{"id":432,"date":"2007-02-07T04:06:31","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T10:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/02\/07\/know-them-by-their-words\/"},"modified":"2007-02-07T04:06:31","modified_gmt":"2007-02-07T10:06:31","slug":"know-them-by-their-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=432","title":{"rendered":"Know Them By Their Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went through a phase a few years back where I read leftyblogs with an eye partly turned to criticism, and partly to ridicule; there was plenty of grist for both mills.<\/p>\n

And then I gave it up.\u00a0 The vast majority of leftyblogs, with precious few exceptions – even among the big ones – were puerile, sophomoric, pointless…just plain dumb. <\/em>I found that if I wanted, for whatever reason, a leftyblogger’s perspective, I was better off going with one of the less-stupid, less-insane locals, like Powerliberal<\/a> or Flash<\/a> or even the New Patriot Collective For Make Better Distribution of Information for Glorious DFL<\/a>.\u00a0 We have knocked heads for years – but they, along with many (albeit not all) local leftybloggers do a much better product than the deranged Kos, the Peter-Principled Atrios, the dumb Ollie Willis, and the angry-funny-without-the-funny Jesus General.<\/p>\n

And especially Pandagon.\u00a0 Although they had the occasional reason to exist when giggly fratboys Ezra “John”\u00a0Klein and Jesse “Ringo” Taylor ran the show, once the blog turned into a collective, it became essentially a “Kos” wannabee; all of the heat, less of whatever pittance of light “Kos” emits.<\/p>\n

One of the band of intellectual midgets that inherited Pandagon from Taylor and Klein was Amanda Marcotte, a fatuous screechblogger with a record of giggly bigotry and purple-faced religious hatred who was recently hired as the Edwards campaign’s official blogger.<\/p>\n

Leftybloggers are closing ranks<\/a> around their own:<\/p>\n

I suspect that they are trying to tear her down because they are justifiably afraid that she will excel at her new job<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, no.\u00a0 Actually, I hope every <\/em>liberal candidate hires a screechblogger; they will provide us a treasure trove of material for the next couple of years (or until they get fired for embarassing their bosses, which would seem likely, sooner than later, in Marcotte’s case).\u00a0<\/p>\n

How likely?\u00a0 This bit here is making the rounds:<\/p>\n

One thing I vow here and now\u2013you motherf**kers who want to ban birth control will never sleep. I will f**k without making children day in and out and you will know it and you won\u2019t be able to stop it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the considerable risk of sounding catty, I don’t think I’m going to be\u00a0needing to “stop” anything.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I digress:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Toss and turn, you mean, jealous motherf**kers. I\u2019m not going to be \u201cpunished\u201d with babies. Which makes all your efforts a failure. Some non-procreating women escaped. So give up now. You\u2019ll never catch all of us. Give up now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not that I want to “catch” anyone, least of all Ms. Marcotte.\u00a0 Enjoy your life, whatever it may be, by all means!\u00a0 It’s just that I’m thinking John Edwards isn’t going to be picking up a whole lot of red-state action with that kind of vibe going out on his frequency.<\/p>\n

Leftybloggers – some of them – have a curious sense of what’s really important.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with disparaging her on the most ridiculously inane grounds (E.g. \u201cShe uses profanity! Holy f**king s**t!\u201d)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve noticed that from quite a few leftybloggers, big and small, find profanity to be a symbol of accomplishment; with some, the attitude seems “Woo hoo! Let’s see you godbags keep up with this <\/em>profanity game, m****r******g d****e**g s*****ni-eating s****s!”, as if fluency with profanity is a sign of…anything?\u00a0 I remember one fairly vacuous former local leftyblogger, writing about an even more <\/em>vacuous local leftyblogger; “he might drive the wingnuts crazy with the swears!”.\u00a0 Welcome to fourth grade!<\/p>\n

I’ve lived around Chicagoans long enough to say with absolute assurance; I can swear more fluently than any leftyblogger (who’s not from Chicago and also brain-dead).\u00a0 I don’t take especial pride in it; profanity merely substitutes shock for thought.\u00a0 Which, with some people, is the only rhetorical tool in the belt.<\/p>\n

Including, according to everything <\/em>I’ve seen, Amanda Marcotte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went through a phase a few years back where I read leftyblogs with an eye partly turned to criticism, and partly to ridicule; there was plenty of grist for both mills. And then I gave it up.\u00a0 The vast majority of leftyblogs, with precious few exceptions – even among the big ones – were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,12,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-campaign-08","category-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}