Herroner Da Mare

Blue Gal, noting the number of bloggers who seem to just give up after a while, does some positive reforcement to urge web posters not to give up raging against -- whatever irks them. You can find the morale-building piece on Daily Kos at Can a blogger get a little respect around here? An excerpt:

Without the lefty blogs, MSM (and by the way, folks, nobody even SAID "MSM" before we came along, they were just the "M" and they got away with a lot more than they do now) would never have covered the Kaloogian fake photo of "Baghdad," Bush's fake "interview" with our troops, and, um, don't get me started about you-know-who. And you also know I'm just scratching the surface here. Needless to say Joe Lieberman wishes we would just go away.

(Interestingly, she fails to mention two other great examples of good done: the eviction of Lott from the Majority Leadership because of his praise of Thurmond's segregationist campaign in 1948, and the total destruction of the other Lott for his lies about gun control. And there are more.)

Even more fun are the comments on her own site, where there is a ground swell that she really does need to become Mayor of Blogospheria. I don't know where one can vote for this, but each day does give more evidence that she is right and we all need to keep slugging, because we are getting under their skin. The clearest example today is a WaPost column by alleged "liberal" Richard Cohen, complaining about the thousands of angry emails he got when he said Colbert was not funny mocking Bush:

It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger.

(Actually, he really was a warmonger, supporting the Iraq invasion because, as he later admitted, he was scared of biowar.)

The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!)

Uh, news flash, The Presumptive Nominatress (is that a word?) continues to prove each day how she isn't even as far left as the middle -- the announcement now that she is going to be recipient of a fundraiser from Rupert Murdock should gag any lefty maggots.

I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

Yes, we've all heard these spineless "nice people" before, condemning any "troublemakers" for bringing up points they would rather not face, as they sip juleps at the country club. The word for them is "Enablers". Fortunately, the virtual city that Blue Gal should become Mayor of has jumped on this like an angry metaphor on an exhausted cliché. Perhaps most expressive was Digby at Lapfull of Dick:

Richard Cohen got 2,000 mean e-mails and this signals the end of the Democratic party. I'll leave you to figure out why that should follow. In case Cohen hasn't noticed nobody on the fucking planet likes squishy faux liberal courtiers. ... Where on earth would anyone get the idea that Cohen might be one of Bush's lapdogs?

Then he quotes one of the man's own pieces from before the 2000 election:

Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.

P.Z. Myers says Cohen "just can't understand" the anger, and adds that is because he is not very bright:

Because Richard Cohen is ignorant of elementary mathematics, he can smugly tell a young lady to throw away any chance being a scientist, a technician, a teacher, an accountant; any possibility of contributing to science and technology, of even being able to grasp what she's doing beyond pushing buttons. It's Richard Cohen condescendingly telling someone, "You're as stupid as I am; give up." And everything he said is completely wrong.

For the last hilarious word, done with a literal forest of links to counter- counter- counter- etc. posts, Michael Bérubé sums it up:

With the help of polite, respectful, decorous, civil bloggers armed with sarcasm, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes (especially the litotes) and satire, the Democrat Party will take back the House and Senate this fall. And then, finally, we can make the bastards pay! We will launch an investigation into smug, supercilious, clueless wanking, and we will issue our first subpoena to Richard Cohen. Tomorrow: join the Campaign to Prevent Massive Linkdumping!