House of Eratosthenes

Internet Tough Guy Well, chalk this one up as a win. A giant triple-scoop sundae win, with a nutty sprinkling of humor…but also a drizzling of caution.

The Edwards campaign has accepted the resignation of blogmistress Amanda Marcotte, the potty-mouth anti-Catholic shill who writes for the hard-left-wing feminist resource Pandagon. It’s a story of the unsuccessful straddling of the chasmatic divide between blogging, in which the need to please everyone is non-existent, and politics, in which the need to please everyone is…well, everywhere.

What I find nutty and humorous, is the DailyKOS guy insisting on finding out what happened.

Which ’08 Dem doesn’t want our support?
by Kagro X
Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 01:30:51 PM PST

Just yesterday, I outlined why the response to the manufactured controversy over the John Edwards campaign bloggers was the responsibility of all Democratic campaigns, and not just Edwards’:

[T]he real power of this game is that it separates Edwards from the Democratic pack, and isolates him. It allows the other Democratic candidates — after mopping their brows and thanking their lucky stars that they’re not (currently) in the cross hairs — to do the right’s work for them by taking the path of least resistance and either watching silently from the sidelines, or actively distancing themselves from him.

That gives the right undue leverage on our side of the aisle. Leverage to which they are not only not entitled, but which is revocable at our say-so.

The loudest voices calling for Edwards to dismiss his bloggers are — and no one can doubt this — never in a million years going to vote for him, either in a primary or a general election. So why are they allowed to drive his decision-making? Not because they can withhold votes from him, but because they can cause Democratic voters to do so instead….

But to the extent that the netroots seek to demand a show of loyalty by Edwards, that same demand must be made of every Democratic campaign. Today, the target is Edwards. Tomorrow, should this vendetta prove successful, the target could be anyone.

This fight, if Edwards is going to be called upon to make it, must be everyone’s fight. If the other campaigns cannot demonstrate that they would have displayed the same courage we call upon Edwards to display, then they benefit from the right’s strategy of divide and conquer. And to the extent that they benefit, they give a pass to and encourage such attacks in the future, and are powerless to stop them when the next one comes. All they can do is hold on tight, cross their fingers, and pray they’re not the next target. And that’s no way to win anything. Certainly not the White House.

Well, it’s not yet 24 hours later, and guess what?

Someone just didn’t have enough respect for you:

Bloggers heralded the decision to keep them; the Catholic League was outraged, and a top adviser to a rival campaign took a shot: “Apparently they’re more afraid of the bloggers than they are the Catholics.”

Who did it?

I want to know.

You want to know.

And now, they’ll be desperate not to let you know.

I’m just a silly little blogger, but I have this advice for whoever did it: Don’t you ever let me find out.

Ha. I love this stuff. Bloggers…not just any ol’ bloggers, but the folks who make the plural into a pejorative, lacking the maturity to even acknowledge, let alone accept, that other folks might have disparate viewpoints on things. Bloggers, of a decidedly leftist tilt, who are just a bit too aclimated to the blogging environment — press some keys, the computer will do whatever you tell it to do. Along they come, swaggering into the barroom of politics, in which anyone sober enough to mount a barstool must be appeased. And they can’t handle it. They’re used to ruling the roost. Here in the setting not for the meek, power must be shared. It’s too much for them.

Heh. Heh. “Don’t you ever let me find out.” I just love that one. Hey Sparky…your ability to mobilize the masses with your vast power of bloggification, has been weighed. It’s been measured. It’s been balanced against the similar attribute possessed by those you seek to tick off, and your side has been found to be lacking.

You really want a rematch?

Anyway. Now for the caution. There’s this meme going around that Marcotte got sacked, and she got sacked because she uses the fuck-word a little bit too much. This is taking flight along the hardcore-conservative side, in which the fuck-word earns universally the derision it deserves in some situations…and giving rise to a sentiment that bloggers who use the fuck-word had better look out.

I can’t hop onto that bandwagon for two reasons: One, obviously, I use the fuck-word around here. Two, it wouldn’t be logical or effective. Let me expound on Two somewhat…I could, tomorrow, take an oath to never again use the word “fuck” on my blog. It fuckin’ stops right now, mkay? Answer me this, then. Toward what end? To show that my points are so good, so sensible, that I can make them without using the word fuck?

Yeah there would be a grain of logic in that. I’d be able to see it; the people who agree with me, would be able to see it. And to persuade others toward my point of view, sure, I can do that without using the word fuck. But — what then am I to say about people who still blog about fuck this, fuck that, fuck whatever…I must be superior to them now, right? I must. If not, there was no point to my oath to stop using the word fuck.

And there was a point. Therefore, I’m a lot better than they are.

So what happens next time someone else comes along, who agrees with my point of view, and is not so enlightened as to stop using the fuck-word. What of that? If I can sit on my high, squeaky-clean anti-fuck pedestal and look down about all the other bloggers still swimming in this filthy sewer of fuck-word slime…are my opinions not being derogated anyway, by my own logic, when they’re being sympathetically echoed by bloggers who still use the word fuck?

So my note of caution is this. Be careful about the moral of the story. Marcotte didn’t get sacked because of her potty mouth. She didn’t even get sacked; she quit. The lesson is this: Blogging is a method of communication. Nothing more. It opens a new doorway to things not tried before, because there are aspects of it inherently incompatible with the political arena. If that were not the case, bloggers wouldn’t be saying anything new, and if they weren’t saying anything new we wouldn’t be talking about them.

And so it becomes a logical necessity that there are contagions in the blogosphere that don’t fit into what we’re used to seeing. And it’s not just the fuck-word. It’s this practice of deliberately trying to tick off the Catholics just to get high-fives and pats-on-the-back from your liberal buddies…like Ms. Marcotte does. Or, for taking the time to point out things you’re not going to be told by anyone who seeks to promote and preserve a public reputation.

Politicians can’t back this stuff. They might think they can, but they can’t. Their mission is to make everyone happy; bloggers have a mission that is directly opposed to this. Especially on the left, I notice. Every leftist agenda, it seems, is somewhat fuzzy on what exactly it’s supposed to achieve or how it’s going to go about making such an accomplishment…and much sharper about which demographic it’s supposed to tax, slander, over-regulate, and to sum it up in general, cheese off and make unhappy. Every leftist agenda seems to have such a target. Parents, white people, men, religious people, people who sell stock at a profit, beneficiaries of an estate.

What do our liberal politicians do? They paper over this intentional injury with euphemisms. What do our liberal bloggers do? They advertise how much damage they’re going to do against the targeted class. Go on, read some liberal blogs for a few minutes. So the marriage between liberal bloggers and liberal politicians is doomed to unhappiness and divorce, I’m afraid. The similar marriage on the conservative side, for similar reasons, is doomed to a similar fate.

Rather fascinating to be living through this experiment and thus to be invited to attend the wedding reception. I’m just not going to be spending a lot on the gifts and I’ll not be hanging around the reception for very long. The Edwards/Marcotte falling-out is an inevitability that awaits all who initiate the same enterprise, regardless of political leanings…and a generation down the road, we’ll be looking back on the practice the same way we, today, look back on pet rocks.

Update: Bill O’Reilly doesn’t think the way I do. His arguments are filled with “you do this” and “you don’t do that” and such and such is “beyond the pale,” whereas I’m more of an if-you-do-this-that-will-happen kind of a guy. He works with commandments, I work with consequences. He’s Pillar III and I’m Pillar IV.

So we have the same sentiments about this whole thing but we have different ways of pointing it out. Those sentiments can best be summed up thusly: These women are loonies.

His segment can be found here. Embedded below.

I know this was just illustrative text from KOS and not really the point of your post at all, but this bit stuck out like a sore thumb:

But to the extent that the netroots seek to demand a show of loyalty by Edwards, that same demand must be made of every Democratic campaign. Today, the target is Edwards. Tomorrow, should this vendetta prove successful, the target could be anyone.

This fight, if Edwards is going to be called upon to make it, must be everyone’s fight. If the other campaigns cannot demonstrate that they would have displayed the same courage we call upon Edwards to display, then they benefit from the right’s strategy of divide and conquer. And to the extent that they benefit, they give a pass to and encourage such attacks in the future, and are powerless to stop them when the next one comes. All they can do is hold on tight, cross their fingers, and pray they’re not the next target. And that’s no way to win anything. Certainly not the White House.

This almost sounds like he’s saying that if we reward our enemies actions by allowing them to attain their goals, they will be emboldened and encouraged to attack again, and in more places.

So they do get it. They must just be playing dumb.

Here I thought their party line was that fighting back only served to recruit more people to their cause, and thus make the situation worse.
- philmon | 02/13/2007 @ 18:49

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KOS Demands To KnowTuesday, February 13th, 2007

KOS Demands To Know
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007