Democratic Values! Left-Wing Alaska Operative 'Ghoulshops' Trig Palin!

A top Alaska Democratic Party operative once again proves the everyday demonology of left-wing secular progressives.

Via Gateway Pundit and Conservatives for Sarah Palin, it turns out that Linda Kellen Biegel, the publisher of Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis, has Photoshopped a ghoulish picture of Trig Palin at her blog. She's also linked by the Alaska Democratic Party website:

From Conservatives for Sarah Palin:

Disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself. Is this the position of the Alaska Democratic party? Keep in mind that she was the official Alaska blogger for the DNC.

Does Bob Poe, who attended a Q&A with Linda Biegel, approve of this?

Actually, why don't you email Bob Poe himself to find out...

And she's linked at the Alaska Democrat's website!

Check this link for the e-mail addresses to Alaska State Democratic Party officials.

Here's Biegel's Facebook link (available from a public Google search). Send her a "friend" request with a personal message!

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UPDATE: Celtic Diva's response is here. And this is what it's all about:

When folks like this think a radio talk show host is a "Homophobic, Red Shirt, Bible-Thumping Nazi, Gay Bashing, Tea-Bagging Racist, White Guy Bigot," it's pretty clear they're not losing sleep over "ghoulshopping" Trig Palin into a grotesque ridicule of Downs syndrome.

More information here:

For those of you who might be unaware, Linda Kellen Biegel was one of the people who filed a frivolous ethics complaint against Gov. Palin. Her complaint claimed that the governor abused the Ethics Act because she wore a jacket with ... the logo of the company that sponsors her husband in the Iron Dog snowmachine race. Biegel's ridiculous complaint was, of course, dismissed, but not after costing the governor thousands of dollars in legal debt to defend herself. You can donate to the governor's legal defense fund, The Alaska Fund Trust, here.Biegel's use of this sick photoshop is part of her efforts to raise money for her next frivolous ethics complaint.

Blogging Anonymity and Blogging Ethics

I should probably weigh in on the Ed Whelan/John Blevins imbroglio. Everyone else is, and I'm getting some links out of it as well!

Some quick background: Ed Whelan outed "Publius" at Obsidian Wings. The latter's real name is John F. Blevins, and he's an Assistant Professor of Law at the South Texas College of Law. Check the links above, and Memeorandum. At issue are the attacks on Whelan as the right's go-to "legal hitman." The term is from the "Anonymous Liberal," so the irony there is rich. Readers can assess who comes out on top in the substantive debate. No matter, though. Whelan comes off as putz, either way. Both James Joyner and Dan Riehl eloquently make the case against Whelan.

Now, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't out someone who writes anonymously (or "pseudonymously," as the case may be). Repsac3 got mad at me once for using his real name in a comment thread. But he had posted his real name at his Twitter link, at he linked to it at the sidebar. So, it's kind of hard to get mad at being "outed" if you "outed" yourself.

Frankly, if a blogger writes under complete anonymity (or pseudonymity), that's his prerogative. And it's not up to me or anyone else, in pure spite, to reveal their identity. It's kind of cowardly, in my opinion, to use a pseudonym, but I can understand it. After the Repsac3 exchange, PrivatePigg, a conservative blogger and friend of mine, said he blogs anonymously simply to protect his privacy from the radical leftists he knows will stalk him and his family.

It happens. As reader know, I routinely wade into the comment threads at leftist blogs to debate and ridicule. I don't claim to be nice about it. I've even used profanity in a comment thread at "Dr. Hussein Biobrain's" blog. But I don't threaten people; I skewer. And some folks can't handle being revealed as nihilist America-bashers. After commenting a few times at The Swash Zone, I received this e-mail from "(O)CT(O)PUS," the blog's publisher:

DO NOT HARASS ANY OF MY WRITERS AT "THE SWASH ZONE" AGAIN. IF YOU HARASS ME OR ANY OF MY WRITERS ONE MORE TIME, I WILL NOTIFY ELOY OAKLEY AND DONALD BERZ AT YOUR PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT AND TAKE IMMEDIATE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST BOTH YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYER. THIS GAME OF YOURS ENDS HERE.

I don't harrass. If folks can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Or go to comment moderation at least!

But if there was ever good reason to blog anonymously, real harrassment such as this is it. "(O)CT(O)PUS" made the rounds at leftist blogs to brag about how he'd "kicked my ass." And he PUBLISHED MY WORK CONTACT INFORMATION so that his co-bloggers could call my college president. I wrote about it here, "(O)CT(O)PUS = CYBER-BULLY."

What's funny about this, in the present debate, is that while Whelan's coming off like an adolescent jerk, the truth is that radical leftists have made a career out of "outing" those with whom they disagree. TBogg, whose real name is Tom Boggioni, has made a pastime of it, as Willliam Jacobson reveals:

So yeah, screw Ed Whelan. The guy's coming off like a thin-skinned prick. But just know that all the faux-outrage on the left is totally hypocritical. These folks get off on outing, snarking, shaming, and demonizing conservatives. That's their livelihood. This secular demonology has no counterpart on the right. Sure, some conservatives are peurile, but leftists are masters at the game.

P.S.: I have a lot of respect for conservatives who get along amicably with leftists. I don't do it well, online at least. Some of my best friends are Democrats (scroll down, here, for my colleague Dr. Greg Joseph, who's a Truman Democrat). But these friends would never put up with the kind of filth that is the stock and trade of today's netroots hordes.

Also, Ed Morrissey's got a poll up, "When is it okay to out liberal bloggers?" See also, Rick Moran, "The Outing of Publius and the Comfort of Anonymity."

Business as Usual at Daily Kos

Here's Markos Moulitas, on Twitter, using the murders of three Pittsburgh police officers as grist for political snark:

When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently, prefer to talk "revolution" and kill cops.

As Captain Ed notes, "Markos Moulitsas twittered his list to blame the shooting on the conservative movement, and apparently joke about the murders."

Recall that Moultisas and Daily Kos have longed claimed to represent the "mainstream" of the Democratic Party. I've written previously about Moulitsas' representative secular demonology. But check out Caleb at Red State, "Kos & Kompany: Cop Shooting Equals Twitter Fun:

Diaries and comments at DailyKos indicting conservatives as inciters of murder are utterly commonplace. And not just at DailyKos. To a whole wing of the Democrats it’s axiomatic that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck cause violence. I’m reminded of a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, wherein he and his panel claim that the invective and hyperbole of conservative pundits is so excessive and that it invites harm on Obama, and then equate Glenn Beck with Nazi sympathizer and apologist Father Coughlin. Yes, all in the same segment. Yes, Keith “YOU’RE A FASCIST, SIR” Olbermann.

It’s very telling. Calling conservatives Nazis isn’t even hyperbole to their minds. But calling Obama’s socialist policies socialist is an incitement to murder.

There's more at Memeorandum.

Andrew Breitbart on the Left's Internet Hooligans

Via Memeorandum, check out Andrew Breitbart's essay on the digital disinformation war leftists have waged on conservatives, "Online Activists on the Right, Unite!":

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George W. Bush.

And:

The left ... uses disinformation to inundate the advertisers of conservative-leaning talk shows to intimidate them from financially supporting popular mainstream shows.

Which is what Think Progress is attempting to do with Bill O'Reilly right now.

But what's especially noteworthy for me is Breitbart's discussion of the left's secular demonology, which I've discussed on this blog many times:

So now that the right is vanquished and thoroughly out of power, why doesn't it learn from its conquerors and employ similar tactics?

The answer is obvious. The right, for the most part, embraces basic Judeo-Christian ideals and would not promote nor defend the propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes. The current political and media environment crafted by supposedly idealistic Mr. Obama resembles Hugo Chavez's Venezuela more than John F. Kennedy's America.

The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and other left-leaning sites benefit from the right's belief that there are rules and decorum in political debate and civic engagement. Of course, every now and then, a curious right-winger will go in and engage in discussion at a left-wing site, but rarely under purely disingenuous and mass coordinated means.

David Brock, John Podesta, am I missing something?

As a prolific consumer of online content, I value nothing more than the sincere expression of opinion that differs from mine. Sometimes I am even moved or swayed from my dogma. But that was not the type of communication that got Mr. Obama elected.

The American right is in a heap of trouble in a media age that doesn't shun the goons and liars that have poisoned the political process and won the American presidency by breaking the rules of fair play. It is time to fight back, but it won't be easy. The enemy is willing to do and say anything in order to win.

One of the left's great representatives of radical secular demonology is here.

See also Saber Point for a discussion of "The Dirty Online War Against Conservatives."

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UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain has a big, awesome essay on this, see, "Andrew Breitbart Shows Why He's Becoming One of the Most Important Columnists in America Today."

On Snark and TBogg

The other day, in response to my essay, "How New Deal Policies Prolonged the Depression," TBogg of Firedoglake left this in the comments:

Be careful what you wish for Donald. I would hate to see the definition of a "socialist" become: " a pro-victory associate professor who lost his job because the state didn't get enough stimulus money".

And I'm not being snarky.

Best of luck to you.

TBogg says he's "not being snarky."

Okay, then what is he being? He's certainly not being caring or compassionate. That's not his intent at all, since his entire blogging schtick is snark.

TBogg, for example, in "F-Me Pumps," smeared Alaska Governor following last October's vice-presidential debate - where she was wearing red high-heels - as an Alaskan hillbilly, the political personification of Amy Winehouse's no-nightlife sluts. TBogg's also had a longrunning hostility to Townhall's young conservative commentator, Ben Shapiro. Ridiculed as "Virgin Ben," TBogg has attacked Shapiro for his sexual abstinence, and when Shapiro got married in Israel last summer, TBogg wrote a post entitled, "Mazel Tov! Now why don’t we do it in the road…", saying "The Virgin Ben, had gone Full Metal Conjugal back in July with his new bride, the now Mrs. Probably Not A Virgin Ben ...

And now TBogg claims that his comment at my post wasn't "snarky"? Well, perhaps a little childish excoriation wasn't up to the task needed to take me down more than a few notches, that is, to destroy me for speaking truth to Democratic power.

I'm halfway through reading David Denby's, Snark, a book on the increasing corrosion of public discusion in American life. Now, I'm no fan of Denby. In a later section of the book, in a chapter devoted to Maureen Dowd, he slams the New York Times columnist for the inadequacies of her snarky essays in attacking President George W. Bush, who Denby calls a tyrant (and then pleads that he's not comparing President Bush to "Hitler").

That said, in Snark, Denby is judicious in his analysis, and the book's worth a look for those still sorting out the venom of a life of political blogging. Denby, by the way, is not attacking satire or spoof, irreverence or irony. He's especially not taking on hate speech or Internet trolls. Denby sees snark (which is the use of malicious sarcasm) as a "pinkeye" infecting the national conversation.

In his historical review of snark, Denby says some of those who professionally attack others intend their words to be strong enough to "make their victims disappear - go away, give up, even kill themselves."

This, then, perfectlly captures TBogg's comment above.

I'm one neoconservative blogger who "just won't die," and when I'm actually strengthened by the abuse and invective from folks like TBogg, they'll abandon snark to just sow fear - in this case job loss for a professor like me employed by the state community college system.

It's not just, "How dare you ridicule the Democratic socialist agenda? Don't you know that you'll lose your job?" It's "I hope and pray you lose your job you wingnut freak, and that you die in the wet gutter of the unemployment lines. We've had it with neocons like you who've raked this country over the coals with war and economic catastrophe." TBogg's beyond just flipping conservatives the bird of dismissal. His intent here is to feign serious concern - "Best of luck to you" - in disguise of the dark spells of death and destruction.

This is what's at the heart of the left. Both sides do snark, of course, as Denby indicates to full extent in is book.

But people like TBogg have truly abandoned any modicum of divine grace and reason for the witch's spell of contumely and ridicule. This is the faux humor of secular demonology. It's not for fun and laughs. It's to denigrate and destroy those whose values and ideas stand in the way of the left's progressive nihilism that's seeking a chokehold on the vitality of this nation.

Paul Weyrich Dies, Gay Activists Ecstatic

Paul Weyrich, a central figure in the modern conservative movement, passed away yesterday in northern Virginia.

This morning's Los Angeles Times features a thoughtful obituary, "Paul Weyrich, Religious Conservative and Ex-President of Heritage Foundation, Dies at 66."

It turns out that Weyrich, who suffered from multiple illnesses, and who lost both his legs to amputation in 2005, continued to write commentaries up to the time of his death. He published an essay yesterday at Townhall, "The Next Conservatism, A Serious Agenda for the Future." In 1979, Weyrich coined the notion of the "moral majority" during a discussion with the Rev. Jerry Falwell:

Falwell "turned to his people and said, 'That's the name of our organization,' " Weyrich recalled in an interview last year with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel."

One can see why Weyrich's passing would be a cause for celebration on the left.

It happens whenever a conservative icon passes away. Yesterday, at Pam's House Blend, gay activists cheered the death of Weyrich in classic fashion:

- "Good Riddance ... At least Falwell won't be lonely in hell."

- "I know it's poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but I truly believe that the world has lost nothing with Weyrich's passing and probably experienced a net gain. Hopefully, if there is a hereafter, he gets judged the way he so harshly judged others."

- "You're only supposed to say good things about the dead? Okay. He'd dead. Good."

- "He shall not be missed ... A truly evil, hateful wingnut."

- "YAY ... And the world is a tiny bit better today."

- "Young too ... He was only 66 y.o."

- "He died too late, ... Like 65 years too late, IMO."

- "I was always taught to respect the dead, but ... Seriously, I'm not shedding any tears over this scumbag. Good riddance, ya toad."

The thread reveals a couple of commenters trying to be respectful, and the remarks here are mild compares to the left's demonization of Jesse Helms when he passed away earlier this year.

If you missed it earlier, check out Ben Johnson's essay on the left's secular demonology, where he writes:

Leftists lack the religious grounding to recognize everyone as a divine soul and a tradition that teaches them to “hate the sin but love the sinner.

Ackerman Wants Bush Dead, Not to Mention a New Counterinsurgency Plan

I've received an e-mail notification from the Center for Independent Media directing me to Spencer Ackerman's new piece at the Washington Independent, "Recasting the War on Terrorism: A Progressive Coalition Wants Obama to Be More Than the Anti-Bush."

First thoughts?

Well, no shit Sherlock, if you'll pardon the expression. I don't normally resort to urban slang, but since Ackerman's a wannabe punk hipster with a supremely disgusting repertoire of profanity, so I'm sure readers will understand.

For the substantive record, Ackerman should be known by his words, for example this passage from July:

The Iraq war is and has always been an obscenity, a filthy lie born of avarice and lust for power masquerading as virtue. This is what imperialism looks like. But the age of empire is over. The same hubris that led Bush into the Iraq disaster led him to miscalculate, again and again, over how to entrench it. But now he is impotent, unable to impose his will, and the nakedness of his attempted imposition has led the American and the Iraqi peoples to wake up and end his nightmare. May his war-crimes prosecutor be Iraqi; may his judge be American; and may he die in the Hague.

I wrote of Ackerman's post at the time:

This is the highest stage of moral relativist anti-Americanism, topped-off with a flourish of abject secular demonology.

And given our potty-mouthed Flophouse freak's piece today, delivered to me via my blog profile contact-information (the editors really need to check my archives before sending stuff out to American Power), I have no reason to suspect Ackerman's abandoned his nihilism. He writes, for example:

Buoyed by high expectations for the first year of Barack Obama’s administration, an informal coalition of progressive national-security and civil-liberties experts are urging the president-elect to redefine the war on terrorism.

Eight years of the Bush administration’s approach to counterterrorism have yielded two open-ended and bloody wars; a massively expanded security apparatus, and spending on defense far outpacing outlays on domestic programs, even during a crisis-plagued economy.

Yet while liberals have spent much of this time opposing the Bush administration’s agenda, many of their proposals for Obama go beyond merely rolling back President George W. Bush’s policies — withdrawing from Iraq, shuttering the Guantanamo Bay detention complex, abolishing torture — to offer new areas of emphasis, like stabilizing Afghanistan, an Arab-Israeli peace and a re-envisioned balance between security and liberty.

Through white papers delivered to the Obama transition team, new reports and interviews with reporters, this loose affiliation of progressives is saying it has a real opportunity to recast the U.S. effort against terrorism in fundamental ways.

Consistent with the broader progressive agenda of achieving global security through multilateral cooperation, economic development and respect for human rights, the past few days have seen a series of proposals urging rejection of the Bush administration’s militarism. To the degree these various progressive groups have a concerted goal, it’s to influence the transition with specific liberal ideas for new directions in the war on terrorism.

You can see why one might hardly be dumbstruck in reading this, given the quadrillions of bytes of BDS spewed over the last eight years of the current adminstration.

But more than that, MSM reporting is even highlighting the building leftist backlash to Obama's centrism. For example, today's Los Angeles Times reports that the antiwar left is worried that Obama's selling out the antiwar surrender enthusiasts to the "people who supported the war from the beginning," a reference to folks like Senator Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The left wants nothing less than the utter emasculation of American power, with increasing "multilateralism" the buzzword for legitimizing the extreme globalist internationalism of the contemporary left. The flaky imprimatur of the "Washington Independent" does nothing to sanitize the disastrously relativist agenda of Ackerman's "loose affiliation of progressives."

The truth is we're losing in Afghanistan right now because of the weak-kneed nature of the current multinational force. As Michael Yon wrote last week, de facto victory is at hand in Iraq, notwithstanding the likelihood of the odd deadenders mounting spasms of nihilist mayhem on the Iraqi people. But Afghanistan needs an infusion of resolve, not a progressive coalition of the sniveling:

A new president will soon begin to make critical decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic crisis at home, and countless other matters. While the Iraq war began, then boiled, and finally cooled before President-elect Obama will be sworn into office on January 20, 2009, the Afghanistan-Pakistan spectacle is just getting started. He was always a fierce opponent of our involvement in Iraq. And, as with so many Democrats in the Senate, he argued frequently, during the campaign, that we should have been focused on Afghanistan all along, because it is the real incubator of the international terrorist threat. Timing being everything, our new president will get his wish. Afghanistan now moves to center stage. The conflicts in Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan have the simmering potential to overshadow anything we’ve seen in Iraq. Here are a few things I hope he understands:

Our enemies are winning. The enemies know it. We know it. Who are they? The Taliban, with its deep local roots, is enemy number one. Al-Qaeda is hanging around to make trouble. Some Paks, who don’t want to see a thriving Pushtun state on their border, are our enemies. They fund and shelter the Taliban even though we rely on them to help us defeat it. Nothing is straightforward in this part of the world. We have other enemies in Afghanistan who hate the Taliban.

Most of our allies are not very helpful. With the exception of the British, Canadians, Dutch, and a few others such as the Aussies, we are not fighting this with an “A-team” of international allies. With a few exceptions, our allies on the ground are comprised of several dozen countries that mostly refuse to fight. The bulk of NATO amounts to little more than a “Taliban piñata.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is proving nearly worthless and provides no credible threat to armed opposition groups (AOGs) in Afghanistan. Most of the NATO member countries seem to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of “Taliban.” They piled in when the war looked easy and largely humanitarian. But now that it’s getting harder and more dangerous, they would like to pile out.

To ensure that we have influence over the outcome, we need more soldiers in Afghanistan, and fast. They need to be U.S. forces, British, Canadian, and Aussie; we cannot depend on NATO in general and they don’t know how to fight anyway. Unless President-elect Obama knows some kind of magic spell, he will not be able to persuade most NATO countries to do the right thing. Springtime 2009 will likely bring very heavy fighting in Afghanistan. We will not have credible negotiating positions while we remain outgunned by a bunch of old rifles and dinged-up RPGs.

Yon pinpoints the resources needed to finish the job: more firepower and the will to use it - something not likely to be realized with the progressives' mushy calls to "legitimize" a beefed up deployment through the utopian defense bureaucracies of "NATO countries."

The leftists will continue to wet their shorts as long as the coming Obama administration makes concessions to the realities of military power.

The fact that the same people who pushed for an American defeat in Iraq are now hoping to "multilateralize" the deployment in Afghanistan shows that Obama is indeed moving right, and this in turn is one of the most reassuring signs that Obama's earlier campaign pledges were largely junk fodder for the masses, and that perhaps he's actually shortened the daylight between his ill-considered antiwar nonsense and the precepts of actual foreign policy responsibility.

That same responsibility, of course, is something of which Spencer Ackerman knows nothing.

Leftist Depravity Continues with Accusations of Palin Pedophilia

Randi Rhodes has claimed that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is "friends with all the teenage boys" in town, and parents can't let their kids "sleep over" at the Palin home:

Brian Maloney offers some background:

Just how far are lefty pundits willing to go to smear Sarah Palin? On behalf of the "progressive" movement, libtalker Randi Rhodes seems determined to sink to new depths of moral depravity, with the limits of imagination as her only impediment.

Less than a week after her wildly dishonest claim that John McCain was "well-treated" during his wartime imprisonment in Vietnam, Rhodes is at it again, this time making a strong inference that Palin likes to sleep with teenage boys.

It's further evidence of a widespread smear campaign that involves lefty bloggers, libtalkers and the mainstream news media. With this gang, the ends apparently justify the means. That there isn't a shred of evidence to back up any of their claims is irrelevant: this is full-scale character assassination.

I'm having an ongoing debate with Dan Nexon at Duck of Minerva over the relative extremes on the right and the left of the spectrum. Dan argues, essentially, that the continuous examples of left-wing depravity are isolated instances and cannot be generalized to "the left."

But as regular readers know well, I've chronicled example after example of the left's intolerance and evil found throughout the netroots, including top members of the leftosphere who coordinate closely with the Democratic Party and the Barack Obama campaign.

Yesterday, for example, Daily Kos had this image posted in a now-deleted comment thread:

You can still read, however, the Kos-hosted diary, "Eulogy Before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel":

As Israel reach the milestone of the 60th anniversary commemoration, its legacy will be showered not with peace and goodwill but revulsion of conscience and damnation.

I could continue around the horn of the leftosphere all afternoon finding examples of Palin derangement, left-wing nti-Semitism, Bush-Cheney demonization, and so forth. But there's no need. I've written about the issue many times, for example, in my essay, "Surrendering Reason to Hate?":

This quest for enemies consumes far left-wing partisans. It is an endless search seeking to delegitimize and dehumanize those who would threaten the safety of a secular, redistributionist world of exclusive false brotherhood and psychological security.

This is why I think there are variations in the propensity to surrender to hate. The left's psychopolitical agenda is "clothed in darkness." It is this very difficult for them to find that "one good thing" about those with whom they differ.

I wrote that over a month ago, but just this week Camille Paglia made a similar point in discussing the Democratic-left's response to the Palin phenomenon:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

None of this is statistical confirmation for a generalized hypothesis on the hard-left's secular demonology. But it's demonstrably clear that folks from top bloggers like Markos Moulitsas and Andrew Sullivan to the nihilists at Sadly No! to TBogg's demonic conservative ridicule-machine are on an endless quest to destroy their enemies with a venomous brew of hate and intolerance.

Barack Obama's collapse from the heights of "Oneness" has only added to this zealotry.

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UPDATE: TBogg's here to correct me:

Randi Rhodes left Air America back in April after being suspended by the network. So you just set a new land speed record by being wrong four words into your post.

Yet, TBogg's got no problem with Rhodes' Palin derangement, and of course, no word on the demonic conservative ridicule machine.

Sarah Palin and the Frontier of American Feminism

This afternoon I confessed, "The main reason I'm so excited about Sarah Palin is in the way she's positively energized the Republican base."

While true, I should add that I'm absolutley blown away, frankly, at the radical feminist response to Palin's nomination as the GOP vice-presidential running mate.

If you haven't yet, be sure to read Michelle Cottle's case study in the depressing feminist lament, "A Bad Year For Feminism: Can Someone Please Tell Me What Happened?"

I think women of the contemporary left are feeling simply violated that a conservative mother from a non-contiguous outback state could credibly claim the mantle as America's top female politician. It has to be a shock, which explains the vehemence that accompanies attacks on any and all facets of Palin's version of the feminine mystique.

But don't take my word for it. Check out Camille Paglia's perspective, which endorses Barack Obama, but celebrates the audacity of Sarah Palin's gendered power (via Allahpundit):

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

Kay Hymowitz, who we might expect to be more favorable to a GOP-style feminism, in any case, confirms Palin's feminine muscularity:

Whatever Palin’s political impact, her cultural significance is profound. For better and for worse, she introduces a new and likely long-running cultural type to the national stage—the red-state feminist.

Of course, the feminist commentariat, primarily coastal and upper-middle-class, has been quick to deny that Palin is any sort of feminist at all. Yes, Palin can boast political success, activism, authority, and self-confidence in front of an audience of 37 million, and, though less widely discussed (perhaps because so profoundly envied), an egalitarian marriage of the sort that has become the foundational principle of feminist utopia. But in most other respects, especially her position on abortion, she has struck female media types as something more like the Anti-Feminist. She is a “humiliation for America’s women” (Judith Warner for the New York Times) and a tool of the “patriarchs” (Gloria Steinem for the Los Angeles Times).

But the crucial point here is that Palin never wanted to be part of Steinem’s club, and in that respect she speaks for many of her sex. The large majority of women—surveys have put the number at somewhere around 75 percent—shy away from calling themselves feminists, even while supporting some movement goals like equal pay. The primary reason for their coyness: feminism’s ambivalence at best, and hostility at worst, toward motherhood and marriage. The refuseniks may or may not remember that Betty Friedan described full-time motherhood as a “waste of human self” and home as a “comfortable concentration camp.” They may or may not be able to quote Steinem on fish and bicycles. But on some level they understand that the framework of establishment feminism has motherhood, and often marriage, as the menacing 300-pound security guard whom men have hired to stand in the way of women’s achievement.

Palin represents a red-state version of feminism that completely deconstructs this framework. Sure, part of the red staters’ identification with Palin is a matter of lifestyle. Blue-state feminists live in big cities and suburbs; Palin lives in South Podunk. Blue staters’ kids play soccer; Palin’s play hockey. They have WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER bumper stickers; she’s a member of the NRA. They dine on sushi; she eats salmon that she caught and gutted. If you’re an Iowa toll collector married to a refrigerator repairman, Palin may well be your gal by reason of her origin and leisure activities alone.

But let's conclude this review with Paglia once again, who nails the secular demonology theme regularly showcased here:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

You go, girl!

Catholic League Takes Issue With Offensive Lefty Blogs

I've spent a good amount of time laying out a theory of the secular demonology common among lefty bloggers. Part of this project has been to offer comparisons of crude profanity widely available across the leftosphere.

Thus, I'm not surprised that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has identifed as "offensive" a number of left-wing blogs that have been credentialed by the Democratic National Committee:

Over 120 blogs have been credentialed as members of the media for the Democratic National Convention; those who have received credentials are allowed to cover the Convention at the Pepsi Center. While most of them offer legitimate commentary, some do not.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is protesting two of the blogs:

“The list of credentialed blogs include radical sites like The Daily Kos. Worse are blogs that feature anti-Catholic and obscene material. The two most offensive are Bitch Ph.D. and Towleroad.

“On the home page of Bitch Ph.D. there is a picture of two children: one of them is shown flashing his middle finger. Today’s lead post, which was written August 17, is called ‘Jesus Christ.’ It begins with, ‘I’m a really crappy Catholic who hasn’t been to mass in ages because most parishes around here ‘will’ insist on being aggressively anti-abortion….’ The writer then objects to some children’s toys on the grounds that they are more offensive than desecrating the Eucharist. The toys are actually balloons that have been made to depict Jesus in various poses, including a crucified Christ; one of these images shows Jesus with a penis. Several who commented on this image made patently obscene comments.

“Towleroad describes itself as ‘A Site with Homosexual Tendencies.’ Accordingly, it shows men in jock straps and underwear. It also has a post on Pope Benedict XVI that takes him to task for wearing a cape with ermine. Some of those who commented on this described the pope in a vile and profane way.

“Both of these blogs should be cut immediately from the list of credentialed sites. Neither functions as a responsible media outlet and both offend Catholics, as well as others. To allow them access to the Democratic National Convention sends a message to Catholics they will not forget. We look for Leah Daughtry, CEO of the Convention, to nix them ASAP.”

I can't dismiss the sense of schadenfreude at Bitch Ph.D.'s selection, as I've been singled out by that outfit for my "racism" in denouncing the black cult of victimology.

I've never heard of "Toweleroad," although by the looks of it I can understand the Catholic League's objection.

What's interesting is the affirmation of the Catholic League's concerns, as evidenced by a look at some of the lefty responses attacking the organization's president, Bill Donohue:

How dare there be gays on the internet! Amazingly, Donahue lists the jock strap photos before citing an allegedly offensive post about the Pope. No one who isn't a closeted homosexual would be so distressed about unapologetic displays of homosexuality. You should just come out of the closet, Bill. We'll accept you for who you are.

The Carpetbagger Report asks:

Did the Catholic League go through all 120 blogs, looking for something that would offend them so they could do this press release? By the looks of it, I’m pretty sure they did.

I'd bet they didn't have to view more than a quarter of these before finding some objectionable material.

Still, the issue for me is not that they should be banned, but how well they represent Democratic Party base? I'm pretty sure they do.

Searching for Hate in the Blogosphere

Even before Arkansas Democratic Chairman Bill Gwatney succumbed to his gunshot wounds on Wednesday, the left-wing blogosphere lit-up with allegations that a right-wing extremist had shot another liberal.

For example, leftist bloggers were quick to allege, without the release of any details on the assailant's background or motive, that conservative "wingnuts" like Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin encouraged a "climate of hate" that provoked the extermination of liberals (recall just two weeks ago a gunman killed two at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, in Knoxville, Tennessee).

In an essay this week, Jonathan Bellman of the University of Northern Colorado, argued that the right has essentially declared open-season on the word "liberal" and anyone associated with it:

It has become what “Jew” was in Nazi Germany and “Communist” was during the Red Scare: something so threatening that it needn’t be explained or questioned. Right-wing high priests like Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have for a long time implied that “liberal” equals something like “seditious terrorist.” It is so ingrained now that we barely notice, or quietly agree.

As I've noted before, the left's propensity to see evil designs on liberals reflects their own ideological foundations in hatred, a secular demonology protective of the perceived purity of the liberal sensibilities.

It's thus interesting to note the dust-up online today over the discovery of death threats against "liberal traitors" on some conservative websites:

On Wednesday night, Fox "News'" Bill O'Reilly continued his dishonest and deceptive attacks on websites, such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, which he misleadingly describes as "hate sites" featuring "vicious far-left attacks" as based on selective reader comments he's discovered posted on those sites.

In the latest of his continuing segments with "Internet Cop" Amanda Carpenter, of the rightwing website Townhall.com, O'Reilly pointed to a number of objectionable comments at the two sites, from "far-left kooks," before tepidly lauding both HuffPo and Daily Kos for having removed some of them, presumably after they were brought to the attention of site moderators.

"Where is that rocket propelled grenade launcher when you need one," O'Reilly displayed on a chyron, and then "Let's hope the dissidents aim is good!" Both of the quotes are purported to be from a "Blog Posting" at HuffPo, according to the Fox "News" graphic, posted in regard to a group of Iraq War Veterans who support the war effort....

But O'Reilly and Carpenter clearly have been protesting a bit too much, as it turns out Carpenter's own website is guilty of the same --- and even far worse --- "vicious" attacks, and potentially even illegal ones, including death threats issued against Barack Obama and "traitorous liberals."

Despite the mock outrage of the Fox rightwingers, The BRAD BLOG has been pointed, by a reader, to a number of out-and-out (and repeated) death threats issued by "bloggers" at Carpenter's own Townhall site.

The multiple threatening comments are posted on the Townhall blog of rightwing radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt, and include death threats against the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama. They were posted on July 10th of this year at Townhall and, as of this posting on August 14th, still remain on the popular rightwing website which requires registration before commenters are allowed to post...

Picking up on this, Dave Neiwart, the leftosphere's premiere crusader against "pseudo-fascism," has denounced conservative hatred:

Two days ago, a gunman walked into the offices of the Democratic Party in Little Rock, Arkansas, and shot the state's chairman to death. The motives are still unclear, but it is starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to "take out" more liberals.

Two weeks ago, another gunman walked into a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began shooting, killing one man and wounding several others before he was tackled. He had written a manifesto before the rampage indicating his belief that "all liberals should be killed." At his home, investigators found books attacking liberals by the likes of Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and ... Bill O'Reilly.

These issues have, of course, never been discussed on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program. O'Reilly has never even mentioned the fact that the Knoxville shooter read his books and evidently watched his show. Indeed, his show not only constantly demonizes liberals, O'Reilly frequently does so by accusing liberals of being the source of vicious hatemongering -- as he did Wednesday, in the segment above, in which he informs us that "the real haters in America are on the far left" -- even though the majority of the quotes they cite are from anonymous commenters and diarists, and in every case the host site has removed them.

But as BradBlog noticed, one need only go to the Townhall.com site that hosts of Amanda Carpenter, his guest in this segment, to find prime examples of right-wing hate directed at liberals -- and no apparent attempt made to remove them. A sample, from Hugh Hewitt's blog:

A day of reckoning approaches... (Why is it liberal traitors like Brob feel they have to resort to profanity to make points? Because they equate emotionalism with reality - "If I scream loud enough and make enough of a scene, I'll get my way". Ten-year-old potty-mouthed brats, all of them.)

And I said traitors intentionally. I know more than one military man and woman stationed overseas who cannot wait to rotate back once the job over there is done and complete the work of fighting all enemies foreign AND domestic, Posse Comitatus be damned, and hunt down the Copperheads in our midst.

Traitors, be afraid. Be very afraid.

There's plenty more, of course, where this came from. And you can always find similar sentiments at O'Reilly's site, where again no effort is ever made to remove such commentary.

But, I suppose, we "Nazis" on the left are responsible for this. Probably because we just always inspire these sentiments, so therefore it's our fault.

Let me be the first to put out the call, once again, for a complete cessation to the competitive demonization we see across the blogosphere. I'm not as naïve to think that we won't have mutual allegations of hatred, and certainly folks on both sides of the political spectrum engage in incitement to violence in the comment threads at untold numbers of blogs, but these attacks shouldn't be a part of our political dialogue.

I'll note, though, that Neiwart confuses those alleged as "Nazis" by some commentators with contemporary Marxist demonologists who have shunned divine grace to launch steady attacks against dead conservatives, most recently Jesse Helms and Tony Snow.

Moreover, whereas some right-wing blogs are polluted by the odd instances of extremism, like that cited at Townhall, it is not the explicit policy of conservatives to welcome hated-filled comments as original "content" at the website, as is the case with leftist blogs such as Daily Kos (see here and here).

Perhaps the left's permissive attitudes toward aggressive hatred on their blogs relates to the much higher propensity for leftist bloggers to pepper their attacks on "wingnuts" with vile obscenities (a recent Google content analysis found liberal bloggers to be more that 12 times as likely to use profanity in blogging than conservatives).

So, while we should all condemn attempts to inflict evil on the other, it's simply hypocritical and inaccurate for members of the left to mount unsubstantiated attacks on alleged conservative hate-filled killers while at the same time encouraging artistic license of such content demonology in the leftosphere.

Obscenities and the Left-Wing Blogosphere

A couple of weeks back I wrote a post examining the tendency toward profanity among leftist bloggers: "Obscenities in the Blogosphere."

I argued that crude vulgarity has become essentially the lingua franca of the hard-left blogosphere and commentocracy. Widespread profanity appears to provide leftists with some assumed heightened firepower with which to beat down opponents, who are demonized as fascist imperialists intent to exterminate racial minorities and the poor, among other things.

My observations derived from recent experience, as well as the debate surrounding profanty at last month's Netroots Nation conference in Texas.

Well it turns out that Matthew Sheffield at the Washington Times has performed a Google content analysis to determine the relative propensity to profanity between top left and right blog communities: "Profanity Greater on Liberal Blogs":

Are liberals more profane than conservatives? Online, the answer seems to be yes. Profanity, those taboo words banned from the broadcast airwaves, is a feature of many people's daily lives. It's much less so in the establishment media world. TV and radio broadcasts are legally prohibited from using it, most newspapers (including this one) have traditionally refrained from its usage.

That's not the case with the Web, where bloggers and readers face no such restrictions. That likely comes as no surprise; what may be surprising, however, is to what degree profanity seems to be a feature more common on one side of the political blogosphere than the other....

The top 10 liberal sites (Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Atrios, Greenwald, MyDD and Firedoglake) have a profanity quotient of 14.6.

The top 10 conservative sites (Free Republic, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs, Townhall, NewsBusters, Lucianne, Wizbang, Ace of Spades, Red State and Volokh Conspiracy) have a quotient of 1.17.

What explains this disparity?

Sheffield hypothesizes that Bush derangement is a precipitating factor. But beyond that, religious belief among conservatives inclines them less toward the use of profanity in their daily lives, and thus in blogging:

Conservatives, especially those who are more religious, are less likely to use profanity in their daily conversation.

This ties in pretty much with the my thesis on the left's secular demonology:

How might we explain all of this? Well, in my view, these folks are essentially Marxist, and at base, we might consider Marxist thought a doctrine of hatred, a secular demonology:

We hate those, whose existence urges us to reconsider our theories and our vocabularies. We hate what places a safe and irresponsible categorization of the world in jeopardy. We hate what threatens the purity and predictability of our perception of the world, our mode of discourse, and in effect, our mental security.

Thus, for the left, rather than consider that vulgarity has no proper place in the respectable exchange of ideas, crude language is a tool to beat down those who would challenge their way of seeing the world, especially those allegedly in the right-wing superstructure of greedy imperialistic designs.

See also, "The Obscenity of Spencer Ackerman," and "The Commentocracy of Hate."

The Marginal Returns of Political Blogging

As readers know, I've been recently studying political demonization in the blogosphere.

In fact, I've developed something of a theory of secular demonology (by no means original), that hypothesizes a particular psychology of hatred that drives the leftosphere, which I've applied, for example, to "The Commentocracy of Hate." To be clear, I do not claim that conservatives are angels (there's a lot of right-wing extremism online, frequently defended by reference to strained notions of free political speech). Recent empirical history, however, demonstrates a powerful propensity among those on the left to mercilessly attack conservative partisans in government and online, going so far as mounting a political psychology of revenge.

I'm returning to this topic again after reading Jason Steck's outstanding essay on group think in the blogosphere.

Steck argues that blogging as a political medium has reached the point of diminishing marginal returns. Online partisans on both the left and right have no inclination toward objective critical analysis, and their respective commentocracies reward those blogs best able to demonize the other. Consequently, insightful, intellectual nuance and persusion get completely marginalized in the flaming haze of political battle:

Take a step back and review any political blog you like and you will immediately be struck by the sameness of the posts. They take the story of the day — invariably some substance-free “gaffe”, photo op, or partisan charge of corruption — and attach a laundry list of catastrophic impacts foretelling the end of the world if that candidate would be elected. Any reference to actual policy issues will be brief, insubstantial, and driven entirely by stereotypes. Comments threads will be infested by cut-and-paste repetitions of well-worn slogans and talking points, bereft of any engagement with the issues of the real world or any recognition that disagreement could indicate anything other than demonic possession. The scripts rule the day without any tolerance for deviation or criticism of any kind:

Mandatory Script #1: Obama is a “socialist” who is simultaneously too intellectually lightweight to be President yet a Machiavellian genius enough to be bamboozling everyone

Mandatory Script #2a: McCain is “McSame” seeking a third BushHilter term so that he can sell Social Security to Halliburton and bomb every country where brown people live in order to establish an American Empire that will revoke the Bill of Rights in order to establish a theocracy.

I'm getting a kick out of both of these "scripts," although if parsimony adds power, the brevity of Obama's script might provide a little value-added as the campaign moves forward.

Seriously though, Steck's onto something, although I don't think his resigned conclusion is completely warranted:

I care deeply about this election, but I find that writing about it publicly is pointless. Welcome to the brave new world of politics, where morons rule by rote.

I've been blogging for about a two-and-a-half years. Recently, when logging-on in the mornings, and especially when I check Memeorandum, I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The most important stories on politics and public policy are often pushed to the side. Controversies serving as fodder for scandal rise to the top. The major bloggers weigh in with venomous attacks and snarky dismissals. One or two of these get picked up by the MSM, and then become "news" themselves. The White House or the major campaigns make a statement, and then it all starts over again in the morning.

I think there's more to it than that, however. I was introduced to the blogosphere by reading academic, high-brow blogs. I liked reading, for example, Daniel Drezner and Virginia Postrel. Folks like this are successful in their professions, and they've generated much of their readership trough their working reputations. Ann Althouse is a fabulous blogger as well (she also teaches law), and she's become something of a media sensation with her serious but stylistic online presence.

There are more examples like this, but what's happened with the partisan blogs is that they've become of the footsoldiers of the revolution, especially on the left. There's simply not going to be compromise when partisan bloggers and their communities see themselves in battle. It can get disgusting, as Steck notes in the comments:

Whenever ... a blog emerges that actually does attempt to provide balanced and/or mixed perspectives, they get shunned. To say that such blogs get "blacklisted" is not an exaggeration. They disappear from Memeorandum, are systematically denied links by the partisan blogs as punishment for their heresies, and are sometimes even subjected to campaigns designed to encourage other blogs to blacklist them. (For example, one blog owner I know of often disseminates orders to his co-bloggers instructing them not to link to other bloggers he doesn’t like or agree with and extends requests to the same effect to his other friends in the blogosphere, yet he claims publicly to welcome equally views from "left, right, and center".) There are more than a few commenters who do the exact same thing — trying to harass and defame any blog or writer who commits an act of heresy against their particular Mandatory Script....

For example, Newshoggers is an example of a blog that often [finds] stories that no one else is talking about at all. But they cancel out much of the value of that positive contribution by their relentless and abusive approach to blogs that they disagree with, usually ignoring contrary perspectives entirely but, when they do acknowledge them, often personally attacking the authors of those dissenting blogs or just lying about what those dissenters said in order to force-fit them into the pre-existing, demonized scripts. Glenn Greenwald is another exemplar of this tendency who has been rewarded massively for his hateful efforts as is FireDogLake. And those examples are in addition to the blog that I know for certain does outright blacklisting behind the scenes while publicly claiming to represent “left, right, and center”.

I'm betting that this "certain" blog is "The Moderate Voice" (aka "The Partisan Voice"), and I'd also note, interestingly, that the three blogs Steck mentions above are among the most prominent demonologists in the leftosphere.

Still, I too think folks should step back a bit, but my suggestion is for people to ask themselves what they hope to achieve by blogging? In my case, I visited many blogs years ago, and my comments at various sites became essay-length, so I thought I'd better get in the game.

It takes a while to find a niche. I started with a lot of cerebral posts, often unrelated to the headlines of the day, with very little partisan bite. I talked to more experienced bloggers who said they liked what they say, but recommended taking the gloves off. I have done that, while trying not to lose my academic side, with my style of lengthy, substantive posts of ranging ideas.

In any case, the blogging medium should be here to stay, or, at least until another platform comes along to replace the immediacy and potential impact of citizens' journalism. Most bloggers will not have a huge readership, but I'm confident that insight and intelligence are rewarded, and I'm frankly blown away sometimes at how awesome the blogosphere works as an alternative and competitor to traditional media.

All is not lost, for the moment at least. The returns of excellence in political blogging may have diminished some, but the ultimate output still carries substantial utility for politics.