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| Great White North | |||
| Canadian Leftist Claims We Ain’t Making Enough Noise! | |||
| 2004-05-17 | |||
| I saw this at LGF and I dont think anyone has posted it yet The warblog drums are growing silent. They’re either running out of time, or money, or steam — or the conviction that Operation Iraqi Freedom was going to be a cakewalk in the sand. Yeah, Fred, where the hell’s my check, you cheap bastard! Oh that’s right: I do this for nothing, because I believe in winning the WOT If the above makes no sense to you, then you have not been paying attention to the chest-thumping chaterati of the cybersphere, a post 9/11 class of might-is-right and right-is-might wordsmiths who rode the "War on terror" wave with their warmongering web logs. Imagine Fred on a surfboard, Beach Boys soundtrack in the background But now, with the news getting more dire, the quag more mired and the cost of war ever higher, the warbloggers find themselves on the wrong side of history. And so some of them are putting down their mice and putting up a white flag. I haven’t raised a white flag and no here Iknow of has either "Where is everybody?" wailed Damian Penny last week. Come to rantburg The youngish lawyer based in Newfoundland, whose blog (http://www.damianpenny.com) is one of the top right-wing online pit stops for Canadians, noticed that, in recent weeks, his pro-war comrades in keyboards were holding their fire. Pro-war and comrades. Notes the mixing of terms. Perfect intro for splitting opinion on the right thing to do, like splitting hairs on virginity. "If I may quote (comic Fred) Willard, `wha happen?’" he plaintively asked. "Did everyone else go to a party to which I wasn’t invited? This is junior high school all over again ..." No, the war party is over. There is nothing to celebrate any more. (Not that there ever was.) President George W. Bush’s folly is a bloody, costly, tragic, world-dividing disaster that has led to more acts of terrorism by more groups. Antonia has to ignore the acts of multitude terrorism which proceeding the war in Iraq for this to be the operative truth, and she has to ignore the fact acts of terrorism are <> DOWN since 2001. Even the New York Times’ pro-war Thomas Friedman admits that the U.S. government has blown it, as he wrote last week: "The world is too complex and dangerous for the pious simplicities and arrogant unilateralism of George W. Bush." Someone in LFG remarked: Are there two Thomas Freidman’s at the NYTimes? Sometimes smart, often sassy and always vitriolic, warbloggers beat the Bush-bashers, slag Muslims and Arabs, attack Canadians and the French for not backing the attack on Iraq and, last but not least, pile on pundits who raised questions about weapons of mass destruction or wondered about exit strategies. I beat them for supporting acts of terrorism. See Murat. Their favourite targets include the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, American foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk, war correspondent for Britain’s the Independent. No that you mention it, most of those folks listed above have been quiet. In fact, both Krugman and Fisk have inspired warbloggers to coin words. "Krugmanism" means to dramatize events to make a point. (As if the right doesn’t!) And to be "Fisked" is to be deconstructed by bloggers. Not that there shouldn’t be critics of critics. But many warbloggers resort to dogma, disinformation and personal attacks. Unlike truth, sweetness and light the left is famous for. As it is here, I see nothing but links for supporting arguments. Those who are attacked usually are attacked with good reason for their insanely inhuman views.
Which is why — indulge me here — I found myself called "blousy,’’ a "perpetual outrage machine," "fat AND stupid," a "dumb leftist," "sub-par female impersonator" and "menopause girl" by Canadian bloggeuse Kathy Shaidle (http://www.relapsedcatholic.blogspot.com). Okay, maybe calling you stoopid is out line... Two weeks ago, she packed it in, at least for a while, after nearly four years of "desperately trying to maintain an increasingly difficult-to-calibrate balance of Righteous Indignation and Smug Superiority to get me through another day of living in this Banana Republic With Snow during wartime." Charles Johnson says that’s a lie. Other warbloggers, who spend a lot of time talking amongst themselves, have called me "fat Tony" and "the peroxide Wonder" (letitbleed.blogs.com) while others still have labelled me a Nazi, a "Jew hater," anti-American, anti-Semitic and other terms that involve the political tilt of the parts of me that meet my chair. Someone help me out here. What parts is she talking about?
One guy, whom I found last week after following links from other like-minded mouse warriors, actually imagines that I regularly visit his site (http://www.lobowalk.com, and please, say ``Hi!" from me). He calls me a "dumb slut" — among other things that would probably have my boyfriend, a former Golden Gloves heavyweight, pounding him out. We can only assume she meaning pounding with fists and not other ’parts of the body.’ Witty, most of these warbloggers aren’t. Not like some of their heroes, a genuinely brilliant if misguided, if I do say so myself, bunch led by columnist Mark Steyn. (He used to write for the National Post until last year’s change of management at the hands of the Asper family.) And a major reason why I delinked them at my website... Other members of the neocon blogging pantheon include Glenn Reynolds (http://www.instapundit.com), James Lileks (http://www.lileks.com) and Andrew Sullivan (http://www.andrewsullivan.com) — at least until Sullivan felt the anti-gay wrath and hatred of the Bush regime. No rantburg?? Probably the most venomous of all is Charles Johnson. His site (http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com) is the toilet in which all sorts of misinformation and malice about Arabs and, in particular, Palestinians are dumped. Anybody who writes favourably — or even in a half-balanced manner — about them is slimed. Chuck Johnson uses the Palestinians’ own damn words against them. And he doesn’t resort to practical jokes such as sliming. And yet Johnson was recently likened to a "righteous Gentile," a term reserved for Christians who sheltered Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. I wish I could be a righteous Gentile myself. The praise came in a positive profile from B’Sheva, a widely read Israeli publication oriented towards the settler movement. As a warblogger, Johnson is still going strong, as is the violence in Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Territories. Violence, she fails to point out, is caused primarily by Moose Limbs (love that term) But those that have fed on it are blogging out. And so, their drums grow silent. Call it an operational pause.
"There seems to be warblogger fatigue setting in," says popcult blogeratus Marc Weisblott (http://www.radioweisblogg.blogspot.com) who has been tracking the phenomenon. "I think this Iraq debacle is exasperating all of ’em. You wish. "And when your whole schtick is rage against (the New York Times’) Maureen Dowd or (the Globe and Mail’s) Heather Mallick ... or, uh, you, that’s only going to carry one so far." Thankfully, there are a complete range of Leftists out there, not all of them conetrated in NY. | |||
| Posted by:badanov |
#10 "...I found myself called 'blousy,' a 'perpetual outrage machine,' 'fat AND stupid,' a 'dumb leftist,' 'sub-par female impersonator' and 'menopause girl' by Canadian bloggeuse Kathy Shaidle (http://www.relapsedcatholic.blogspot.com)..." Kathy's reply: "Dear Antonia,Pow! |
| Posted by: Old Grouch 2004-05-17 10:40:33 PM |
| #9 Extra butter on mine Steve, thanks. And extra napkins... |
| Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2004-05-17 4:42:25 PM |
| #8 Sgt. Mom: ROFL! You da' WOMAN! |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-05-17 3:45:16 PM |
| #7 I am SO crushed! Here we are at SSDB, war-blogging as hard as we can, and we don't even get a mention, not even a nasty e-mail. If a warblogger falls in the forest, but there is no leftoid Canadian columnist to hear it, was there any sound? |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2004-05-17 1:01:07 PM |
| #6 Yep. Like most self-righteous left-wing Canadian intellectuals here finger is right on the pulse of the American Heartland. You bet. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2004-05-17 12:52:15 PM |
| #5 Sigh. We’ll deal with that tomorrow. That should be ugly, I'll make popcorn. |
| Posted by: Steve 2004-05-17 12:17:49 PM |
| #4 She sent me a nasty e-mail once. I think she lives in one of those bubble universes that the physics geeks predict. Not ours, in any event. |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2004-05-17 11:42:48 AM |
| #3 Nice Fisking there, Badanov. Now that you've softened her up, Lileks is going in for the kill: Ahem. That Toronto Post piece that took a swipe at your humble narrator? Sigh. We’ll deal with that tomorrow. |
| Posted by: Mike 2004-05-17 10:56:26 AM |
| #2 I guess they miss Allahpundit.com also? |
| Posted by: Anonymous4021 2004-05-17 10:28:30 AM |
| #1 A socialist on the right side of history. My suprise meter is stuck in the red zone. |
| Posted by: Phil B 2004-05-17 10:21:06 AM |