs:

"Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence..."

Yes, indeed. Thanks to Borepatch for that link!