Damn you, John, for blogging that Dan Bartlett quote before I could. Revealing slips like that offer a golden opportunity to revisit one of my favorite takedowns of the rightwing blogosphere ever.
Rep. John Linder, a Republican from Duluth and a member of the steering committee that made the Calvert appointment, was the first congressional office targeted for calls by RedState.com. But Linder brushed off the online critics.
“I really don’t pay much attention to blogs,” he said. “You can say anything on those blogs without any attribution and get away with it.”
Liberal blogs have been influential, the Georgia lawmaker acknowledged. But he dismissed their conservative counterparts, saying, “I don’t pay any attention to them.”
Even some conservative bloggers object to the new blog activism.
“If you look at the top tier of right-wing bloggers, they’re almost unfailingly civil,” wrote Dean Barnett for the opinion Web site Townhall.com.
He charged that Erickson was trying to turn right-wing Web sites into “the kingmakers that the left-wing blogs are.”
As I said at the time:
Researchers like Bob Altmeyer have exhaustively demonstrated that conservative followers like being told what to think and conservative leaders don’t tolerate input from the masses. In that way radio is the perfect medium, sending the Party line through a select group of reliable disseminators to the polloi with little chance for feedback, which liberals value but authoritarians hate.
IIt must get pretty depressing to be told over and over again that one’s job is to take the latest pap from party HQ and repeat it verbatim regardless of whether today’s pap contradicts yesterday’s pap. If my purpose in life added up to functioning as a router that you can buy for fifty bucks at radio shack, odds are good that I would find a more rewarding hobby, like trainspotting or self mutilation.
I naively meant to cite the Graeme Frost affair as an example what happens when conservabloggers give ad libbing a try. My bad! Even their category nine stupidquakes start right at the top.
Jen
This I like, from the Our Lady quote…
Finally, someone asking the hard-headed questions! Bless you, Michelle!
Zifnab
Or you could hang out in Minnesota bathrooms practicing Morse Code. Or you could go wetsuit shopping. Or you could just verbally molest 17-year-old pages from your Congressional Office.
I’m just saying, your options are really limitless.
Grand Moff Texan
Years ago, when I had a blog, one of the first links at the top was “Right-wing Blogs Explained“.
Yep. It’s all right there in that video.
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Elvis Elvisberg
Why would it be depressing for them?
As you pointed out, authoritarians like the top-down system.
They get to play a part in advancing the interests of the Party. How important and exciting!
D-Chance.
Tim F wrote:
You may be bought for $50… Limbaugh draws $235 mil.
When it comes to audience, size matters.
Notorious P.A.T.
Doing what you’re told without complaint or comment: it’s the American way!
Dreggas
Brian: Please, please, please listen! I’ve got one or two things to say.
The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t NEED to follow ME, You don’t NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for your selves! You’re ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We’re all individuals!
Brian: You’re all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I’m not…
The Crowd: Sch!
demimondian
I’m reminded of the sudden change in the CPUSA’s opinion of Nazi Germany when the Hitler-Stalin pact was released. Also, I’m reminded of their equally sudden reversal of opinion when Hitler launched his surprise attack on the Soviet Union later on.
[Godwin!]
Dreggas
Sorry for going O/T but I just found the best xmas ornament evah!
Dennis - SGMM
I wonder how it feels to go to sleep a right wing blogger and wake up a sockpuppet.
Bombadil
So wrong! On so many levels!
Bombadil
I take it you’ve been reading the responses to Michael D.’s love note to the FairTax.
Dreggas
which is why it is absolutely fucking perfect.
JustSam
In that way radio is the perfect medium…
I would have thought TV was the perfect medium, but it’s easier to get away with being physically ugly on radio. So I’ll concede this point.
Bombadil
I wish I could send a case of them to Falafel Boy.
libarbarian
On an unrelated note:
Hewitt thinks Romney kicked ass. Quelle suprise??!!??
I think he just lost the base.
Sounds fine to me but its kryptonite to the dominant faction of the Rep. party.
LiberalTarian
Yeah, I used to have a great Republican friend before they started sending me shit from Townhall.com. We used to just argue about policy, but when they sent me the “Katrina showed the difference between white men, who get their families out of harm’s way then come back to help, and black men, who …” Yup, no more Republican friend from Jacksonville. I couldn’t believe the complete lack of integrity and the overwhelming hatefulness. Sounds like a recipe for a right-wing blog, eh?
Dennis - SGMM
Redleg
Right-wing bloggers are more civil- if you consider calling liberals “unamerican” and “pro-terrorist” and “surrender monkeys” and “communists” and “immoral” and “fascists” as being within the realm of civil and polite discourse.
Dennis - SGMM
Sorry; forgot to close the blockquote tag.
Xenos
Romney forgot to mention his appreciation for:
the intense and dramatic liturgy of the Satanists;
the deftness of Thugees when they conduct their rites;
the awesome architecture of the Mayan pyramids and how they are employed in the extravagant sacrificial rituals of the Mayan priests;
the passion with which the counter-reformation set about to purify the church of heterodoxy;
the willingness of the protestants in 1820s upstate New York to clear the landscape of fruity polygamous heretics that had emerged in the midst of that most all-american landscape…
David in NYC
I’m pretty sure the Miss Poppy site is a satire, or at the very least tongue-in-cheek. Take look at this, from the “About Miss Poppy” page:
MissPoppy.com is transvestite friendly and welcoming.
Don’t think that would be on a real fundie site. Also, the underwear lines are called “fundies” (for Protestants) and “nundies” (for Catholics). That’s WAY too much humor for a real wingnut.
Peter Johnson
The right-wing blogs are, at the very least, a great deal more civil than those on the left. Karl Rove put it well:
I would argue that it’s unfair to say that blogs on either side do nothing but regurgitate.
Bombadil
Karl Rove? The one who said, “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”? That Karl Rove, is the arbiter of good discourse?
demimondian
Not to mention the delicate tracework of chicken entrails sacrificed upon the cases of PC’s running Windows
Dreggas
The products are real and designed TO mock the right wing and fundies.
Tax Analyst
Yeah, right. Is that because when they disagree with you they call you a “Traitor” instead of just telling you to “Get Fucked”, like folks do around here?
You know what? I don’t consider being called a “Traitor” for holding a different opinion to be particularly civil.
Peter, Get Fucked.
Grand Moff Texan
The right-wing blogs are, at the very least, a great deal more civil …
OK, Peter, fess up: who told you to say that?
Hmmm?
C’mon, out with it. Who poured that in your hole, you fistula?
.
Dreggas
Highlighted for the, I am guessing, inintentional humor.