Saturday, April 15, 2006

Viking rant

As per the lefty rant stuff immediately below, The Wege (of Norwegianity) shows us all how it's done. Posted in full because it's fun.
Hugh Hewitt may or may not be the biggest fucking idiot to ever work as a pundit, but he certainly is clueless. Here is some of his response to the WaPost article on Maryscott O'Connor.
Read the whole thing, including the absurd attempt to blame the descent of the left on conservatives:
But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack.
The left has become disfigured because the excess that dominates the lefty blogs is absorbed by rank-and-file activists and encouraged by the Democratic Party leadership, which embraces, posts at and praises the blogs that are among the angriest and most vulgar/profane/hate-filled.

The collapse of the left's ability to engage in politics will continue and in fact accelerate unless and until the leaders of the Democratic Party rebuke the party's activist base and its spokesmen, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The best thing the GOP has going for it in November, 2006 and in the presidential campaign to follow is the fury of the unhinged left. The vast majority of Americans reject politics of this sort, but there's no hiding what the left has become or the Democrats' endorsement of it.

[HughfuckingHewitt.com]
Fulmination, but no content, and an allegation so utterly divorced from reality as to be ridiculous. The DNC eggs on bloggers? WTF? Bloggers routinely assail the DNC for being lard-headed chickenshit fucktards. The only language on most liberal blogs harsher than that used to decribe Bush is usually reserved for the Democrats.

DEMOCRATS EAT THEIR OWN. WE BELIEVE EVERY PRIMARY SHOULD BE LIKE BLOODY KANSAS. WE RESERVE OUR MOST VEHEMENT VITRIOL FOR OUR APOSTATES — NOT THE NUMBSKULLS ON THE RIGHT.

Hugh Hewitt is by far and away the most delusional commenter on the right. No fact can penetrate his thick skull, no news development can dent his smug preconceptions. If the truth were Katie Holmes he couldn't knock her up with a truckload of viagra and an army of Scientologists coaching from the sidelines because Hugh's GOP-trained nose would go for the shithole every time since Hugh has trained himself to think RNC talking points smell like the truth whereas most folks would just flush again and then light a match.

For a robo-Bushie like Hugh, there's no way to comprehend a movement that criticizes anyone who's wrong, regardless of party. Democratic bloggers rip on Democrats all the time and for a variety of reasons. Not so with the lockstep right, who are now in the process of goosestepping their way into oblivion.

UPDATE: Had to run out the door but I wanted to come back to this to clarify a few things. I got the Hewitt link from Memeorandum, which has a growing list of left and right bloggers who were commenting on Maryscott O'Connor being covered by the Post. That's not a permalink, so if you get to this on Sunday or Monday scroll down until you find "The Left, Online and Outraged."

But what outraged me is that each and every rightwing blogger to comment ignored the substance and went straight into "they hate Bush" mode. Well, yeah, we do. So get over it and try to figure out why. Only dumb sunzuvbitches refuse to educated themselves as to their ideological opponents' arguments.

I've made this challenge countless times and never been taken up on it, but I can take any issue I follow and tell you what the Republican position is on it. It's increasingly impossible to find Republicans who can do better than reciting the RNC's version of what Democrats think. The RNC hasn't played it straight once, and their followers are increasingly misinformed like the simpering Hugh who literally has no clue that rank and file Democrats have been fighting with our party leaders since the party began.

No harm can ever come from airing out issues. But it is hard to know what the Republican beliefs are when they so often hide behind "Bush said" without asking for proof. They accept that Bush is doing good because Ken Mehlman says so, and they know that Democrats are full of shit because they only know what the RNC says we believe, which is never even close to being accurate.

But don't take my word for it. Go to the Jawa Report and read the comments. Need more proof? Check out Wizbang's comments. Check them all out. Cap'n Ed calls us "fever swamp" dwellers.
If I were a liberal blogger, I would cringe with embarrassment after reading this article. Finkel doesn't report on the respectable blogs on the center-left like Jeralynn Merritt at TalkLeft, Ezra Klein, and even John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, who takes strident positions but provides actual argument to support them. The bloggers that Finkel highlights do not appear removed at all from Democratic Underground and Indymedia nutcases. The Post leaves the definite impression that Jeralynn, Ezra, and John are the exceptions to the rule on the Left.

The right-wing has its fever swamp, but they generally don't dominate the upper echelons of the conservative blogosphere as it appears the fever swamp of the Left does with the liberal blogosphere.

[Cap'n Ed]
So let us off to Truth Laid Bear where the numbers of links in don't lie (unless it's to downgrade a liberal blog ranking or upgrade a wingnut site). Unhinged wingnuts first:
2. Michelle Malkin
4. Power Line
5. Little Green Footballs
6. Captain's Quarters
9. Hugh Hewitt
These are the top wingnut blogs (I ignored #1, Instapundit, because he mostly just links to hate and tries to avoid directly peddling it).

I'll even salt my list with Cap'n Ed's notion of who the lefty haters are:
3. Daily Kos
11. Eschaton
24. Wonkette
The angry left is comprised of smaller blogs, for the most part. The angry right starts at the top and works its way down until you start running into serious Christian bloggers who don't endlessly parrot the mindless hate speech of the Hugh Hewitts and Ass®ockets.

The party of rugged individualism has turned into a bunch of conformists. They're not conservative, they're not well informed, and they really don't know what's going on. And they don't have the guts to make any kind of attempt at understanding the other side, so add coward to the list of wingnut descriptors.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got a chuckle out of the Wege's comments, but what do you want to bet the capitalized part is quoted by wingnuts "proving" that Left Blogistan is unhinged.

We might mention, too, that many righty blogs disallow comments, either because they know that torrent of hate that is out there or because they can't stand to have anyone questioning their talking points, er, views.

CKR

troutsky said...

Left Wing has such an incredible picture poetry essay today I feel totally incompetent. CapnEds and Hewitts idiocy should encourage us all to reach for the sky.You want mad? You want fringe? You want Left? Does my writing turn moderates "away"? Do I give a shit?

I would like to see more critical left working semi-intelligent conservative blogs like neo-neocon, engaging them not so much in argument or battle of ideas as a steady barrage of polemic.

helmut said...

I'm mixed on this, Cheryl and Troutsky. Like I say here, I think the rant is good. And I don't really care if the right picks up the theme of the left feeding on itself. The Wege picks up on a significant difference in that statement - that the left has a built-in capcity for self-criticism. This is a great thing. When it goes uncritical it becomes as dangerous and stupid as the tripe on the right.

Yet, this has to be placed in context. The left doesn't have a real presence in the American mind. Certainly not like Rush Limbaugh and other blowhards. So, I don'tmind the creed style to bring on those who are angry but don't yet speak the lefty language of pluralism, fallibilism, democracy and sanity.

These should, in any society with a thought in its head, trump flag-waving mind-numbery any time.

Idiots are everywhere across the political spectrum. And then there are thjose who attempt to make intelligent political choices. The right captured the market on the idiots. As a pragmatic political matter, we have to take some of them back - though my comments here are obviously not helping. And then we need to make the case that there's a good reason for not being an idiot.