The Eternal Victim
Michelle Malkin is pretty het up over Glennzilla’s examination of her hate-filled comments sections on MichelleMalkin.com and HotAir.com.
“But…but…but… People I regularly call ‘unhinged treasonous moonbats’ are mean to me! Waaahhh! Ping-pong balls!”
We have to admit she’s got us on the ping-pong ball thing, because it’s stupid, racist, not funny and stupid. But of course, by “us” we mean a couple of random jackasses in various comment threads and that one guy on Wonkette.
We also find it astonishing that a woman who writes something like this:
Update: Looks like this is Scott Thomas’s MySpace page. Yes, his theme music is the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killers.” The first line of the song: “I can’t seem to face up to the facts…”
…Doesn’t anticipate being ridiculed on a regular basis. (Additions to the Scott Thomas saga we anticipate in the near future: Update: Allah is hot on the trail of a Scott Thomas ‘slam book’ reportedly compiled while he was in the seventh grade … apparently while Thomas may have ‘a killer butt’, he is without a doubt ‘a total man-slut’. Telling. Update: Ace reports that Thomas is a big drinker of Diet Dr. Pepper. At least nine empty cans were discovered in the recycling bin outside his house. Isn’t that drink usually associated with butch ‘Rosie O’Dimbulb’ types? Update: Milbloggers weigh in on the Diet Dr. Pepper angle. Apparently only ‘weak sister’ types drink it, they say.)
Meanwhile, Michelle’s comment thread moderator, Rick Moran, explains how they scrub comments the wingnut way over at her twin hate sites:
I read every comment made on the site and Michelle scans most of them as well. We are pretty ruthless in weeding out the vile, the threatening, the hateful remarks made by both right and left.
See, this is what I don’t get. Sites like this one (or Atrios or a dozen lefty blogs) don’t scrub comments, except in extremely rare circumstances (like when some jerk was posting Malkin’s home address in threads, fr’example). But over at Malkin’s sites, comments are apparently scrubbed all the time. It’s a difference in philosophy — they want to exert iron-fisted control over the message, we say, let the community police itself and let the transparent chips fall where they may. Much has been written about how this phenomenon neatly sums up the differences between an authoritarian mindset and a liberal one.
But the more granular point is, how can you compare hateful comments on a blog that claims to regularly scrub them (like Malkin’s or O’Reilly’s) to hateful comments on a blog that doesn’t (like DailyKos)? Especially when just as many show up on the former as on the latter? It’s like if a guy accusing another guy of being an alcoholic gets found the next day face-down drunk in the gutter, and when the second guy (who only has a couple of beers with dinner) points this out, the first guy is all, “I’m in AA! I am pretty ruthlesh in my dedication to shtaying shober! P-p-ping pong ballsh! Unhinged! Whereshafugginbloodymarysroundhereanywaysh?
Seriously, Michelle and Rick, if you’re scrubbing all the hateful comments out of your threads … shouldn’t it be really, really hard to find any hateful comments in your threads? Yet they’re everywhere! I mean, we’d hate to conclude that much of what is truly hateful on your guys’ sites is stuff that, in your severe misanthropy, you don’t find hateful at all, or cynically feel serves your political purposes.
Actually, we wouldn’t hate to conclude that. We concluded that at like, two ticks past Year Zero of the Intertubes*. You utterly disgusting cobagz.
* Which, incidentally, is the precise moment that the very first packet containing an appeal to the authority of Ludwig von Mises was switched over the proto-Arpanet.
I read every comment made on the site and Michelle scans most of them as well. We are pretty ruthless in weeding out the vile, the threatening, the hateful remarks made by both right and left.
Isn’t this the same person who published the home phone numbers for three UC Santa Cruz students who led an anti-war protest?
Maybe someone should take care to scrub Malkin’s comments from her own blog in future.
I wonder why you haven’t covered (or uncovered) the story of the day: Clinton’s boobs.
Not chicken, are you? Bok bok.
Sadly, yes.
Hammer on the nail head. The fact that they scrub comments is not a defense, it’s an indictment.
The story of the day is my itchy shin. It itches.
Hey, Psycheout, did you see where Althouse demanded an apology from Greg Sargent the other day, then followed that up with another demand for an apology from Reason? She’s incredible. It’s like she’s living in a state of permanent hot flash.
Can you imagine what hell it would be to be standing behind her at an airline ticket counter when they’re bumping people from flights?
Oh. My. God. Females have BREASTS?! Holy crap! I feel so… scandalized! Well! You can bet damn well sure my vote isn’t going to some tit-having hussy!
Yeah. Add me to the “Blogs4brown = parody” collum.
Okay, count me ignorant, but Malkin seriously has a guy whose job it is to moderate comments? And they still have that much vile racist and hateful stuff left behind? Does she need two of these guys, or would they just end up deleting 3/4 of the comments?
Forgot to add:
How much hate does your site have to generate in order to require a dude who’s job it is to sit there and stare at them all to weed out the really bad ones?
I don’t usually read Ann Althouse, D. WhateverYourNameIs. Can you direct me to what it is you’re talking about?
Some Guy, don’t be a cobag.
Moran’s job is actually very much like that of a nuclear criticality engineer. Like a nuclear pile, the hate on Malkin’s site is enormously useful and powerful for her purposes, but he has to sit watching the gauge to make sure it doesn’t reach critical mass and cause a chain reaction that would lead to the meltdown of the entire wingnutosphere.
Hey, Psycheout, did you see where Althouse demanded an apology from Greg Sargent the other day, then followed that up with another demand for an apology from Reason?
That was wonderful, another of those sublime Ann Althouse moments in which she’s Archie Andrews carrying a big ladder.
“Hey Ann!” Swoosh. Crash. Elderly janitor conked on head and falls over with cart of cleaning supplies.
“Wait, don’t turn that way!” Swoosh. Crash. Window janitor had just repaired broken again.
“Stop! Just stop!” Swoosh. Crash. Janitor sits up to see what hit him and finds out the hard way.
Can you direct me to what it is you’re talking about?
http://www.annalthouse.com
Well, I, for one, find the sport of ping-pong inherently funny.
So there!
The prospect of encountering Malkin’s vagina in a dark alley?
THAT I find scrotum-crumbling!
Besides, whenever I read “Vagina Dentata”,
I start hearing Hakuna Matata.
Which creates a mental image of a snaggle-toothed vagina
with lips of play-doh and bacon singing that there’s nothing to worry about… you know, as a way to lure in the heedless.
Seriously, what IS it with rightwing retards and their pathological fear of pussy?
Pussy is GOOD for you… AND it tastes GRRREAT!
God dman mothrfruckin uncivl lefty bloogers!
Does she need two of these guys?
According to Pattycakes, she’s got two of them. He says ‘Allahpundit’ also scrubs comments.
And Moron says Michelle herself patrols the threads, so that’s six eyeballs trained on the Old Faithful of Hate that is Hotair.com and Michellemalkin.com …
I expect that if Hillary does get elected a quasi-religious cult will spontaneously form to worship the Presidential Bust. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if some of the guys here were founding members.
For my own self gratification, I’d like to re-post this comment…FROM TWO DAYS AGO!!!11!:
Here. Here. Here. HERE. HEREEERERE!
BTW- She didn’t answer the question…Does she?
snark/
Who is this gook, and why does it have a voice?
And the née Maglalangadingdong? No wonder it went to “Malkin”.
/snark
(I went with “gook” because hopefully it will offend her. She has no shame, no scruples, and obviously no human-to-human morals. She is famous because American guys have an Asian fetish (and she knows it – how many sticky screens and keyboards did the basement wingers have to replace after the cheerleader video?)
So from this point on, she will be Michelle “The Gook” Malkin. If she wants it to stop, she can stop being a racist bitch.)
Note: I hate the term I used above. My apologies if I offended anyone (except Ms. Maglalangadingdong. She started the war.)
Frankl – nah, that’s not cool. Even if it’s in good faith, as you claim.
If she wants it to stop, she can stop being a racist bitch.
You’re just granting yourself a license to say “gook” which strikes me as awful.
Some Guy, don’t be a cobag.
Yeah, Some Guy.
That’s Psycheout’s job. And it’s really important to him. So, like, be respectful and let him be the cobag.
Or, at least, let him fight it out with kevin.
Troll taxi for Frankl?
Oh, and RB – the Althouse-Archie thing? Front page, top of the fold material …
Michelle Malkin is totally HOT!
I’d totally hit it.
If ever met her, I’d be like, “Yeah, yeah, uh huh, uh huh, you’re totally right, Wow! gosh you’re smart! Hey, I’ll vote for (insert name of Repug candidate (probably Giuliani)) here if you’ll sleep with me.”
And then I’d vote for Hillary.
Cobaggery is done in the breast thing? Or the Hate thing? Be specific!
But, come on. A whole blog post on Clinton’s fatty tissue? Nuh-uh, can’t be real.
For those who keep track of these things, I’m currently installing Sword of the New World, and taking her for a spin around the block.
http://www.swordofthenewworld.com/index.php
I’m not expecting a whole lot, per se, but the concept is interesting, and the art is very spiffy, and they get kudos for not being another fantasy mmorpg.
…noy glavin, with the lol.
Vote for Hillary, with those boosies? Good lord, man, what can you be thinking of?!?
Honestly, that post of Ann’s ranting on about how Hil’s deliberately “introducing sexuality into politics” or some such tossage, just made me gurgle. I had to study it carefully to find the purported cleavage, and even when I did, I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking that miniscule amount of shadow could make Hil go from Ice Queen Mrs Prez to Sally Sleaze. Except in the highly breast-obsessed mind of Ann Alternativehouse.
Lordy, what must it be like to live in that mind? Constantly thinking of breasts, one’s own and others’.
I know I like to leave mine at home when I go consulting with various businesses: they just get in the way, you know, and if I’ve got them with me I’m forever having to fight the urge to whip ’em out and jiggle ’em about.
Much easier to leave them on the dresser.
l@lthouse.
Mas l@lthouse.
de nada.
Frankl is obviously Bill O’Reilly spreading astroturf comments for his next tirade on the evils of the lefty bloggers.
Here’s something to chew on: if the small sample of pure, unadulterated hate Greenwald found on Malkin’s site is what’s considered “tame” or “an acceptable level,” what were the comments that were considered “too hot for t3h Intarwebs” like?
The liberal press, The Washington comPost, seemed to think ClintonCleavageGate was worth writing about. I thought you folks loved the liberal media.
Sadly I had to comment on Michelle’s recent tirade about the wonderful Sam Brownback (who she calls “Switchback”) this morning. It makes me sad. Other than her anti Brownback bias, she’s a talented and objective journalist.
I hope she is able to get past her hatred of Senator Brownback soon, and focus on the important news of the day. We really do need her common sense reportage in this time of liberal media bias.
I’m just not that interested in Hill’s breasts. But the Speaker of the House, now that’s a rack. Oh wait. Denny isn’t Speaker anymore.
Oh, God. That is the one thing I didn’t need to wake up to this morning…Denny Hastert’s rather substantial man-boobs… *Dry heave*
Which typeface is that on the lolcat?
“Lordy, what must it be like to live in that mind? Constantly thinking of breasts, one’s own and others’.”
Well, you know…. you get used to it…Sometimes I like to switch it up with other body parts. Yeah, you work that femur, baby!
Ha! WaPo is liberal like Fox News is balanced.
Zany parody person.
Much easier to leave them on the dresser.
All six of ’em, Qetesh?
That’s some dresser.
Typeface is Futura Bold, as any fule kno.
Malkin is the future, so stop with the worrying. The future is harmless.
/off topic
A couple of weeks ago you called a Glenn Greenwald a one man wingnut wrecking crew.I read him a few times in the past but I’ve been reading him everyday sine, the man is un-fucking-stoppable. If anyone is noticing a lack of pwnage in their area its because Gleen is sucking it all up like some sort of pwnage eating black hole.
Why the fuck is he not on the TV?
Malkin does bring out the latent racist in a lot of purportedly liberal men. Look freakazoinds Making references about her somehow resembling an Asian prostitute is a double slam. First, because the woman is attractive looking and of Southeast Asian ancestry, you come up with “hooker servicing GIs and white American/European expats.”
The point is that if Malkin was very good looking and Swedish, you would never make the prostitute reference. It’s because of the Phillippine ancestry. And that, my friends, is just as racist as anything on a wingnut site.
Alice Cooper, I to am disgusted with the “me so horny! hur hur hur” stuff. But I assume many of those people are agent provocateur trolls. But to any who aren’t knock it off please! You’re really not helping, and besides that stuff is way out of line anyway.
We really do need her common sense reportage in this time of liberal media bias.
Bwahahahahahahaha! Wow, you don’t realise how absurd that comment looks from here in the real world. “Liberal media bias” indeed. Chuckle snarfle snort. Heh heh heh.
You dolt: to the entire rest of the world, the US is trmbling on the edge of fascism. And I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally: the US is far, far to the right of centre from every viewpoint except the US.
Honestly, if the US media had the slightest tinge of liberal bias, how the fuck could the Bush junta have fooled the entire fucking country into supporting this obscene war up till now?.
Ahem. Cough. Sorry, furball.
All six of ‘em, Qetesh?
That’s some dresser.
You should see my bras. Damn near strangled myself once.
And I’ll third the disapproval at the ping pong ball mentions: would you say such a thing about Daffyd Ap Hughie?
And I’ll third the disapproval at the ping pong ball mentions: would you say such a thing about Daffyd Ap Hughie?
Fourthed. And curiously, a google site search of S,N! for Frankl turns up no prior hits. First time commenter dropping a slur? Hmmmm… I wonder what it all means…
How very cruel!
I agree – the ad hominem BS with Malkin, Coulter, et al really needs to stop. (I mean that in a general sense for all blogs, not just this thread.) Sure, Malkin should be attacked for her perposterous philosophies, her long track record of getting almost every story wrong, wrong or wronger, her hypocrisy and arrogance, and her life goal of spreading hatred throughout the Free World – that’s a given. But her appearance is no reason to mock her – well, except for that picture she used with her hair blowing back in the wind – or denigrate her ethnic heritage.
That said, I like to think of her as a Pretty Hate Machine. Dig!
And Moron says Michelle herself patrols the threads
Yes she does and the other day in the Ward Churchill thread she chastised some guy for posting an unattributed passage on Chief Joseph but I suspect the horrible reality of what happened to the Nez Percé was what she really objected to. Not the horrible history reality itself but that somebody mentioned it. When he argued with her she immediately banned him and a cheer went up from her authority worshiping kommentariat.
But I’m shocked that on the same thread Malkin and Moron let this one stand.
On July 24th, 2007 at 10:59 am, Ron Rockstar said:
This is one where the conservatives can rejoice. There can’t be a negative for conservatives. If he stays, conservatives can paint the whole college as radical which gives a nice backdrop to the whole idea of an abhorrent state of our education system. If he goes, the conservatives, as well as the students of the University of Colorado win. We are conservatives. We need to start looking for the opportunities. Rejoice.
You would think that this twisted brand of honesty and the act of painting any scenario as a positive for conservatives rather than a cause for continued seething resentment would earn this dumb motherfucker (or agent provocateur from the left) a summons to appear at Wingnet World Headquarters to be summarily dismissed or at least take a 50% cut in his cheeto rations for 6 months and a admonishment to change his way too gay user name.
I chuckle at the notion that MM’s commenters are vehemently defending their cherished non-hate site (it’s not! It’s just not PC, and tells teh truth: liberals, commies, Islamohippies, and socialists need to be interned to protect America’s Freedoms!!!), by describing how much they hate anyone who labels their non-hate site, a “hate site.”
And they wonder why …
I mean, come on, how can you not laugh at this stuff:
On July 27th, 2007 at 10:29 am, JJwclink said:
Michael Savage sums it up accurately when he says that “liberalism is a mental disorder”
The fact is that those comments that Greenwald posted (which aren’t verifiable as true) really aren’t too bad.
The left has a standard for hate that doesn’t include their own delusional rants.
If Malkin was a of Swedish decent, I ‘d still have a knee jerk reaction to attack anything about her because she represents so much that is wrong with this country. Sometimes it just seems like there is nothing left to do but be vicious.
On the other hand…If y’all know someone who can do the ping pong ball trick (ancestry unimportant), I’d sure like to see it. So hit a brother up!
Hey! What? Its on my list of thing to see with my own eyes before I die. And it happens to be one of the tamer items.
I remember bitching about the lack of preview, and now that it exists, I’m only batting about .500 in actually using it successfully.
“The point is that if Malkin was very good looking and Swedish, you would never make the prostitute reference.”
No. The point is that if Malkin resembled a “good-looking Swede,” she’d be ridiculed as a bimbo stewardess or some such shit. It’s all about the sexism, not so much the racism.
And for cryin’ out loud people, PsycheOut is a parody troll blogwhore for his idiot Brownback parody site. Cheeze Louise.
Why the fuck is he not on the TV?
Silly! Actual liberals aren’t allowed on TV! Only faux-liberals like Lieberman and Colmes are TV-worthy.
Here’s something to chew on: if the small sample of pure, unadulterated hate Greenwald found on Malkin’s site is what’s considered “tame” or “an acceptable level,” what were the comments that were considered “too hot for t3h Intarwebs” like?
Don’t forget that the standards for hate on the left and right are different – Gare-bear actually sort of managed to find an acorn by writing:
The left has a standard for hate that doesn’t include their own delusional rants.
The Malkinbots don’t think of calls to set up concentration camps and such as hate.
Ya, sexual references to Malkin et al would require, in fairness, such references to the likes of Dafydd ab Badger, and that’s just wrong.
But her appearance is no reason to mock her – well, except for that picture she used with her hair blowing back in the wind – or denigrate her ethnic heritage.
To devil’s advocate for a second, note that, in fairness, such a standard would also strike all mention of man-boobs, turgid post-sammich-eating appearances, doughy white-man-ness, and the like.
At some point, though, the policing of humor for propriety leads to humorlessness. And humor is often fundamentally offensive. All the same, bigotry sucks. Etc. Rinse and repeat.
I don’t know where the line is, or how carefully one really should tread when tossing off snark to a group of largely like-minded folks fully quipped with in-jokes. But I do know that the fact that this sort of thing is even discussed here indicates that LGF-style hating-on is not what’s going on. Those folks truly don’t give a shit, whereas we’ll hand-wring over the proper ways to insult a piece of human shit like Malkin.
I’ll try to be nice myself, but I’m not gonna worry about it if I might possibly somehow be construed as not being nice after some sort of postmodern parsing of my prose.
Because, for all the (deserved) abuse, we recognize our snarkvictims as HUMANS. They don’t, and actively aim to dehumanize. That’s the difference. And the deployments of ping-pong imagery don’t change that, no matter what a Malkin, a Johnson, or a Certain Person Who Objected to “D-Ho” has to say (as the first two are utter hypocrites and the latter risibly ridiculous).
If Malkin was very good-looking and Swedish we’d be all up in her face with ABBA:
He came in a dream
He seduced everybody in the land
The fire in his eyes
And the fear was a weapon in his hand
So they let him play
Play their minds away
We’re all following a strange melody
We’re all summoned by a tune
We’re following the piper
And we dance beneath the moon
We’re following the piper
And we dance beneath the moon for him
And we dance beneath the moon
My favorite paragraph from michellemalkin.com’s Terms of Use:
For the purposes of liability, your comments are yours, all yours. For the purposes of profit and propaganda, your comments are mine, all mine.
I don’t know where the line is …
It can be hard to find. But I think where something is very close to the edge in terms of race or gender or something, a good, first-look deal-breaker on acceptability is whether the “joke” is actually an attempt at teh funny … i.e. it attempts to add something original to the particular race/gender/whatever issue in question with the tools of comedy, whether that’s with language, context, situation, irony, etc.
Declaring that you’re going to call someone a ‘gook’ because you don’t like them fails that basic test. It’s not any kind of attempt at humor. It’s just appropriating a disgusting, racist term for no good reason at all. Frankl compounds the racism in his comment by referring to Malkin the ‘gook’ as an ‘it’ in such a way that makes it very unclear whether he is dehumanizing Malkin alone or Asians in general.
But the deal-breaker test is just the very first one … a joke can pass it and still cross the line. Nor does the use of the word ‘gook’ always mean racism on the part of the user. Mikey’s used it in previous threads, but always in the context of his blunt, detailed and often poetic second- or third-person narratives on the horrors of the Vietnam War, where it’s clearly understood as a faithful recording of a term in common use by GIs of the time.
The ping pong stuff in its original iterations may have passed the first test. I’d argue it failed further tests, though some argue differently. But I’d definitely argue that at this point, today, it is definitely a dry well in terms of humor. I think most of us can agree that it’s just an out-and-out slur now … not that I personally think it was really anything more than that.
In lighter news, a song for the past and future girlfriends of Ace:
My vagina has a first name
It’s B-A-C-O-N
My vagina has a second name
It’s P-L-A-D-O
Oh! I have to hide it every day and if you ask me why I’ll say:
‘Cause my boyfriend Ace is way gay with V-A-G-I-(ick!)-N-A!
Actually, I always agonize over using that term. I hate it passionately. For a long time I’ve felt at home among asian people, in many ways moreso than among the more european americans. I loathe racists, not just because of the blind madness of it, but because it requires a kind of a willful ignorance, a belief structure that necessitates a construct that flatly denies observed reality in the artificial belief that all “those people” are the same. Racists know as well as any of us that this is clearly false, but yet the racial component of their hatred is so much easier to access than any other, so they fall back on it anyway.
But sometimes, if one is speaking honestly about a time and a place, one cannot avoid the terms in use at that point. You couldn’t write honestly about the jim crowe south without using the n-word, and in my life, the most chilling, terrifying thing you could hear in the middle of the night with chaos raging all around you was the cry of “gooks in the wire”. That meant, at best, hand-to-hand. It meant you had every likelihood of getting hit by your own guys. It meant if you went down with grenade shrapnel in your back you would likely get finished by a guy running by with a bayonet.
We mock them for their stupidity. For their inhumanity. For their own hatred, fear and foolish beliefs. We need not emulate any of that…
mikey
Comments on Malkin’s race are so friggin wrong except to point out that she uses her minority status as cover for her racist ideas.
Rick “i’m an autodidact, i taught myself the works of Socrates” Moran.
Rick Moran. I love him, and even though neither of us are gay and he keeps banning me we WILL be together.
Rick Moran.
Jebus.
Also, for the sake of ace and CY and them wingnuts that come here sometimes, can we maybe get some words added to Frankl’s hateful comments? Something along the lines of what Marita noted, that he’s not a regular and not expressing views that are in keeping with the tone and nature of the site. Malkin gives the left an overwhelming abundance of blind stupidity to work with, there’s no need to be a racist asshole to snark at her. Plus, it’s kinda hypocritical to loathe her beliefs and use her race against her.
However, anchor baby jokes are fine. She opened that one up by agitating for the source of her citizenship to be removed.
Gary, that was weak. It’s like you’re not even trying. You can do better than that.
Also, for the sake of ace and CY and them wingnuts that come here sometimes, can we maybe get some words added to Frankl’s hateful comments?
I will continue to vote no on scrubbing or otherwise altering comments (except in very rare instances like the one I think I mentioned in the post above).
IMO, commenters on this thread have done a perfectly adequate job of showing where we stand on Frankl’s comments. If Ace or CY or some other mouthbreather cherrypicks the Frankl comment for their salacious purposes? Well, that’s what wingnuts do. And what we do is ridicule them for doing stuff like that. We’re not about leaving honeypots to trap them or anything, but at the same time I don’t think we should modify our principles about free and open forums, just to hamstring them in their efforts to make fools of themselves.
We’re like the sheepdog and they’re like the coyote in the old Warner Bros. cartoons that way … they punch in each morning before unloading a new batch of dipshit commentary, we greet them at the time clock before composing our takedowns, and it’s all very civil for those few moments when our paths directly intersect … ‘Morning, Sam.’ … ‘Mornin’, Ralph’.
But after that, it’s all about the wringing their necks and holding them over cliffs and things of this nature.
1) There is no excuse for the racism that is hurled Malkin’s way. None. I mean that in general, but I’m also looking specifically at you, Frankl. Spin rhetorical justifications all you want, but all you’re really trying to do is make racist remarks with impunity. Not gonna fly.
2) As has been noted above, Malkin provides reams of material with which to crush, mock, disprove, or otherwise discard. She’s an enormous stooge who has an uncanny ability to be wrong about damn near everything while claiming that she is right. Why not just use that stuff, destroy her “arguments,” and leave it at that?
At the very least use those damned hot air videos to endlessly make fun of her. She writes the material for ya’all herself.
A Sweedish Michelle Malkin! Imagine the possibilities, Ja!
A Sweedish Michelle Malkin! Imagine the possibilities, Ja! Aren’t they good at massage?
everyone shed a tear for Allahpundit! one perfect, righteous, ant-muslim tear.
This is Allahpundit’s reward for constantly patrolling Hot Air for inappropriate comments, as well as lecturing, threatening to ban, and sometimes banning the offenders. He gets to have some self-righteous sock-puppet claim that he devotes his life to a “hate site.”
(via Patterico, linked by Malkin in her post)
oh the humanity!
This is Allahpundit’s reward for constantly patrolling Hot Air for inappropriate comments
Oh, A+ for effort. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be very good at it. Perhaps it would be helpful if someone explained to him what an inappropriate comment would look like. ‘Cause I think when he sees one he just mutters “right on, dude” and keeps looking.
Hell, for that matter they could maybe just use a little technology (it is, after all, a web server. That means it runs on a computer) to index a hundred or so key words and just hold comments that include them for moderation a few times a day. ‘Cause after all, if you don’t recognize that intolerance, racism, genocide and death threats are pretty much what we are talking about when we use that word inappropriate, you probably aren’t the best choice for moderator.
Just sayin…
mikey
I’ve gone on about this before, and elsewhere, but personally I try to draw the line at a joke that will also insult large groups of people I’m not currently pissed off at. Lots of people are Asian, lots of people are female, I know and love some of them and I certainly have no beef with most of the rest of them.
The ping pong crap is not the smart bomb of snark. It causes a great deal of collateral damage. And if you can’t come up with a more specific way to insult Malkin with, as noted, all the material she provides for us daily, you are either lazy or stupid or just looking for license to be racist or misogynist in public, I’m looking at you Frankl.
I am not always successful in avoiding broad, unintended insult. Possibly no one is, though that’s no reason not to keep trying.
Actually, I think we should transfer that stupid thing to Daffyd. It would be amusing.
Frankl said, July 27, 2007 at 8:36
snark/
Who is this gook, and why does it have a voice?
And the née Maglalangadingdong? No wonder it went to “Malkin”.
/snark
Nice try, Ian.
You Lose.
Play again?
Greenwald almost never, ever deletes comments. I once alerted him to some leftie goon whose comment could truly have been taken for a call to violently attack Bush and Cheney and take to the streets with guns ‘n ammo; THAT he deleted. Normal, decent people don’t let stand calls for violence against anyone, and which could seriously be considered illegal. But other than that, I’ve found much more freedom of expression on the so-called “left-wing” blogs.
(And btw, no one ever considered me left-wing until the definition of that became opposing Bush/modern GOP. Now I guess I’m a Stalinist of some sort.)
All of which raises an interesting and, to my knowledge, unexplored point; If BillO and Malkin are claiming lefty sites as “hate sites”, what percentage of those hate-ful comments come from
a) trolls or
b) lefty responses to said trolls?
Clearly, “Frankl”‘s comment could be construed as hate-ful and we could all respond in kind and tell him what we really think. But from the tone of the commenters here (whom I have grown to know and love), we all know he’s a troll.
And let me add: As many know, I was until about mid-’05, a Bush and war supporter, and sometimes argued at “liberal” sites about the issue. As I began to change my mind, the worst, by far most vile comments directed at me were at Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom. My positions were gratuitously sexualized (I am a “concubine,” I lick Glenn Greenwald’s dick etc.), and I was explicitly told to “fuck off and die.”)
No one on the “left” ever did anything like that when I was still in favor of Bush and the war. The fact is, like John Cole, I began to reconsider my position on the GOP beginning with the Schiavo derangement, and when Greenwald began blogging — and well before he was on anyone’s “A” list I was reading him — I simply did a big turn around. For that, I have been reviled in some of the sickest terms imaginable. I don’t whine about it, but I’m also not going to sit still for Malkin and Rick Moran claiming they and theirs are some sort of Miss Manners cohort.
trolls
I don’t put much stock in agent provocateurism among trolls. Making trouble in comments is an ego game and it’s hard to get your strokes pretending to be an extreme version of a blog’s consensus, especially if there’s no actual humor value in it. Comments are fun, but they’re not the actual show. Maybe Psycheout can try to explain how paltry the payoff is.
My unscientific belief is that the idiots on left-wing blogs are left-wing idiots and the idiots on right-wing blogs are right-wing idiots. In any political group there are always some that can’t distinguish between a war of ideas and a war between people. There’s a little hitch in that certain right-winginess is dependent on the elevation of specific groups above certain others, but then I chose my side for a reason.
(And btw, no one ever considered me left-wing until the definition of that became opposing Bush/modern GOP. Now I guess I’m a Stalinist of some sort.)
Same thing happened to me–I’ve never affiliated with any party or set ideology, yet somehow, by virtue of opposing Bush, I’m a full-on Stalinist commie who gets marching orders from Daily Kos (a website on which I have read exactly one thread, which was people talking about how their military service changed them from GOPers to Dems). I find it rather funny, really–wingnuts are pathologically incapable of thinking in anything but the most cartoonish binary.
Maybe Psycheout can try to explain how paltry the payoff is.
Hm. Don’t actually know what I’m talking about here.
Oh, and I just have to congratulate D. Aristophanes for this gem:
the precise moment that the very first packet containing an appeal to the authority of Ludwig von Mises was switched over the proto-Arpanet.
which is easily the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
I expect that if Hillary does get elected a quasi-religious cult will spontaneously form to worship the Presidential Bust. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if some of the guys here were founding members.
Jeez you don’t know much about us do you. We’re the ones who criticize our own to a fault. It’s you 28%-ers who are so into that whole cultic authoritarian leader worship thing.
If Malkin doesn’t like being called a hateful witch then maybe she should stop being a hateful witch.
Re: My Comment
My bad. I was angry. If I could delete the comment, I would.
Sorry everyone.
Mona,
Now you know how it feels when a self-described “small-l libertarian” insists you love Bill Clinton so much you wanna marry him, even though you’ve spent the past two hours ranting about how basically spineless the guy was on right-wing “social issues” and corporate intrests.
Hey, y’all, here’s a thought. After the one-two punch of Terri Schiavo and Cindy Sheehan – or more specifically the vile flood of ugliness that spewed forth from conservatives over the issues – I found myself unable to take anyone to the right of, say, Al Gore seriously on anything. I hate to paint a broad brush, but the vast bulk of the right is accepting if not championing the worst excesses of their side of the field. Back during the whole gay marriage ammendment do-dah, I was told by many a wingnut that trampling the rights of gays was no reason to vote against Bush because Kerry would seriously give into the Islamists, yo. Or that presidents lying and reading your mail without you knowing it or keeping secrets was okay since it was a Republican and they only have our best interests in mind. Y’all know what I’m talking about.
What I’m getting to is this. Here we are, discussing whether or not a vile, nasty joke is acceptable when it’s made at a vile, nasty excuse for a human being. We had a big hoo-hah about the Star Trek fanfiction guy. There was some kerfluffle about borderline (or over the border) anti-semetic remarks made “as a joke we all understood” sort of way at Wonkette the other day. If, say, tbogg makes a snarky remark about, say, Ann Althouse that’s a bit too, well, sexist, he’ll catch hell for in the comments. And there’s always discussion.
Do right-wing comments sections have these sort of discussions? I don’t read ’em, so I don’t know, but does the occasional brave soul pop up and say “Ya know, fellows, maybe we should intern all Muslims or encourage violence against leftists or call people fags because we think they’re not sufficiently manly”?
As one of those who occasionally gives people hell for sexist, racist, etc, jokes, let me make clear: I do not actually give a flying damn if you hurt Michelle’s feelings, or Jonah’s feelings, or Ann’s feelings, and in fact am positively amused when people hurt Bill O’Reilly’s feelings. Because they are hateful people who go out of their way to hurt the feelings of others. So you want to call Michelle hateful, or hypocritical, or a token, or any other damn thing, feel free.
But when you insult someone based on their gender, their ethnicity, their weight, or some broad stereotype of a trait that is shared by millions of other people who would probably just as soon have nothing the fuck to do with the idiot you’re trying to insult, that’s where I object.
There are female liberals. There are Asian liberals. There are gay liberals. There are fat liberals. Each of them undoubtedly has far, far more in common with you than they do with Michelle or Jonah or anyone else you are collaterally insulting while you taunt the wingnut.
Why make enemies of your allies? And why be so lazy about it? Every one of the people we mock here has said at least three stupid things a day for the last ten years, much of it having made its way into writing. Keep the jokes fresh, mock them for what they do and say, not what they share with other people you have no grudge against.
Don’t be lazy. Don’t make enemies of your allies. Don’t insult people you don’t mean to insult. Don’t give broad offense for the sake of giving specific offense. Is this hard?
What D. Sidhe said.
Unique depths of awfulness require unique insults.
Malkin is, in essence, like the bullied kid who joins the bully’s gang, becomes chief sycophant, and laughs when the bully beats up other kids. In a more sane society she’d be hanging out on street corners, giving out badly photocopied pamphlets about the swarthy hordes.
Other than her anti Brownback bias, she’s a talented and objective journalist.
Okay, Psycheout, now who’s a cobag, again?
Also, I don’t have much desire to vote for Hillary (but I will — I would vote for my cat before I’d vote Republican) but, seriously, Hillary’s cleavage? Kind of yucky, really.
My unscientific belief is that the idiots on left-wing blogs are left-wing idiots and the idiots on right-wing blogs are right-wing idiots.
Fair enough. I’ll buy that.
but does the occasional brave soul pop up and say “Ya know, fellows, maybe we should…
Occasionally, someone will step up and say “guys, tone it down, you’re not helping.”
They usually get banned, flamed and deleted. Moderation has no place in a flame war on a right-wing site.
Is this thread over?
Is this thread over?
Not until Kevin shows up and posts multiple comments addressed to himself.
It’s also inherently dishonest when someone like Bill O or Malkin points to an ugly comment and claims it speaks for the whole site and its author, while ignoring the reaction to the ugly comment – which is a better indicator of the whole site.
But we don’t even have to go there – Glenn said it best
(1)Standard X is dishonest and corrupt.
(2) Those who advocate and apply Standard X to others ought to have that standard applied to them.
If what we’re looking at is a SCRUBBED version of their sites……one can only imagine the kind of excreta we DIDN’T get to see.