WB: Payback – Moon of Alabama

April 16, 2006

WB: Payback

Billmon:

The difference, I think, between left and right is that the right has no rational justification to feel any of these things, and yet many, if not most, conservatives continue to wallow in the mindset of a besieged minority.

Liberals, much less radical progressives, really are a besieged minority in this country. So why is it suddenly considered front-page news that they’re acting like one?

Payback

Posted by b on April 16, 2006 at 06:43 UTC | Permalink

Comments

“I mean, isn’t that how high-school nerds usually get even – by spreading vicious rumors about the popular kids? Some things never really change.”
As one of the prototype high-school nerds I must take issue with this statement. Spreading rumors about nerds, their sexual orientation, family, etc. was the playground of the ‘popular kids’. The WaPo is keeping with that tradition, the insiders who use the otherness of the nerds to maintain dominance.

Posted by: Dick Durata | Apr 16 2006 7:28 utc | 1

Questions about nerdlingness aside, I see this development as an encouraging thing. The MSM ignores issues that they feel do not threaten the status quo (like, oh, say, the Downing Street Memoranda). By even acknowledging the existence of Left Blogistan in their {sarcasm} fair and balanced reporting {/sarcasm}, it is a sideways admission that there is some growing degree of empowerment in our rantings, and that we threaten to eclipse the scripted talking points.
Let them deliberately miss the point of schtick to discredit what we have to say. The Right has walking, talking cartoons like Rush Limbaugh, for crying out loud. If a person is cerebrally challenged enough to read Jesus’ General and not get the joke, they aren’t the sorts who are going to be responding to rational debate, anyway.
I’d say there’s no such thing as bad publicity here. If this is a Rovesque strategy to discredit the Left, the blowback will be that it will increase the traffic to sites the Right would rather people not be reading too closely. The only downside I can see to it will be the inevitable brief increase in trollage… which is a more effective means of stifling debate than running a couple of fluff articles about how wacky the Left is.

Posted by: Monolycus | Apr 16 2006 8:16 utc | 2

Is there a code or ethos of liberalism? To folks like ann Coulter or Little Green Footballs, anyone with a half-baked, contradictory philosophy is a certified mainstream “liberal”, and fair game.
Picking on them is about like making fun of the French, anyone can do it, but what’s the point? These folks are too convinced of their righteousness to listen to any arguments.
There is not even a monolithic view of “conservatism”, but Bush’s neocon approach is far from what traditional conservatism is about: more debts, a bigger government, more involvement overseas.
Why are “liberals” not taking him to task over that?

Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 16 2006 9:15 utc | 3

i have my maryscott o’connor moments. sometimes daily.
i’d wager a good portion of the times readers are as pissed as mary. the piece is so transparently degrading/hostile towards her, painting her as this nutcase, how can you not go nuts with all this going on.
they’re jealous of the attention. blogs constantly focus on issues presented in the paper. msm would like us to rag the issue, not them. they probably wouldn’t mind if so much of the reviews weren’t so professional, but face it, the writing is better on the best blogs than anything from the msm, most of it anyway. journalists are hamstrung at any msm. they can’t just fly into a rant and say whatever the hell they want. they’re confined, w/editors and such. writers w/blogs have a freedom they will never have.
and we are spoiled w/the internet, totally. plus, it’s addictive. it has never been so adictive being a newsjunkie. this is the age of reality tv (i don’t mean to imply it’s real) where audiences want opinion, attitude and emotion. how can they compete? it;s like comparing jon stuart to brian williams. ha! can you even imagine them gutting into some of those freeper sites? nah, no fun. but i agree it’s not very nerdie. more like the top cheerleaders (heathers) going after the new really cool creative kids, they know they can’t compete. they are used up and they know it. they know we know it too.
plus, they front paged it, kind of takes the wind out of whatever second act they have planned. let’s see who they get to replace benny. lol, nothing like digging your own grave.

Posted by: annie | Apr 16 2006 9:24 utc | 4

There’s always this explanation, not so far fetched:
People who support Bush are actually complicit with and enabling Bush’s madness in a co-dependent, self-reinforcing feedback loop that is ‘closed,’ which is to say it is insular and not open to any feedback from the ‘real’ world.
Bush supporters are not merely disinterested in seeing that they are in denial of reality; on the contrary, they actively don’t want to look at this, which is to say they resist self-reflection at all costs. Bush and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world which reflects back their unconsciousness as itself evidence that proves the rightness of their viewpoint. All of Bush’s supporters mutually reinforce each other’s unconscious resistance to such a degree that a collective, interdependent field of impenetrability gets collectively conjured up by them that literally resists consciousness.
People who don’t recognize Bush’s illness and support him are unconsciously colluding with and enabling in the co-creation of the pathological field that is incarnating itself into the human family. People who support Bush become unwitting agents through which this non-local disease feeds and replicates itself. By supporting Bush they are collaborating with and becoming parts of the greater, interconnected and self-orgaized field of the disease…..

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 16 2006 9:54 utc | 5

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