Go read this if you have not had your fill of the Sheehan circus.
And for another persepctive, go read Arthur Silber, who supports Cindy Sheehan’s political activism.
No Stars for the Man-Whore
Via Gary Farber, this Roger Ebert take-down of Rob Schneider and Deuce Bigalow II.
Wired
If you haven’t already, check out this month’s Wired magazine, which has two fun stories, one about milbloggers by one of my favorite reporters, John Hockenberry (who is great on NPR’s The Infinite Mind), and this piece on how much the internet has changed things over the past ten years. The story about Banksy is worth a read, as well.
MoDo is Back
I didn’t miss her:
President Bush has done so much for women. Not at home, of course.
Women in jeans in America may have their rights eroded by an administration where faith trumps science, but women in burkas? The president can’t talk enough about how important their rights are.
And in the administration’s diplomacy-free foreign policy, five of its top spokesmen on the Muslim world are women: Condi Rice; Laura Bush; Liz Cheney, No. 2 in the Near East bureau of the State Department and head of the Middle East democracy project; Karen Hughes, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy; and her deputy, Dina Powell.
W. thinks so highly of Ms. Hughes, his longtime Texas political nanny, spinner, speechwriter and ghostwriter, that he put his Lima Green Bean, as he called her when she prodded him about the environment, in charge of the critical effort to salvage America’s horrendous image in the Islamic world – even though what she knows about Islam could fit in a lima green bean. Why get any Muslims involved in reaching out to Muslims? That would be so matchy.
It May Be Legitimate
But I don’t have to like it:
Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klansman whose conviction in June in the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers in Mississippi seemed to close one of the state’s darkest chapters, was released yesterday when a judge granted bail pending an appeal.
The release raises the possibility that Mr. Killen, 80 and in poor health, will die a free man after serving barely six weeks of his sentence.
He was convicted on three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 41 years to the day after a mob of Klansmen killed the three campaigners – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner – in an incident that galvanized national support for the civil rights movement. Prosecutors said Mr. Killen organized the mob.
Judge Marcus Gordon of Circuit Court, who gave Mr. Killen the maximum possible sentence, said in court that he had little choice but to set bond while Mr. Killen appealed his conviction. Judge Gordon said the state had not proved that Mr. Killen, who uses a wheelchair, was a flight risk or threat.
“It’s not a matter of what I feel, it’s a matter of the law,” Judge Gordon said.
I want him to die in jail. Sooner, rather than later.
And Speaking of Paranoid and Delusional
It looks like the previous speculation about the replacement of the overseer of the Plame investigation was false:
David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor’s investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer.
Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be Lockheed Martin’s new general counsel.
Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame’s name was leaked in 2003 and he has testified to the grand jury investigating the unauthorized disclosure.
Comey gave broad discretion to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago when he was appointed to investigate the leak in December 2003. Margolis is not expected to alter Fitzgerald’s mandate in what are likely to be the final months of his investigation. The grand jury ends its term in October.
You can read all about the speculation about Bush replacing Comey with a ‘skull and bones crony’ here, courtesy of the ‘reality-based community.’
Since this post uses the word PLAME and also contains a mockingly derisive reference to the ‘reality-based community,’ consider this the flame warfare thread.
Like I Said
Yesterday, I wrote:
I think this is the last time I am going to discuss this issue, because as careful as I have been to not say anything about Cindy personally, the jackasses on the far left are going to distort this post, lie, vilify, and attack anyway, and it just isn’t worth it to me to deal with their bullshit.
And today, ‘The Poorman offers up this:
It’s got everything: breathtaking incoherence, an elevation of trivial internet slights over the death of a mother’s son, paranoid delusions – the works. Please do read the whole thing – things this perfect don’t come around every day.
The proximate cause and context of all this is a little online soap opera which opens with Sheehan being called a “whore” and an Arab-loving traitor, among other things, by some dude named Erick. Anonymous people left nasty emails and even phone messages for our Erick (which is not nice so don’t do it), he says, and it’s Atrios’ fault, and Erick, as it turns out, is the reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaallllll victim here.
Hey Andrew- when you start out as a lying asshole, why should we waste any more time reading you? I mean, when you are going to start out by simply distorting what Erick said (because Andrew knows there is no difference between a whore and a media whore “Think about it: what are the chances that a media whore like Gannon would turn out to be an actual whore?”), why should we even take you as honest? Nowhere did Erick caller her a traitor, or an ‘arab-lover.’ And I am far from being paranoid and delusional, considering the heaping pile of steaming nonsense you have written today.
Some dude named ‘Andrew’ goes on to scribble:
The upshot of the post appears to be that there is nothing necessarily wrong with being the mother of a dead soldier, provided you don’t let it influence your opinions in any way, and provided that you don’t feel that you are somehow entitled to an explanation of why, exactly, he was sent off to die. Failing this, you deserve whatever you get, and anybody who calls you a whore is protected by a Level 50 No-Backsies Force Field. This is certainly a step up from collage, but it is still something short of an actual response to the questions Cindy Sheehan wants the President to answer. Ah, the questions! Cole appears to have missed this little detail, insisting repeatedly that Sheehan has already met with the President, as if he was worried she might use this second opportunity to try to sell Bush a set of overpriced encyclopedias, or steal his silverware. She wants to ask “why the war that took her son’s life was started and why it is being continued.”
Dance along with the Poorman now, because ‘all Cindy wants is some questions answered.’ That is it! Just a few simple questions!
It’s worse than that, though, because even if Cindy Sheehan had no questions, she is, in herself, in her own story, an accusation. There are tens of thousands of Americans who have lost a loved one as a direct result of this war of choice with Iraq, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis. Each of the dead has a mother, and whether or not they camp out in front of Bush’s Ranch of Make-Believe, and whether or not they currently think the war was a good idea, and whether or not they even ever wondered about what it was and is all about, those mothers deserve a real answer.
This isn’t about Cindy Sheehan. Andrew, Atrios, all the folks at dKos couldn’t give a SHIT about Cindy Sheehan. This is about galvanizing support against the war, and not a whit about Cindy Sheehan and her ‘questions.’ And for some of them, this isn’t even about galvanizing support against the war- it is just pure politics.
But you will notice that Sheehan is essentially a “weapon”, a “tool”, “used” by nefarious and – yes, I’ll say it! – “evil” webloggers in order to generate mean emails against some dude named Erick. Or something. She isn’t any of those things. She’s a human being, a mother, and a fucking American, and she deserves a straight fucking answer from the President about why her son is dead.
Pretty good work there from the guy who wrote about the Global Struggles Against Strawmen. And here are the ‘questions’ Cindy wants answered:
“Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for? If the cause is so noble, why don’t you send your twins?”
And, for good measure, some demands:
“Honor our sacrifices by bringing our nation’s sons and daughters home from a war based on lies and deceptions.”
I can’t imagine why Bush hasn’t met with her. Again.
*** Update ***
Northrup responds:
I would like to stress here that Cole is not saying that this weblog is literally edited by some kind of giant, hyper-intelligent, dishonest anus, but merely that The Editors are analogous to a fibbing cornhole in our dealings with him. Now, as long time readers have no doubt suspected, this weblog is literally edited by an enormous, mendacious, disembodied anus.
It shows. At any rate, the bullshit continues in earnest:
… Cole responds, pointing out that Sheehan was not called a “whore” literally, but actually a “media whore”, which is a metaphorical kind of whore that doesn’t necessarily fuck people for money (Jeff Gannon nonwithstanding.) No, I won’t get out of here – that’s what he said. Go see for yourself. So if anybody thought that Erick was literally saying that Sheehan fucks people for money, please disabuse yourself of that notion forthwith!
Don’t feed me that bullshit. Erick’s original quote:
Cindy Sheehan’s son was killed in Iraq. She’s a grieving mother. Last year, the President met with Mrs. Sheehan, comforted her, and grieved with her. At the time, Mrs. Sheehan thought the President had done well and appreciated him. Enter August, no major news, and a media still smarting over the President’s re-election despite everything they threw at him. Cindy Sheehan returns entering stage right — this time a left wing media whore in the form of a grieving mother.
Which has morphed into the following at Eschaton:
Um, has Michelle Malkin talked to Cindy Sheehan’s son? Has Bill O’Reilly? Has Erick Erickson, who called Cindy Sheehan a whore over at redstate.org? If they haven’t talked to him, they should shut up, leave her alone, and defend their incoherent position on the Iraq war without hiding behind Cindy Sheehan’s dead son.
At MYDD:
Blogger Erick Erickson says Cindy Sheehan is a “whore in the form of a grieving mother”
The Poorman himself:
The proximate cause and context of all this is a little online soap opera which opens with Sheehan being called a “whore” and an Arab-loving traitor, among other things, by some dude named Erick.
And, my favorite, at Steve Gilliard’s site:
To call her a “left-wing whore” will affect how people see you and your site. Even your readers disagree with the sentiments here and their expression.
Where he just drops the word ‘media,’ but makes sure he gets the ‘whore’ part in. Funny how the metaphor looks like a literal use of the word ‘whore.’ Just one of those weird coincidences on the InterTrons!
Put it this way- If Erick has said she had become a ‘left-wing media hound,’ how many of these guys would have written posts showing outrage that Erick had called her a ‘hound?’ By conveniently dropping the word ‘media,’ the intent is to pass on to their readers that Erick called her something other than what he said.
Erick also stated the following, in his apology for calling her a media whore:
Amazing what happens when you take on a lefty sacred cow.
Why are the Editors not outraged OUTRAGED! that Erick called Cindy Sheehan a cow?
*** Update ***
Guess someone did take offense at Erick calling her a cow: