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Bloggers are mean jerks who suck
By Ned | July 15, 2008
Man, is James Kirchick annoying. One would think that after being so thoroughly pimp-slapped by Matthew Yglesias, he would decide to take a short break from the Internet, or at least a short break from being infuriatingly smug, but instead he’s apparently decided to retaliate against the left-wing blogosphere with a Politico article that mixes every single stupid cliché about those wacky jihadist nutroots into a frothy, pungent stew.
Hey, James? It’s not a great sign for the strength of your argument when you unintentionally refute your second paragraph later in the article. Like so:
Press fascination with the Netroots has been matched by obsequiousness on the part of leading Democrats fearful of blogger wrath. At the 2006 YearlyKos convention — named after the website Daily Kos, whose founder, Markos Moulitsas, is the most prominent and intemperate member of the Netroots clan — former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner treated attendees to a $50,000 party, and a host of Democratic leaders made appearances.
But wait!
The only other discernable accomplishment of the Netroots was to get Dean elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Yet this supposed triumph has proven to be small beer, seeing that party bigwigs have kept him on an incredibly tight leash. His near-invisibility over the past three years is yet further evidence of the illusory “power” of the Netroots. Clinton understood the exaggerated influence of liberal bloggers when she said at a closed-door fundraiser in April, “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party.”
So which is it? Are Democratic politicians desperately pandering to bloggers, or do the bloggers only have one man on the inside who’s largely ignored by everyone else in the party?
Oh, and James? The head of the DNC, traditionally, and due to the nature of his job, is kept out of the spotlight. Just because after the midterm elections he wasn’t getting photographed next to Schumer and Emmanuel doesn’t mean he wasn’t doing anything, and in fact his 50-state strategy has been pretty good to the Democrats.
But this is really all just the tip of the iceberg. The stupid fucking iceberg. Below the fold, more Kirchicktardedness than you can handle.
Here’s one of my favorite parts of the article, because it’s really a perfect example of Kirchick’s breathtaking cynicism:
The breakup of the Netroots and Obama began with his decision last month to support a bill granting immunity to phone companies that provided records to the federal government in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This is an issue about which the vast majority of the American people couldn’t care less, but it’s of monumental importance to the Netroots, who see it as confirmation of their deepest and darkest fears that Vice President Cheney is out to get them. Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald exemplified the Netroots’ rage when he bemoaned “Obama’s willingness to embrace [this] rancid framework.”
Boogaboogabooga! Those paranoid liberal bloggers are just whining about shit that normal people couldn’t possibly care about! Glenn Greenwald’s just a conspiracy theorist, and not an accomplished Constitutional law expert!
The thing is, the bill actually looks kind of scary when you, say, read it, or Greenwald’s actual grievances with the bill. But why do that when it’s an issue that normal folks like steel mill workers and irritating New Republic editors don’t give a flying fuck about?
Kirchick also employs a common logical fallacy which Socrates called, “making shit up.”
After he visits the country this summer, Obama said two weeks ago, he plans to “refine” his position. In other words, Obama will listen to his generals and drop the original campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades within a period of 16 months. [Emphasis mine.]
See what he did there? Obama used the word “refine” - saying something that is both patently obvious when it comes to pretty much any issue you could name while at the same time managing to be almost completely meaningless - and out of that Kirchick spun a line of bullshit that bears no relation to the actual quote. To better illustrate my point, watch what happens when I apply the same technique to the first sentence of this article:
It’s hard out there for a member of Netroots Nation. Crashing onto the national political scene not long after George W. Bush’s first inauguration, the Netroots — the angry left-wing Internet warriors who, from their keyboards, do daily battle with Republican warmongers and their Democratic enablers — have been the subject of endless study by the mainstream media, the very establishment force whose authority the Netroots collectively seek to undermine.
In other words, Kirchick is admitting that the chronic bedwetting problems of his childhood never fully went away.
See what I did there?
Near the end of the article, Kirchick even goes so far as to resurrect one of those classic liberal hawk canards about those nasty bloggers: that poor Joe Lieberman is a fine man who’s being persecuted simply because he disagrees with progressives on one teensy issue.
Netroots vitriol against Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) is the most latent example of their irrationality. Lieberman, who has an impeccably liberal voting record, barring his stance on the Iraq war, is a prime target of the Netroots, which brooks no deviation from leftist orthodoxy.
Of course, for the above sentence to make sense you’d have to think that the issue of the Iraq War is somewhere on the level of importance with tights versus pants, and not one of the defining issues of our time. This is like complaining that people were being mean to Jesse Helms when he was in the mainstream about a lot of stuff, just not the whole racism thing.
Bravo, James. I was starting to think that after the 2006 election it was nearly impossible to be this willfully obtuse about the role of liberal bloggers in the Democratic Party, but you’ve clearly proven me wrong. I’ll bet Marty Peretz is proud.
Topics: Elections, The Media |