Saturday, April 15, 2006

Mad lefty bloggers

Blogdom has surely seen this article in the WaPo by now. It's noon here in DC, but still too early for me to have checked other blogs. The article is worth a read. It discusses the "angry" left bloggers with the main character being Maryscott O'Connor of My Left Wing (which, I see, is loading very slowly today - good for Maryscott).

The orthodox media still has this "how do you say... web-blog?" tone when discussing the blogosphere. "Do the people on your planet enjoy springtime and long moonlit walks on the beach?" But the article, in my view, does a decent job of humanizing lefty blogging anger. It may be a wild anger still looking for direction, but I'm personally pretty glad it's there.

Now, as the responses near 100, O'Connor has a cigarette.

Now, as they head toward 200, she picks up the album about her father, where there's a letter from him to his wife, written three days before he died [in the Vietnam War], that ends, "I love you and the baby more than I ever knew a person could love."

The baby.

He never knew her name, or that she was a girl, or that his wife weighed less on the day their daughter was born than when she was conceived. "Catatonic" is how O'Connor describes what her mother became for a while, and then the mother got better, and then the daughter got worse, and then the daughter got better by becoming angry rather than silent about a new war, so angry she began wishing her president would go to hell.

"I've got to stop looking at this," she says, putting the album away and turning back to the screen.

Meanwhile, over on Eschaton, Dave is writing, "As a matter of fact -- I do hate Bush!"

On Rude Pundit: "George W. Bush is the anti-Midas. Everything he touches turns to [expletive]."

On the Smirking Chimp: "I. Despise. These. [Expletive]!"

And on Daily Kos and My Left Wing, the responses keep rolling in.

"Thank you, Maryscott."

"Thank you for the kick in the [expletive]."

"I wrote to my [expletive] so-called representatives."

"I also wrote to my [expletive] congressman to get off his [expletive] [expletive] and do the right [expletive] thing."

"You know what?" O'Connor says. "I did a good thing today." And for a moment, anyway, she isn't angry at all.

No comments: