Conor Friedersdorf: Avoidance, Obfuscation, Prevarication

Unless I see some serious engagement on some of the points I've raised, this should be may last post in the current debate over Conor Friedersdorf. I will keep my eye open for some of the more egregious claims Mr. Friederdorf is wont to make in his future blogging; but there will be no further iterations in the current controversy in the absence of new information or responses. Mostly, it's simply not worth my time. Why engage if folks are too lazy or too self-absorbed to even attempt a rebuttal to the points I've raised? There's some current roiling on the right, and this is good, but some of those engaged in it are not acting in good faith, and that really defeats the purpose of it all.

Frankly, I'm not particularly invested in Mr. Friedersdorf. He's not a class intellect, and his writing is both arrogant and pedantic. I'm interested in ideas. As I've noted, Mr. Friedersdorf has made some generally off-the-wall arguments on some key public policy issues. He's also embarked on a personal jihad against Mark Levin, who is currently the #1 bestselling conservative author in the country. That kind of personalization of political difference is itself worthy of rebuttal. And as a number of my good friends have joined the exchange, I thought I might behoove myself to throw them some support.

I've responded to Mr. Friedersdorf with a number of detailed posts (here, here, here, and here). All of these essays are detailed and substantive. Mr. Friedersdorf's silence in engaging them goes beyond disrespect. Frankly, as is the case with Mark Thompson and E.D. Kain, it's most likely that Mr. Friedersdorf is simply overwhelmed by superior firepower; and rather than further expose the superficiality of his intellect, he adopts a variety of coping techniques: avoidance, obfuscation, and prevarication are the first tactics that come to mind.

Readers can check Mr. Friederdorf's comments to the links above. Let me first note the most recent for some flavor:

Look man, if you want me to address your arguments, just state one clearly enough for me to respond!

This response fits with any of the tactics I mentioned above, although I'd add the noun "dishonest" as well. Readers might check my search of "Conor Friedersdorf" posts. All the argument I've made are "clear" and compelling. That Mr. Friedersdorf chooses not to engage them simply confirms his penchant toward avoidance and more.

I actually wrote on Mr. Friedersdorf's essay attacking "war on terror hawks." As I said at the time, Mr. Friederdorf "equates the actions of one lone wacko with those of an international terrorist network that's responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as well as a number of other terrorist atrocities around the world in recent decades."

Mr. Friederdorf has never responded to this substantive, AND APPARENTLY CLEAR, point. He did retreat to denial, of course. But he has not systematically defended his argument that conservatives should treat suspected abortion killers just like captured Islamofascist jihadis - that is, he suggests conservatives should support waterboarding for both. It's not possible to pose a hypothetical like this a priori if the proponent of the scenario doesn't in fact see the two categories of antagonists ("combatants") in equivalent terms.

In fact, Mr. Friedersdorf claimed that he "did not equate" the actions of the abortion murder suspect to global terrorist barbarians. He then demanded that I explain what "leads you to believe otherwise." And so I did, here:

At your original post I cited weeks ago, "A Question for War on Terror Hawks," you assert moral equivalencies between a lone U.S. murder suspect and the untold number of violent jihadists within the global terrorist network - including many, of course, who were captured on the battlefield and held as enemy combatants in a real war on terrorism. Your post, as it proposes partisan payback for the robust anti-terror policies of the Bush years, basically endorses an Obama administration policy of declaring domestic anti-abortion terrorists as identical enemy combatants; you also deploy taunting language in saying, "I wonder how 'War on Terror Hawks' would react" if President Obama had the "prerogative to order the waterboarding of the uncharged, untried detainees." The scenario is not simply a hypothetical. It's transparent advocacy in furtherance of ideological retribution. Most of all, your post is dishonest hackery, and your defense of it is peurile idiocy.

To this, Mr. Friederdorf DID NOT ALLEGE vagueness on my part. Indeed, he asserted that my argument - offered in good faith at his request - was "a paranoid theory."

I'm not prone to paranoia, actually, so there's little to make of Mr. Friedersdorf's comment other than a one-off bit of snark. It is a good example, however, of my point above, which is that Mr. Friedersdorf resorts to avoidance, obfuscation, and prevarication when confronted with superior argumentation.

And that's actually kind of sad for him. The man clearly hopes to make an intellectual contribution of some sort. But as we see here, he's flummoxed with a case that deploys inferential logic as a matter of straightforward argumentation. It's simply not that complicated, much less unclear. So why no response from Mr. Friedersdorf? He rebuked me for not defending my original post, and then he turns and panics when I stand up to him. Readers can see why I question this man's capabilities.

But that's not all. I offered a detailed and highly reasoned argument in my essay, "Neoclassicons." Mr. Friedersdorf appears to be among a number of bloggers seeking to claim the mantle of today's "genuine conservatives." As I noted at the post, "From Conor Friederdorf to David Frum, to Daniel Larison to Andrew Sullivan, and then E.D. Kain, there's a movement afoot that wants desperately to be "conservative," but one that is failing miserably."

Once again, Mr. Friedersdorf refused to respond. He did make some lame, and completely irrelevant, points about how he'd been "defending Rod Dreher," as if dropping some names of people not even tangentially related to the discussion might possibly be considered a rebuttal. Mr. Friedersdorf apparently does that thing quite a bit, so we shouldn't be surprised.

My main thesis at "Neoclassicons," in any case, is that these folks are not "conservative." I especially indicated that Andrew Sullivan - who is the ideological lodestar for these people - is not a conservative. Hardly anyone would situate Sullivan on the right of the ideological spectrum nowadays. Andrew's colleague at The Atlantic places him at "the center right." And even liberals now think of Sullivan as one of their own.

And this is the key thing in all of this: Mr. Friedersdorf seems to think that the most important intellectual developments today are taking place on the left of the political spectrum. This fact helps explain Mr. Friedsdorf's jihad against Mark Levin. The latter, as I noted, is the hottest thinker in conservative politics today. Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto is essential reading for anyone who's seriously thinking about the future direction of the American right. And Mr. Friedersdorf is attacking him?

It takes no great leap of imagination to see that not only is Mark Levin threatening to Conor Friedersdorf, but also that Mr. Friedersdorf's attack on him are less about ideology and more about self-promotion. "Hey, if I attack Mark Levin I can score some points with the Andrew Sullivan and the left-libertarians."

That's really all there is to it. As I've shown in this post, which is now a lot longer and more detailed that I'd anticipaed, Conor Friedersdorf is an essentially dishonest man with an inflated sense of self-importance. I can hardly be more clear in saying this, but be that as it may, I'm not expecting a response to the arguments I've made in any case. Mr. Friedersdorf doesn't have it in him, and in all of his recent slurs, he's mostly out to gain attention for himself rather than debate those who really do care about the movement.

I've enabled comment moderation. I won't be publishing Mr. Friedersdorf's drive-by snarks here. If he responds with a post at either of his blogs, I'll reply in kind if they are substantive - and if in fact they move the debate forward.

Otherwise, I'm moving on ...

Conor Friedersdorf: Hammered on Multiple Fronts, Threatens Dan Riehl

The Big Baby at Big Ideas has refused to engage the substantive points at my post, "Conor Friedersdorf: Small-Minded Narcissist." In his own posts, Mr. Friedersdorf makes provocative assertions, and then he whines when you call him out on them. He then accuses others of "ad hominem" attacks as if that relieves him of the responsibility of defending his allegations.

So to be clear: I'm not attacking Mr. Friederdorf "against the man." I'm arguing "descriptively" against his behavior, which is objectively childish and selfish. His small mindedness is also objectively demonstrated by making what would be playground copycat allegations:

It's quite a paranoid theory you've developed. But it is unsupported by any evidence. Should you take the time to converse with me like a gentleman, I'll happily engage your substantive arguments, and I think you'll find that your wrongheaded assumptions about me will change.

Actually, to say I'm "paranoid" is a claim that itself needs to be substantiated by "evidence." And of course, the "theory" in question at my post is itself a logically-derived claim on Mr. Freiderdorf's arguments. It's a method of substantive debate. Ignoring the argumentative power of my claims doesn't make them go away.

But frankly, Mr. Friederdorf is not known for much intellectual firepower.

Cranky Conservative eviscerated him at this post, "How Do You Like Dem Apples?" I got a kick out of this passage:

I wasn’t really going to comment on the 3578734895723894569783th (give or take) debate on “real conservatism,” this time involving RS McCain, Dan Riehl, and Conor Friedersdorf, but after reading Friedersdorf’s take, I couldn’t help but think of that scene from Good Will Hunting.

WILL: Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first year grad student. You just finished some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison prob’ly, and so naturally that’s what you believe until next month when you get to James Lemon and get convinced that Virginia and Pennsylvania were strongly entrepreneurial and capitalist back in 1740. That’ll last until sometime in your second year, then you’ll be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood about the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

CLARK: Well, as a matter of fact, I won’t, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of –

WILL: “Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth…” You got that from “Work in Essex County,” Page 421, right? Do you have any thoughts of your own on the subject or were you just gonna plagiarize the whole book for me? Look, don’t try to pass yourself off as some kind of an intellect at the expense of my friend just to impress these girls.

Friedersdorf, again, ends up making it all about him! After being thoroughly schooled by Cranky Conservative at the comments, Friederdorf has the temerity to demand a retraction!

I should have chosen my words more carefully ... I do thank you for alerting me to the error, and apologize for my imprecision. However, I think the rest of my comment stands, and refutes the argument in your post. I wish you’d correct your mistake as readily as I’ve fessed up to mine.

Cranky Conservative responds beautifully:

You fess up to a blatant misreading of McCain, and that means I am supposed to “correct” a mistake that I did not make? In the very body of the post I said that I did not think you were stating that Kirk is the sole authoritative voice of conservatism. As for the remainder of the post, I stand by the analysis. You haven’t offered up anything more meaningful than name dropping.

But note something else: If Friederdorf can't win an argument on the merits, he'll make implied threats - which, in the case of Dan Riehl, means that he'll mention the publication of private e-mail communications to get you to STFU. Here's the comment from Mr. Friederdorf:

Time and again I have addressed the substance of your arguments, while you've responded with little more than ad hominem attacks. I have unfailingly refrained from responding in kind, kept the confidence of private e-mails you've sent me, and otherwise excerpted far more material from the folks I'm criticizing than you do in a typical blog post on your own site ...

So, readers can discern the pattern: Friederdorf loses an argument. Then he alleges you've slandered him with ad hominems. Then to ice the cake, he'll hoist the maganimity of NOT publishing your e-mails as some kind of macabre badge of debating honor.

And here's the thing: Friederdorf argues like a lefty! Not only is he enthralled with the leftosphere's "association with academia," but he smears and threatens with the best of its representatives.

And all of this points back to the orignal points at issue between myself and Mr. Friedersdorf - and apparently many others on the right: Conor Friedersdorf is a "faux" conservative. He can be aligned him with a group of postmodernists that I've identified as "neoclassicons." Dan Riehl characterizes these same folks as "worldly, nonreligious conservo-libertarians." Robert Stacy McCain just calls out Friedersdorf for his pathetic "intellectual scam."

I'll have more later. But in the meantime, look forward to Mr. Friedersdorf showing up here in the comments section, where he'll (1) avoid the argument presented, and (2) attack me personally while alleging ad hominems.

I've never e-mailed him, so he won't be able to threaten me with that one.

Neoclassicons

I'm involved, just a teeny-weeny bit, in this flame war Robert Stacy McCain's having with Conor Friedersdorf.

At Stacy's post yesterday, "Conor Friedersdorf vs. Dan Riehl" (on the debate between Friedersdorf and Dan), I left the link to Conor's post, Iran, Twitter, and The American Information Elite." That link goes to the Atlantic, where Freidersdorf's now a "big ideas" blogger. Stacy's been hammering Friedersdorf pretty hard anyway, but even more now that news of the Freidersdorf's Atlantic gig got out.

I've been thinking about writing something about this. So, I might as well comment on Dan's remark earlier on the conservatives schism (David Frum vs. Rush Limbaugh, etc.), when he noted that "To be honest, I wonder if this whole moderation movement isn't simply about purging the social conservatives."

Well, yeah. I'll just say here that Conor Freidersdorf is an Andrew Sullivan myrmidon. As anyone who's followed the recent conservative debates knows, especially in the months since the election, there's been an amalgamation of moderate conservatives, left-libertarians, and unpatriotic paleocons on the postmodern right. I wrote about this (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) the other day, in "What's Up With David Weigel?" From Conor Friederdorf to David Frum, to Daniel Larison to Andrew Sullivan, and then E.D. Kain, there's a movement afoot that wants desperately to be "conservative," but one that is failing miserably.

The reason is simple: These folks, let's loosely call them neoclassical conservatives, or neoclassicons, are driven by an essentially leftist-libertarian domestic policy orientation that is primarily animated by an intense hatred of "theoconservatism." That's the term Andrew Sullivan deploys in his book, The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right. In Sullivan's case in particular, hatred of theoconservatism emerges out of the psycho-sexual torment of his own homosexuality. For a man who has apparently long preached a standard of homosexual monogamy, his own personal moral breakdown into wild sexual excursions of high-risk barebacking and alleged steroidal drug use makes it difficult for reasonable people to take him seriously. Sullivan's own considerably masterful writing, of course, and his ability to put his finger to the pulse of the latest ideological hot buttons, helps to give him some cachet among those on the left looking for some type of pop-legitimacy to their postmodern agenda.

What's striking about all of this is not just how wrong these folks are on most of the main issues of contemporary conservatism, but also how, from my perspsective, the Sullivan-cadres mount their ideological program completely bereft of decency. Andrew Sullivan himself, as is well known, practically lost his mind last year after Sarah Palin's nomination as the GOP presidential running-mate. His attacks on the Palin family have hit bottom and he keeps digging. Beyond that, I routinely see his followers and allies making the most ridiculously unhinged attacks, allegations, and arguments. Conor Friedersdorf put up a totally absurd piece a couple of weeks back, in an essay called, "A Question for War on Terror Hawks." Friedersdorf advocated waterboarding for folks like the suspect in the murder of George Tiller. I took him to task in my post, "Is Waterboarding Worse Than Abortion?," and he left a hopeless comment noting his exception.

E.D. Kain, another neoclassicon who practically worships Sullivan - and not to mention, Daniel Larison - is himself like a confused adolescent, afraid to engage in an intellectual debate with me at this blog. E.D. Kain was once in regular communication with me as the publisher of Neo-Constant, which was described as a blog of "Hard-line neoconservative political commentary, global politics, and foreign policy." Like Andrew Sullivan, E.D. must feel a need to float along the tides of partisan popularity. He's certainly denuded himself of moral standing among those with whom he had previous communications. But that kind of childishness appears to characterize the neoclassicons overall. Recall that Andrew Sullivan attacked Ann Althouse for her simple decision to get married. Why? Jealousy most likely, but also spite for hetersexuals and traditionalists. This is how these guys roll.

And what for? For all intents and purposes these guys have joined the other side. They're not conservative by any sense of the imagination. One doesn't have to be a devout church-goer to be deeply conservative on the issues, and that includes on such starkly moral questions as the right to life for unborn children. One of the most important conserative intellectuals in the last few decades is Robert Bork. And he claims to be just mildly religious (see Bork's, "Hard Truths About the Culture War" for a penetrating expose on the mainstreaming of postmodern radicalism in contemporary public affairs).

Robert Stacy McCain mostly just writes these people off as little men, a bunch of immature pseudo-conservative social climbers. My take is perhaps rougher. From social policy to international affairs, I see these folks in bed with the hardline activists of the nihilist left. On gay marriage to Iraq, there's little that differentiates them. For them to suggest they're "reclaiming" conservativism is preposterous. No smart conservative on today's right would even deign to associate with views like this. Rush Limbaugh is popular for a reason. Mark Levin's Tyranny and Liberty remains at the top of the bestseller lists, and the mainstream press has refused to give him the time of day. David Frum and Sullivan, on the other hand, are feted like they're top political soothsayers of the age. It's a strange thing.

No matter. Analysis of election data, as well as recent polling, indicates how far out on a limb the neoclassicons have placed themselves. The genuine conservatism of folks like Robert Bork, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin will be making a huge comeback in no time. Frankly, the Obama administration's deficit-driven agenda is already being repudiated in public opinion, and former Obama voters are now having remorse.

It's good to put these neoclassicons in there place, of course. Conservatives have to fight for every inch. The media's in the tank for Obama, and Andrew Sulllivan and his stooges are simply seeking a path of least resistance in their hubristic attempt to excommunicate the traditional right-wing from the political spectrum.

I'll have more on this debate in upcoming posts.

Resurrecting Culture 11? Or, How Faux-Righty Conor Friedersdorf Gets Media Attention

It's be hard to believe that "pomo" conservative opinion outlets would have much of a chance in the current environment, but hardline leftists love to entertain the thought. See Washington Monthly's, "Culture Shock: What happened when one conservative Web site ventured outside the movement bubble" (via Memeorandum). The piece pays special attention to longstanding faux-conservative and online attention-hog Conor Friedersdorf. The essay dismisses mainstream conservative websites (like Big Hollywood) as ignorant of the youth culture and afraid to break out of the right-wing cocoon. What's funny, of course, is that folks on the right aren't fooled by Friedersdorf-types who aren't conservative and who in fact push far left-wing policies and ideological programs. The "Culture Shock" piece is also stuck in a 2008 mindset, wherein Bush-fatigue, Obamania, and John McCain's political campaign disaster virtually guaranteed a Democratic victory. That moment is long passed. If Culture 11 is able to round up money for a comeback it won't be a reflection of demands for a more eclectic conservatism. Anyone can find that at The Daily Dish or the pretentiously ignorant League of Ordinary Gentlemen. In other words, these folks are epic fail. Conor Friedersdorf is a special case of Andrew Sullivan myrmidonism that's simply Democratic Party cheerleading by any other name. Besides, as Robert Stacy McCain notes:

This is becoming a familiar pattern for conservatives who want to waste a double buttload of cash:

1. Create a new Web site;
2. Promise something innovative and different; and
3. Most of all, don’t call Stacy McCain.

Because I don’t anything about “making conservatism fun, light-hearted and accessible.”

Daniel Larison, 'Prefab Conservative'

Is Daniel Larison a "prefab conservative"?

Drawing on John Schwenkler, Conor Friedersdorf suggests that "prefab conservative" is the hot new term of day. It describes a kind of "off-the-shelf" right-wing talking head, prepackaged, like a home built with prefabricated construction (via Memeorandum):

The prefab conservative, or prefab-con, brings the same attitude to political discourse: rather than using reason and critical thinking to craft arguments that fit the real world, he trots out prefabricated memes, arguments and conclusions that are passably functional at best. All too often, they are even worse: the typical prefabcon lives in an intellectual house of ugly, wobbly walls that collapse on themselves in slight gusts. Undaunted, he throws up another structure on the same spot, though that wolf named reality is standing right there, ready to huff and puff again.

For his key example, Friedersdorf offers up conservative talkshow host Kevin James, who came up empty-handed in a May 2008 appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews. James' problem was that he clearly didn't know the history of the Munich crisis - you know, that little bit about "peace in our time" that has come to define craven diplomacy in the face of unspeakable evil. Yeah, Chris Matthews pounded Kevin James for ignorant posturing, and rightly so.

But staying with the World War II historical frame, perhaps Daniel Larison, Schwenkler's buddy over at the American Conservative, should throw his hat in the ring for nomination as the "prefab conservative" standard bearer. Few "intellectual" conservatives have abused the history of interwar European diplomacy as well as Larison.

I distinctly remember a dramatic post Larison wrote last year during the campaign, "Avoiding Key Details Is Essential In Warmongering." In apparent classic "prefab conservative" form, Larison wrote:

People will endure remarkable hardship, at least once, to expel an invader from their country. Like France after Verdun, the horrific experience might be great enough to force a nation into a purely defensive posture, but even post-WWI France, which is a better comparison with post-1988 Iran, did not sink into pacifism.

Indeed, the occupation of the Rhineland, security guarantees to central European states and the building of the Maginot Line all point not to pacifism, but to an assumption that another war might come and France should be prepared for it. The Maginot Line came out of the experience of Verdun, which was that the defensive position held the overwhelming advantage in modern warfare; the problem with the Maginot Line was not that it was defensive and therefore somehow “weak” or pacifistic, but plainly enough that it did not guard the entire border.

This was a breathtaking revision of history, especially Larison's analysis of the Maginot Line and French pacifist public opinion. As I wrote at the time:

Historians have long since shown that "pacifism" in the interwar context is captured by the entire collapse of social will that indicates a stage existential crisis far beyond numbers of men under arms or military armaments. The French case is even worse than the British, for as Eugen Weber has shown in his book, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930's, the entire national posture in France in the face of the rising Nazi challenge was one of national decay, moral laziness, and cowardly inaction. If anything, the Maginot was the greatest French symbol of the refusal to fight. I mean, really, the Maginot Line was a huge national system of underground bunkers within which French troops could hide from German Panzer divisions! There was no "overwhelming" advantage to defense on the eve of World War II. It was the opposite, as the German High Command's blitzkrieg strategy was to illustrate in the rapid defeat of the French in 1940. Basic books of French interwar history have covered the theme of French pacifism and moral decay for decades. William Shirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic is the central first-hand journalistic account, and the outstanding scholarly synthesis of the historiography can be found in Robert Young's, France and the Origins of the Second World War. Young's theme is strategic "ambivalence" rather than pacifism, so if folks want to quibble with details, you might be able to throw Larison a bone with that.

The exact historical debate on the origins the French collapse in 1940 is less important than discerning the countours of the "prefab conservative" template.

If historical cluelessness is a top criteria, Daniel Larison ought to be a frontrunner.

But wait!

If it's really as Friedersdorf suggests, that "the prefabcon's core flaw is a misunderstanding of what it means to be principled," then it frankly seems that Friedersdorf himself should be in running as well! Hey, maybe Andrew Sullivan and the boys at Ordinary Gentlemen are "prefab conservatives" too. They seem to be, to a man, supporters of Barack Obama and the diplomacy of deceit and weakness, not to mention the abandoment of democracy and human rights. On that point, maybe someone who is a "prefab conservative" isn't conservative at all. Maybe "prefab conservative" is just another nifty little attack slogan that these "neoclassicons" have invented to advance the cause of postmodern hypocrisy. "Prefab conservative," as a term, is similar to "Rovian Islamist". It's not a term of meaningful debate. It's a moniker of excoriation, an attack grenade in the left-libertarian rearguard battle against the current top conservative on the American right.

If that's the case, no worries: Idiots like Larison are already totally marginalized. And folks like Conor Friedersdorf are simply chumming the waters to build a personal sinecure as a "house conservative" at some liberal mainstream journalistic outpost. Thank goodness the inane hypocrisy of these folks is so transparent. Let them stay over at American Conservative and the Atlantic. That way they won't bother anyone of real credentials on the genuine conservative right.

**********

UPDATE: Dan Riehl links, and adds an interesting take on the "fundamentally flawed" languaged behind Friedersdorf's notion of "prefab-cons". See, "Pre-fab Isn't An Insult."

Best Conor Friedersdorf Tweet Evah!

I'm almost rolled over laughing! Talk about hammering Conor Friedersdorf!

I'm checking my @AmPowerBlog replies and I find one from Sandra Binder. And then clicking on her page we get this beauty:

So now I am totally following Sandra's tweets!

Hopefully next she'll put ever-so-worthy E.D. Kain on the chopping block, and not to mention Andrew Sullivan (no link for him, but R.S. McCain's on the case, "Kentucky Census Right-Wing Lynching Fake Hate-Crime Suicide Schadenfreude Update).

No doubt Dan Riehl's hip to it (see, "Conor Friedersdorf vs. Dan Riehl").

Who says Twitter's worthless!!?

Sleaze-Blogger E.D. Kain Reaches Pinnacle of 'Conservative' Blogosphere! Simultaneously Linked by Andrew Sullivan and Charles Johnson!

This has to be one of the greatest moments in my blogging career!

The inimitable sleaze-blogger E.D. Kain, erstwhile neoconservative and publisher of the now-defunct political webzine Neoconstant, has broken the final barriers of obscurity to capture the highly-coveted Conor Friedersdorf Wannabe Award for Faux-Conservative Punditry!

The award goes to the biggest gasbag to follow in the footsteps of Conor Friedersdorf, the Andrew Sullivan myrmidon and closet leftist who's jonesing to single-handedly nuke the entire American right-wing, from Sarah Palin to Mark Levin to Rush Limbaugh.

The honor is bestowed on those rare occasions when a nominees's work has been recognized for its supreme anti-right-wing smear-mastery by none other than RawMusleGlutes (the Daily Dish, now esteemed as the blogosphere's "nerve center for news from the Iranian street"); and King Charles of Little-Green-Libel-Lizard-Land (and now self-proclaimed expatriate from the "Birthers, creationists, climate deniers," etc.).

Looking at this Memeorandum screencap, we see that both mental cases have linked to E.D., the aspiring slander-master at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, and his post, "Conservatives as Self-Parodies":

I do recommend E.D.'s post, if for nothing else but the butt-freak arrogance that's dribbling off the page like a milky load of Andrew Sullivan's spooge. E.D. ridicules Andy Schlafly, the no-name publisher of the unread Conservapedia, with supreme self-importance:

I really am spoiled reading the conservative writers that I do read at the Scene and the Porch and Pomocon and the other little pockets of intellectual conservatism remaining.

Hey, can't be TOO spoiled now can we (can't be too rich or too thin either, as they say)?!!

The "Scene" is the insider's shorthand for Conor Friedersdorf's blog (no doubt the blogosphere's equivalent to William Buckley's National Review in the early days!). Absolutely no familiarity with the "Porch" (but my guess is "Front Porch Conservative"), and "Pomocon" is the Post-Modern Conservative over at First Things.

But there's more:

It just makes me throw my hands up in the air. I try too hard to retain the word “conservative” – to hold on to some other sense of its meaning, some other definition that the American right has no hold over. I have great admiration for the paleocons, but I would never really fit in even with that idiosyncratic bunch. I’ve tried to come to terms with the idea that the movement can be changed for the better but I’m beginning to doubt myself even there. The invention of the modern Tea Party only reveals how deep the fraud runs.

In the end I’m just at a loss. I see less and less hope for the American right however much they bellow and bluster to the contrary. I don’t even mean this in terms of electoral hope. I mean this in terms of salvation.

How deep the fraud runs? And the "tea parties"? Has E.D. ever attended a tea party? I can guarantee you there's more intellectual vigor in one good tea party sign than all the bulls**t bluster being spouted at all the "po-mo" websites I've cited on this page:

And E.D. Kain's an intellectual mountebank and an ideological imposter. I'd say a yellow-bellied backstabber as well, but I've covered that ground before. See, "Sleaze-Blogger E.D. Kain Interviews Despicable Libel-Blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs."

Click the link above. More of the lowdown on E.D. Kain, po-mo-prick-in-arms to the wannabe right's libel-blogging contingency.

Mark Levin on David Frum

There's a genuinely bitter partisan brawl going on between Mark Levin and some of his prominent faux-conservative antagonists.

You might have caught the initial attacks on Levin last week, from Conor Friedersdorf and then Rod Dreher. I first caught wind of all this in Dan Riehl's response to Friedersdorf, "In Defense of Mark Levin." Dan has a number of other posts covering various iterations of the debate. In an earlier post, Levin suggested that "I have to lower myself to deal with the undeveloped minds of kooks like Rod Dreher." Then Dreher returned fire, calling Levin a "bumptious vulgarian."

You might have also caught David Frum piling on to Conor Friedersdorf's attack: "No Wonder People Hate Us." I also read this last week. I didn't think much of it, since I see Frum as a marginal faux-conservative on the wrong side of the big issues of the day.

Now Levin has responded to Frum, at Riehl World View (and there's a thread at Memeorandum):

David Frum was never much of a thinker. Try as he might, he just can't seem to attract interest, let alone a following, even when stabbing his old boss, President George W. Bush, in the back with a rambling screed. Profiting from a confidential relationship with a president is about as low as it gets. But Frum, the ex-speech-writer turned self-hating blogger, isn't done descending. Now he spends his lonely days and nights at his keyboard trying to settle personal scores and demonizing those who dare to dismiss his ramblings as the work of an emotional wreck.

My interactions with Frum have been minimal, despite his past suggestions that they were something more. As best I recall, I met him first on an Amtrak train. He was sitting near the restroom feverishly working his lap top's keyboard. We exchanged pleasantries, and that was about it. I believe the next time I met him was at the Ledeen's home. He seemed harmless enough. The next thing I knew, he had a blog at NRO. I rarely read it, but when I did, I noticed he displayed a quirkiness and psuedo-intellectualism which suggested to me that something was a little off with the guy. But I didn't give it much thought. I became reacquainted with Frum after he viciously attacked Rush Limbaugh, after having attempted to spar with Rush over a period of months. And it was this unhinged, emotional outburst that caught my attention. I then realized, as did others, that Frum was a truly pathetic character subject to wild personality lurches and obsessed with drawing attention to himself.

In one truly bizarre incident, after I responded to another of Frum's hate-Rush outbursts, Frum had his own 15 year old son call my talk show. Realizing Frum had become emotionally uncontrollable, I told my producer to tell his son that it would not be appropriate for him to come on the air. If his father called in, I would put him on the show. Within minutes, Frum called, and he proceeded to make a fool of himself by interrupting, name-calling, etc. He could not gather his thoughts or make coherent, reasoned points. So, as the host, with a responsibility to my audience, I had to repeatedly lower the noise-level on his rantings. Frum made a fool of himself.

There's more at the link.

This is especially interesting to me, as I'm blog buddies with Dan Riehl.

But if you check over at Rod Dreher's blog, and click the "conservative" tag, you'll find that he's also been attacking Robert Stacy McCain (as a side skirmish in the debate). Dreher cites Freddie de Boer for support, which is even more interesting. Freddie's the resident left-wing extremist at Ordinary Gentlemen. That blog, as I've written many times, is the home of the net's Andrew Sullivan myrmidon project. A classic essay which encapsulates the ideological foundations of this project is "Twenty-First Century Conservativsm."

And therein lies why Levin's engagement in this debate is important. The attacks on Levin by Friedersdorf, Dreher, and Frum are like the wobbly swings of a late-round boxer on the ropes. The challenger's last-breath hope is that he might land a blow on the champ, securing a fleeting chance at taking the championship belt. But Levin's takedown today has knocked Frum off his feet, and the rest of his postmodern allies aren't far behind.

These people are kind of sick, actually. But that's where such "Meghan McCain Republicans" have been taking the debate over the future of the right. These "twenty-first century conservatives" have basically pitched their tent with the likes of Andrew Sullivan. It's thus no surprise that their attacks have taken on the unhinged likeness of "trig-trutherism."

There's a principled conservative movement currently making a comeback. Levin's #1 book is the right's manifesto for the fight back to power. As folks can see from the pushback against Levin, it's not just the Democrats who are standing in the way ...

Tucker Carlson's Populist-Nationalist Monologue Draws Response (VIDEO)

Abby Hunstman and Conor Friedersdorf were among some of the prominent responses. Video below:

The View's Abby Huntsman Defends Tucker Carlson's Private 'Heart of Gold' After Pay Equality Comments https://t.co/xmlOASVSiA

— People (@people) January 5, 2019

Conservatives ought to be angry when the right’s television hosts mislead the audience. https://t.co/sEee9hA2Fr

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) January 6, 2019

Is Waterboarding Worse Than Abortion?

Check out Conor Friedersdorf and his essay, "A Question for War on Terror Hawks."

Friedersdorf basically equates the actions of one lone wacko with those of an international terrorist network that's responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as well as a number of other terrorist atrocities around the world in recent decades.

Why such equivalence? Friedersdorf wonders what the reaction would be had President Obama "declared two or three of these extremist pro-lifers" as enemy combatants? "Should President Obama have the prerogative to order the waterboarding of these uncharged, untried detainees?"

Folks can read the whole thing for a sense of Friederdorf's total unseriousness. But my friend Jan at Vinegar and Honey has written along these lines in her post, "It Will Never Make Sense To Me." Jan compares waterboarding and late-term abortions. Maybe Mr. Friedersdorf might like to respond to her questions:

There has been much discussion about the pros and cons of "water boarding" and whether or not it constitutes "torture." Also, of great concern are the "rights" of the recipients of the water boarding technique.

I know what the word "torture" means, as defined by a dictionary, and I know what the word conjures up in my own mind. What I really don't understand is what the difference might be if a "terrorist" is tortured by the water boarding method, as compared to an abortion, and especially, a partial-birth abortion performed on an innocent fetus, in terms of suffering.

Maybe what I'm really trying to reconcile in my own mind, is how the opponents of water boarding, who vehemently protest the cruelty of it, and diligently pursue "justice" and "protection of civil rights" for the recipients of it, justify the pain and suffering endured by the innocents who have done nothing, but are tortured in the most inhumane way during an abortion--while at the same time loudly protesting the mistreatment of some very bad people intent on killing us, one and all.I looked up a few things about both subjects. Perhaps, you will tell me what you think, after we compare the two.

Water Boarding

Water boarding as it is currently described involves strapping a person to an inclined board, with his feet raised and his head lowered. The interrogators bind the person's arms and legs so he can't move at all, and they cover his face. In some descriptions, the person is gagged, and some sort of cloth covers his nose and mouth; in others, his face is wrapped in cellophane. The interrogator then repeatedly pours water onto the person's face. Depending on the exact setup, the water may or may not actually get into the person's mouth and nose; but the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The person's mind believes he is drowning, and his gag reflex kicks in as if he were choking on all that water falling on his face.

Pain In The Unborn

“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies.”– Steven Calvin, perinatologist, University of Minnesota.

An unborn child at 20 weeks gestation “is fully capable of experiencing pain... Without question, [abortion] is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure.”– Robert J. White, MD., Ph.D. professor of neurosurgery, Case Western Reserve University.

“At 20 weeks, the fetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body, and their electrical activity can be be recorded by standard electroencephalography (EEG)”– Dr. Paul Ranalli, neurologist, University of Toronto.

An unborn child has less legal protection from feeling pain than commercial livestock.

In a slaughterhouse, a method of slaughter is deemed legally humane only if “all animals are rendered insensible to pain by a single blow or gunshot or an electrical,chemical, or other means that is rapid and effective, before being shackled, hoisted,thrown, cast, or cut.” (Section 2 of the Humane Slaughter Act, 7 USC 1902).

By contrast, D&E abortions, performed as late as 24 weeks (well after the child begins to feel pain), involve the dismemberment of the unborn child by a pair of sharp metal forceps.(9) Instillation methods of abortion (performed even in the third trimester) involve the replacement of up to one cup of amniotic fluid with a concentrated salt solution, which the unborn child inhales as the salt burns her skin.The child lives in this condition for up to an hour. In neither of these techniques is the unborn child provided with any form of anesthesia(1013)http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/FetalPain091604.pdf.

Robert George writes in his essay, "Obama and His Pro-Life Apologists," something rather thought-provoking: President Obama knows that an unborn baby is human. He knows that the blood shed by the abortionist’s knife is human blood, that the bones broken are human bones. He does not deny that the baby whom nurse Jill Stanek discovered gasping for breath in a soiled linen bin after a failed attempt to end her life by abortion, was a human baby. Even in opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was designed to assure that such babies were rescued if possible or at least given comfort care while they died, Barack Obama did not deny the humanity of the child. What he denied, and continues to deny, is the fundamental equality of that child—equality with those of us who are safely born and accepted into the human community."

The sad part of all of this, is that the President is not the only one who persists in defending the rights of the women who choose to abort, and the abortionists, but sadder, still, is the fact that they all put more value on the well-being, and lives of a terrorist, than they do on an innocent little child who has no one to come to his defense as a human being with the right to live.

Is water boarding worse than being burned alive, poisoned, or torn to pieces?

From Vinegar and Honey, "It Will Never Make Sense To Me."

True/Slant Shuts Down — Charles Johnson, E.D. Kain Looking for New Digital Media Bones to Suck Dry

A belated follow-up to last year's entry, "Sleaze-Blogger E.D. Kain Interviews Despicable Libel-Blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs."

Both of these bozos were sucking the guts out of the digital media beta site True/Slant, cross-posting material from their own digs for an extra couple of bucks in slimeball blogging.

Background at Neil Ungerleider, "Last post on True/Slant."

This is probably no big deal for most readers, although it's interesting to me that the Internet publishing gods weren't smiling down on these two libel-blogging bloviators. Maybe they'll actually hafta get jobs, you know, like most people of good moral standing. That said, Barret Brown is on True/Slant and I've found him to be a fairly decent guy after going a few rounds in the flamewars (and Barret's at Vanity Fair, so he has something of a viable inside thing going already). And I hope Kashmir Hill's social networking blog lands quickly on its feet at another location, and I'm confident it will (she's good).

Added: Dan Riehl links, "Conor Friedersdorf: Angel Of Death In Web Publishing." I forgot about that idiot Conor Friedersdorf, but he's right up there with E.D. Kain and Charles Johnson.

Conor Friedersdorf: Small-Minded Narcissist

I'd be charitable to say that Conor Freidersdorf's comment at my post last night was "odd." To say it was "egocentric" would be closer to the mark, and "narcissistic" also comes to mind.

The post was about the debate on the right between traditionalists and those who I've identified as neoclassical conservatives, or "neoclassicons." I mentioned Friederdorf and his debate with Dan Riehl. The exchange has been covered at The Other McCain. But the Friederdorf/Riehl debate was simply a pointer to the larger schism that's been roiling the conservative waters since at least the election of President Obama.

But Friederdorf wants folks to make it all about him:

I haven't any desire to purge social conservatives. I spent 14 years attending a religious private school ... I mean, how inaccurate! In a post ostensibly about me, you get most of your facts wrong, and spend most of your time talking about Andrew Sullivan.

Oh, poor, poor baby!

Actually, no, I don't get the facts wrong, Mr. Friedersdorf.

The post isn't "ostensibly" about you. And indeed, as for Andrew Sullivan, my point is precisely that we have a clique of Sullivan myrmidons that's emerged from various perspectives on the postmodern right - folks who I've loosely lumped together as neoclassicons. But it's by no means just you. So, once more, I'm struck by how you think its "odd" that I wrote primarily about Sullivan! You tender little attention-whore! "Oh, Dr. Douglas, you nasty!" You spent "most of your time talking about Andrew Sullivan." How dare you, you cad!

And, of course, the facts in question aren't wrong. At your original post I cited weeks ago, "A Question for War on Terror Hawks," you assert moral equivalencies between a lone U.S. murder suspect and the untold number of violent jihadists within the global terrorist network - including many, of course, who were captured on the battlefield and held as enemy combatants in a real war on terrorism. Your post, as it proposes partisan payback for the robust anti-terror policies of the Bush years, basically endorses an Obama administration policy of declaring domestic anti-abortion terrorists as identical enemy combatants; you also deploy taunting language in saying, "I wonder how 'War on Terror Hawks' would react" if President Obama had the "prerogative to order the waterboarding of the uncharged, untried detainees." The scenario is not simply a hypothetical. It's transparent advocacy in furtherance of ideological retribution. Most of all, your post is dishonest hackery, and your defense of it is peurile idiocy.

And that brings me to something else: It turns out that Dan Riehl points to your underhanded attack on Mark Levin and conservative talk radio. Interesting how Dan refuses to mention you by name, better not to besmirch his page it turns out:

While many people may have taken exception to some of Andrew Sullivan's Palin posting at The Atlantic in the past, I find it somewhat troubling that they would hire a blogger who seems to have a serious problem understanding blog ethics, if not journalistic ethics, as well. Frankly, this is unethical and lazy blogging at its worst. So much so, one almost wonders if it isn't by design.

Their newbie blogger has spent the last two days presenting extremely small snippets of text to represent Mark Levin's broadcasts, almost to the point of obsession - see here and here. Along with being unethical, this makes no sense.

He links to Talk Radio authorities, David Frum and copiously back to himself. I thought blogging was about both documenting one's source material - and sharing same with your reader whenever possible? ....

It isn't simply unethical, it's poor blogging and bad etiquette, to boot. Assuming they are paying this guy money for his blogging, one would think an organization such as The Atlantic could do much better than that.

It's my hunch that the endless attacks on Mark Levin are not just about "improving" talk radio. They're about "improving" (purging) right-wing ideology - which you allege is a system that's "damaging to public discourse" - in favor of Sullivan-styled neoclassical conservatism (which, don't forget, is really a euphemism for the right's postmodern program of marching with leftists on social issues, civil liberties, and foreign policy). So, yes, Mr. Friederdorf, you are attacking social conservatives. These are exactly the "Rovians" and "theocrats" that you and the neoclassicals are out to destroy.

God have mercy on your soul, son.

P.S. Don't miss Jimmie at Sundries Shack as well, "Conor Freidersdorf is Not Ready to Take on Mark Levin."

It's a Good Thing Hilzoy - a.k.a. Hilary Bok - Is Retiring From Blogging ...

... Because she's lost her grip on reality:

I'm taking this opportunity to retire from blogging ...

The main reason I started blogging, besides the fact that I thought it would be fun, was that starting sometime in 2002, I thought that my country had gone insane. It wasn't just the insane policies, although that was part of it. It was the sheer level of invective: the way that people who held what seemed to me to be perfectly reasonable views, e.g. that invading Iraq might not be such a smart move, were routinely being described as al Qaeda sympathizers who hated America and all it stood for and wanted us all to die ...

That said, it seems to me that the madness is over. There are lots of people I disagree with, and lots of things I really care about, and even some people who seem to me to have misplaced their sanity, but the country as a whole does not seem to me to be crazy any more.

Wow!

Perhaps Professor Bok needs to spend some time with her colleagues in the Department of Psychology!

I mean, she recently excoriated Ed Whelan as a "petulant bully" for outing Publius. That episode drove a whole weekend's worth of political blogging, and the moment pretty much refutes the idea that "the madness is over." (And of course the idea that "the "madness" has stopped makes more sense now that "The Lightworker" has been elected to the Oval Office.)

For such an accomplished blogger (she also writes at the Washington Monthy), her post demonstrates an extreme disconnect from the hyper-partisan political polarization we've seen since President Hussein was elected.

And her faux outrage in the Publius blow-up is something else!

It turns out that Bok is one to insist on being identified by her online handle. Yet, she published her picture at Obsidian Wings in 2005, here. Her Wikipedia entry includes all of her blogging information. So it's kind of strange for folks to allege that she was "outed" in a blogging controvery earlier this year, see Linda Hirshman, "Sheltering Women: Linda Hirshman Responds to Hilzoy."

But really, it's not difficult to understand why she insists on pseudonymity.

She took her Ph.D. from Harvard University. In case you didn't think of it, Professor Bok's father is Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard University, and the author of a highly-influential book on affirmative action, The Shape of the River:Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Professor Bok's mother is Sissela Bok, a highly-regarded moral philospher and currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

That's some high powered left-wing creds! And you wouldn't want to sully them by getting down and dirty in the netroots fevers swamps. And remember what they say about that old pinnacle of the Ivy League:

“Harvard” is suspicious of patriotism, disdainful of small-town values and entertainments, enthusiastic about big government programs and transnational initiatives like the World Court and the EU. It is “homeopathic” at one remove: that is, it harbors a sentimental affection for the Third World, “traditional” medicine, native tribes (”native” anything, really, except “nativism” and “natality”) but only so long as it is filtered through the scrim of Western affluence and “progressive” values. (By the way, I keep putting the word “progressive” in scare quotes because progress suggests a movement forward towards a desirable goal whereas “progressive” in the Harvard sense embraces the rhetoric of progress while advocating policies that stymie it.)

Anyway, see John Hinderaker's comments on why reputation matters in blogging, "Leveling the Playing Field."

And here's an interesting piece of related trivia: Conor Friedersdorf, the eminent "conservative" and now Atlantic blogger/Andrew Sullivan colleague, was a student of Professor Bok's at Pomona College in the 1990s. And being the idiot that Friedersdorf is, he refuses to address her by her real name after he found it published at Wikipedia.

Wait! Here's another piece of related trivia: The "conservative" Andrew 'Harvard Ph.D.' Sullivan confesses that out of thousands of bloggers, "Hilzoy might be my favorite of the bunch" (via Memeorandum).

Well, there's your six-degrees of leftist separation for the day!

Photo Credit: The John Hopkins Newsletter, "Prof. Bok Goes Behind the Music: Bok Studied Both Economics and English Before Finally Settling On Her Love: Philosophy."

**********

UPDATE: I love it! Personal attacks in place of argumentation or refutation! From the very first comment:

Your jealousy is showing, Mr. Long Beach City College.

As regular readers know, I've addressed the "I can't believe you're a professor" slur, and its corollary, "he's only a junior college professor," in recent entries. See, "You're a Professor, Really?", and "Political Science at LBCC: Training the Next Generation of Leaders."

Actually, that would be "Dr. Long Beach City College."

And I would be jealous, if Hilzoy was a Harvard Ph.D. AND a neocon!

'I Didn't Change. The World Changed'

From Daniel Henninger, at Wall Street Journal, "In an interview, Dick Cheney says 'It's important to have people at the helm who are prepared to be unpopular'."

I think Dick Cheney's been the rock of American public life for the last 10 years. He's unruffled in his convictions, more impressive as he got older.

RELATED: The left's revulsion of the former V.P. is picking up over at Memeorandum. See especially, ABC News, "Former Powell Chief of Staff: Cheney “Fears Being Tried as a War Criminal”." And click through at Memeorandum for Conor Friedersdorf's attack on Cheney. Friedersdorf's an airhead.

Sleaze-Blogger E.D. Kain Interviews Despicable Libel-Blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs

E.D. Kain, the dirtbag blogger who once giddily published my work at his now defunct "hardline" neoconservative portal, Neo-Constant, has an interview with Charles Johnson at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, "The Evolution of Blogging: An Interview with Charles Johnson."

With the exception of perhaps the harebrained Conor Friedersdorf, I can't think of more perfectly suitable blogger to interview the Mad King of LGF (Charles pumps up the interview here). It turns out E.D.'s now a featured contributor at True Slant. It notes there, at his bio-blurb, that he's also a "writer at David Frum's site, New Majority" (now called the "Frum Forum," and circling the drain as I write this). Beyond his abject dishonesty and spinelessness (discussed here), E.D.'s made a name for himself with his incoherent ramblings at the Ordinary Gentlemen. He's a stream-of-consciousness smear-master who's never learned the meaning of terms like "concision" and "parsimonious." Not only that, he's an Andrew Sullivan myrmidon, which raises obvious questions of integrity (if not sanity) all by itself.

So now, with the interview of C.J. at Ordinary Gentleman, E.D.'s now gone all in, breathlessly and irreversibly, with the weasely so-called postmodern conservatives who are increasingly being revealed as mindlessly useful idiots for the radical left. A quick case in point is Andrew Sullivan, who gleefully links the interview (off a hat-tip from airhead Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum).

And you know what? All of these folks have unsurprisingly found a consensus focal point on this gem of a libel-quote from the interview with King Charles (compete with the softball lead-in question):

At that point in time you were fairly well aligned with much of the conservative blogosphere which unified behind the war on terror. Lately that seems to have changed. More and more LGF seems to be distancing itself from the right. What’s changed? Has national security become secondary to economic issues, or does it run deeper than that?

National security is still an important issue. But the main reason I can’t march along with the right wing blogosphere any more, not to put too fine a point on it, is that most of them have succumbed to Obama Derangement Syndrome. One “nontroversy” after another, followed by the outrage of the day, followed by conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, all delivered in breathless, angry prose that’s just wearying and depressing to read.

It’s not just the economic issues either. I’ve never been on board with the anti-science, anti-Enlightenment radical religious right. Once I began making my opinions known on issues like creationism and abortion, I realized that there just wasn’t very much in common with many of the bloggers on the right. And then, when most of them decided to fall in and support a blogger like Robert Stacy McCain, who has neo-Nazi friends, has written articles for the openly white supremacist website American Renaissance, and has made numerous openly racist statements on the record … well, I was extremely disappointed to see it, but unfortunately not surprised.

I’ve always written the truth about my opinions, and I have no intention of changing that policy now, just to fit in with a “movement” that has gone completely off the rails.

Robert Stacy McCain is currently in Orlando, Florida. He texted me today to give me the heads up on his son Jim's scuba-diva lessons at their fabulous hotel. Robert hasn't responded at his blog to the Ordinary Gentlmen smears. He's busy, mostly likely, having a fun-filled business trip, although it's possible he's not aware of the latest salvo in Charles Johnson's campaign of libel smears. Of course, Robert's replied numerous times to these scurrilous attacks before (see, "Charles Johnson's Quantum Physics"). What's interesting here is how E.D.'s essentially given Johnson's ravings the patina of credibility outside the fetid fever swamps of the LGF commentariat and of the dungeons of a few hangers-on across the neo-communist blogosphere.

For the truth is that this campaign of fabrications of Robert Stacy McCains' "racism" is actually unintelligible except among those trolling the narrow ideological confines of the radical, unhinged postmodern left. No serious writer on the right today gives these allegations credibility. (No offense, but A.J. Strata recently proved, in his attack on Robert, that he doesn't know WTF is going on, so cross him off the list of right-wing respectables).

Interestingly, the first comment at the Ordinary Gentlmen post -- no doubt from a friendly but brainless "post-mod" -- sums up perfectly the non-conservative bone fides of Charles Johnson's leftist sycophants:

My theory on LGF ... is that he was never really a conservative at all. His original understanding was that the War that began on 9/11 was ultimately a LIBERAL war, i.e., a defense of those Enlightenment values he mentions above.

There's more of that (classic) comment at the post; and notice how it's a essentially an attack on the "evil" neocons as "illiberal" -- with the added bonus of smearing the reputation of former President George W. Bush. No doubt we'd find similar rants in the totally fubar comment threads at Daily Kos.

It's worth noting that Serr8d showed his mettle with a comment there as well, where he suggested that:

Charles Johnson is a hateful, spiteful little man who uses his ‘custom-designed software’ to form and shape his hand-picked commentariat to echo his own thoughts. It’s a classic methodology to assauge his desire for positive feedback. He’s selected Robert Stacy McCain as his target du jour, and in fairness, Ordinary Gentlemen, you should give RSM an interview as well.

Indeed, in fairness, by all means.