JimH wrote:

Could you offer some examples of his writings that would classify him as
crazy?

Jim, if you heard his speech rants locally, you'd realize the man is
losing it. As for some quotes:

"I'm just an old man looking after cemeteries,"

"[We have] a prolonged and seemingly unending period of a lack of
decency. A fish doesn't know it's wet. We're numb and we can't even
feel it."

Then take a look at this:
http://tinyurl.com/6oema

Eric Zorn has transcripts of Miller's just-short-of-clinically-insane
interviews on MSNBC and CNN right after his speech.


William Saletan goes nuclear: this is no longer just an ordinary
election, he says, it's "becoming a referendum on democracy."


NewDonkey: "Not since Pat Buchanan's famous 'culture war' speech in
1992 has a major speaker at a national political convention spoken so
hatefully, at such length, about the opposition. At the dark heart of
the speech was the same old tired litany of lies and
mischaracterizations about Kerry's Senate votes on military spending
and weapons systems that BC04 has been retailing for many months."


From a time machine, Zell Miller himself criticizes his speech. Here's
what he had to say in 2001: "John Kerry has fought against government
waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to
Washington....John has worked to strengthen our military."


Andrew Sullivan: "[Miller's] speech tonight was in this vein, a classic
Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful
rhetoric....The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole
universes to the word crude."


Jonathan Cohn in the New Republic: "It was one of the most vile
political speeches in recent American history, every bit as offensive
as Pat Buchanan's infamous call in 1992 for "religious war" and,
perhaps, a little more disturbing. Buchanan's speech, after all, was an
assault on decency. Last night Miller declared war on democracy."


Matt Yglesias, who was in the hall when Miller spoke: "I don't believe
I've ever heard a more disgusting speech delivered in the English
language. The fact that I couldn't see a single person on the floor who
seemed to feel anything less than the utmost enthusiasm for that lunacy
was, well, a bit disturbing."


Commenter Thumb, reacting to my pithy comment last night: "Zell's
speech reads better in the original German."