THERE is a nasty little scrap happening on the internet between the forces of the political Left and Right â and the right seems to be winning. That's what any standard capacity, culturally attuned laugh meter would show.
This cyber battle is important because it demonstrates the emerging significance here of web logs (blogs) in national and international political debate. Perhaps more important, it shows how the Australian Left, or at least those members who blog, has become a bunch of whining, humourless, self-absorbed bores.
Without doubt it's difficult to slap your thigh when accusing John Howard of dismantling democracy by winning the election last year. Giggling, of course, is inappropriate when linking Australia's refusal to sign the Kyoto protocols to hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. It's the total absence of even an attempt at a chortle which marks many of Australia's Left-wing blogs.
The Yippies sniggered Richard Nixon out of the White House and here every Tory leader since Billy McMahon has had the left â and many others â rolling in the aisles. But these days, put the letters www before a despatch from the Left and the humour factor drops to negative.
This doesn't necessarily mean the Right is correct and morally superior, or that the Left is behind and lacking scruples. It does mean Right-wing blogs are more fun to read and thus their messages are more frequently seen by non-combatants. And humour can do more to destroy an argument and puncture a buffoon than earnest, self-important dreariness.
Evaluate this yourself. Try journalist Tim Blair at timblair.com, and academic Professor Bunyip at bunyip.blogspot.com. Then take a test run with journalist Margo Kingston's Web Diary at margokingston.typepad.com, and writer Tim Dunlop at roadtosurfdom.com. The issues are big, with the Right tending to be pro-Howard, pro-Bush and pro-Israel, and the Left the opposite. It's a vicious, merciless, relentless battle and some of the participants take themselves very seriously. Kingston believes she is marshalling a revolution. So do her contributors, including an arch-conspiracy theorist who maintains military helicopters were deliberately flown over Parliament House last month when premiers met to discuss anti-terror laws â that sneaky John Howard ordered them into the air to scare state leaders into submission.
For the casual reader, the choice ultimately reduces to a question of trust. I can't accept all the positions Blair takes, and the views of some of his comment posters are oafish and infantile. However, someone who values and can deliver humour is, to my mind, someone who knows the world is flawed and that they themselves have the odd defect. Such people tend to be tolerant, even when they use jokes to lacerate opponents. People convinced of their own purity of soul and vision, and of unalloyed evil in others, rarely find room for real dissent, or genuine laughter. That's what democracy is for â to save us from the humourless.
#1
If you were Janice Rogers Brown watching what happened to the Miers nomination, would this encourage you to want to be confirmed or increace your hesitancy to be nominated?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
10/22/2005 13:19 Comments ||
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#2
Oh for crying out loud.
Miers is mediocre but the way in which her nomination exposed the intent of the social conservatives to push repeal of Roe and similar issues at any cost disturbs me greatly. There are more frigging important issues right now than to divide Congress and the country over an issue that a clear majority of citizens say should be left alone.
Where the hell are the political leaders determined to hold this country together to face a long, difficult and chronic war on Islamacist terror, plus deal with the no longer tenable huge differences in income and freedom that create the looming pressure for massive immigration flows?
Oh, wait ... that's about what Dubya is trying to do. Too bad those on the right are more concerned about narrower issues.
Too bad for us as a country.
And no, that is not necessarily a pro-Miers position. But it sure as hell is an anti-the-anti-Miers-hysteria one.
#3
Top of the issues that brought me to the polls is the federal judiciary, including SCOTUS. It is what will bring me to the polls in 2006. Bush has a lot of work to do, and the Meirs nomination was a simple political mistake. Bush oughta own up to it and appoint a nominee, such as Brown or Owens, if he is that interested in appointing a woman to SCOTUS.
And I agree, the cravenness wqith which the religious folks on the right fell in behind Meirs is indeed troubling, but no less so than the left wanting a hearing on a Bush appointee for once. Both extremes have been pushing this pig of a nomination because both believe their own causes will be advanced. It was actually funny, hearing the left in the senate, before it came out how much against abortion Meirs was, pleading to just give Meirs a hearing, and then to hear the religious elements on the right wanting her to be confirmed.
#4
The man has not back down on Iraq or the WoT and you expect a beltway rebellion is going to unnerve him? You'd think he'd earned to do as he saw fit. But oh no.
This is one way for the Rep's to start losing the middle. Neither the Reps or Dems can run America without the consent of the center. Even a reasonable person has seen that the Reps don't have the votes without the RINOs and a few DINOs to pass the much promoted names by the conservatives. So, go ahead, knock yourself out. The conservative mouthpieces have acted no better than MoveOn, the DU or the Kos Kiddies. Now they have betrayed the fiscal restraint plank. The only difference between the two extremes is the velocity they destroy the place. They're making it easier for me to sit out the next one. A plague on both houses.
#5
I agree with you in good part, SE9500. The only caveat I'd add is that while I am concerned about fiscal issues, I'm more concerned about preserving the fragile majority that is willing to face down the jihadis and deal with the other massive upheavals we can expect over the next couple decades. If it takes some deficit spending to keep that coalition together and fund the way, I'm supportive. Would like obvious fat to be cut, of course ... but the monies pouring into the WOT are important and some of them aren't obviously WOT related. R&D monies, subsidies to cities and states to deploy radiological, bio and chem sniffers at ports etc etc. are as likely to be stuffed into transportation bills as to be called out as war-related. That gives political cover to the dems who are still supporting Bush on this.
Posted by: too true ||
10/22/2005 14:30 Comments ||
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#6
You'd think he'd earned to do as he saw fit.
No American President has the right to "do as he [sees] fit." And thank God for it.
#9
I'm a bit suspicious of this because I watched a White House press conference about a week ago where the juvenile press brats did all they could to get the press secretary to answer one question - Do you think Miers is not strong enough to withstand the political heat and may withdraw.
The press secretary refused to play into whatever their game was. He did a good job and would give them only one quote. Do your job and report on her record so that people can know who she is. His refusal to play into their game made me wonder why the desperate desire for the press brats to claw and scratch for an answer that they could use to indicate that Meirs was too weak to withstand the publicity.
They asked it over and over again and then asked it sixteen different ways. The press conference descended into angry chaos over the question.
So now they are trying a new way to make it sound like Meirs is about to withdraw...any day now. Maybe so, but then again, maybe this is just another attempt by the MSM to shape the news by creating their own gloomy predictions. Gosh, imagine that.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
