Sadly, No!

So apparently, Deb Frisch has been leaving more disgusting and vile comments about Jeff Goldstein’s family over at other peoples’ blogs, which naturally means that it’s time to send Jeff some more money. Michelle Malkin laughably compares the whole ordeal to the Kitty Genovese murder:

Remember Kitty Genovese, the New York City woman stabbed to death near her home in Queens while her neighbors watched from their windows? The case popularized the psychological phenomenon dubbed the bystander effect or “Genovese syndrome.” You know: “I didn’t want to get involved.”

[Gavin adds: Oh, that would be a Sadly, No! on that. Michelle could even have crankily blamed the NY Times for the popular misconceptions about the Genovese case, so that’s a double whoopsie.]

A few weeks ago, blogger Jeff Goldstein outed an unhinged nutball, former University of Arizona lecturer in psychology Deborah Frisch, who left vile comments about Goldstein and his son at his site, Protein Wisdom. The case received some mainstream media attention –faulty, at that–after Frisch resigned. Most people have moved on. But not Frisch. She relocated to Eugene, Oregon, and the harassment of Jeff and his family continues.

Does posting awful and nasty things about someone’s family on another person’s blog really constitute “harassment?” And how is it any worse than posting someone’s cell phone number on your blog so your dumb-ass readers can call them and give them death threats?

Now here’s the punchline:

I can understand why some might not want to pay further attention or bother to help out. After all:

It’s someone else’s problem.
It’s dangerous.
I don’t want to get involved.

It’s Kitty Genovese Syndrome, blog-style. But if you feel moved to more than just stare out the window, here’s Jeff’s Paypal address:

proteinwisdom-at-celluloid-wisdom.com

Genius. I wish I could make money by getting into nasty Internets flame wars too.

[Someone who definitely isn’t Gavin adds: Hey Brad, I’m going to, um, beat you up. Bwaha, I am coming to get you. Woo!]

Incidentally, I think Patterico has the best advice on how to handle the situation:

What do you folks suggest Jeff do? He currently appears to be shutting the site down until this is settled. I advise against that; I would ban her and ignore her. But, failing that, what other options does he have?

Call the cops and give them her IP address. If she keeps it up, have the police call her and tell her to knock it off.

Since the following three sentences do not close today’s David Brooks column, baffled readers are left to conclude that his head somehow managed to remain unexploded:

Lebanon is a chance to show that the death cult is not invincible.

To its enormous credit, the Bush administration has kept its focus on that core reality, and it has developed a strategy to reverse the momentum: let Israel weaken Hezbollah, then build an international force to help create a better Lebanon.

Yet, having spent a week on the phone with experts and policy makers, I’d be lying if I said that I was optimistic the strategy will work.

Yep, you read that correctly. David Brooks heaps praise on the Bush administration for pursuing a policy that, while bold, he concedes is unlikely to succeed. Also, I should point out that his premise is that an immediate cease fire would essentially maintain the pre-conflict status quo, as far from ideal as that may be, while the continuation of hostilities could end up sowing “so much instability that it ends up toppling the same Lebanese government that it is trying to strengthen.”

Brooks, of course, prefers to pursue the larger risk that has less chance of success.

Point out everything that’s wrong with this sentence:

This AFP photograph shows Beirut demonstrators with a giant poster of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that was used in a rally protesting the accidental killing of civilian human shields, along with terrorists, in Qana.

And yes, that little gem was…

Posted by John at 02:43 PM

Ok, I’ve been on a pretty good riff here lately, but this post is it for me until tomorrow when, if things go as planned, ‘Miguel’ will once again converse with wingnuts in strange headgear.

But as I give my S,N! comrades a much-needed breather from wingnut-ridiculing, I’ll now apologise to the Cubs fans among our readers, whom I viciously slurred. I’m sorry. I should have made an exception for S,N! readers in my wholesale anti-Cubs diatribes, anyway. But I also should have known that as soon as I wrathed-out on the whole Cubs Nation, the Great Jebus In The Sky would see fit to reward me with shit like this:

CHICAGO (AP) — Carlos Zambrano outpitched Chris Carpenter to win his ninth straight decision as the Chicago Cubs completed a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals with a 6-3 victory Sunday.

BLARG! FATTY CUBSBEAST CARLOS DID EAT THE REDBIRDS! BUT HOW DOES CARLOS NOT GET HIS ARM CHEWED BY GRAVYMONSTER DUSTY?? IT IS A MYSTERY!!!

So now I’m off to work on other crap.

V.D. Hanson — with emphasis on the V.D. (the wingnut disease!) — discourses on a “clarified” wartime lexicon, and thus we can trace the many spirochetes’ journey from Bush’s and Olmert’s jockstraps straight to Victor’s sore noggin:

“Civilians� in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.

“Collateral damage� refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target.

[…]

“Innocent� often refers to Lebanese who aid the stockpiling of rockets or live next to those who do. It rarely refers to Israelis under attack.

The “militants� of Hezbollah don’t wear uniforms, and their prime targets are not those Israelis who do.

“Multinational,� as in “multinational force,� usually means “third-world mercenaries who sympathize with Hezbollah.� See “peacekeepers.�

“Peacekeepers� keep no peace, but always side with the less Western of the belligerents.

[…]

What explains this distortion of language? A lot.

[…]

But most of all, the world deplores the Jewish state because it is strong, and can strike back rather than suffer. In fact, global onlookers would prefer either one of two scenarios for the long-suffering Jews to learn their lesson. The first is absolute symmetry and moral equivalence: when Israel is attacked, it kills only as many as it loses. For each rocket that lands, it drops only one bomb in retaliation — as if any aggressor in the history of warfare has ever ceased its attacks on such insane logic.

The other desideratum is the destruction of Israel itself. Iran promised to wipe Israel off the map, and then gave Hezbollah thousands of missiles to fulfill that pledge. In response, the world snored. If tomorrow more powerful rockets hit Tel Aviv armed with Syrian chemicals or biological agents, or Iranian nukes, the “international� community would urge “restraint� — and keep urging it until Israel disappeared altogether. And the day after its disappearance, the Europeans and Arabs would sigh relief, mumble a few pieties, and then smile, “Life goes on.�

Well, I have a few clarified wingnut definitions for Diseased Dicktor:

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Courtesy of NobodySpecial in comments, I’m treated to Mark Steyn‘s latest bit of fascist tosspottery. It’s stunning; in the same vein as his last offering, but the general thesis is expanded. Last time he urged our government to act more like the Iranians’. Now he’s urging our society and culture to be more like that of militant Islam.

He sullenly recounts how Kathryn Jean Lopez was put in her place last week by an emailer who argued that practicing wingnut “journalism” was not at all the same thing as being in uniform and fighting on the ground. K-Lo, to her credit, took this rather better than Steyn, who is more sensitive to righteous deprecations of his self-regarding journalistic sacrifices:

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Atrios, after offering a pungent quote from Marshall Witless, sez:

Basically there are people who imagine that there is a supermajority political consensus in this country which is shattered by nasty partisanship[…]

It’s authoritarian because it calls for conformity and brands dissenters as the problem. Get on board the unity bus, they say, can’t we all get along. That’s what the nation needs. Stop your nasty disagreements, and let my team rule without criticism.

Which rang a bell of recognition — I’d just read Stanley Kurtz, who took time from his busy schedule of dreading the Emerging Fagg0rt-Polygamist Majority to opine:

So either we destroy Iran’s nuclear program by force, or Iran is going to get the bomb, likely provoking nuclear proliferation throughout the region.

That means a whole lot of Islamic bombs floating around the Middle East for the indefinite future. It would probably take another terrorist strike to move the American public in the direction of a more hawkish approach. Over the long term, in the absence of greater national unity and more decisive American military action, you’d have to say the odds of nuclear terror within the next decade have risen substantially. Should we blame the president for this? I don’t think so. To a degree, I blame the dovish Dems. Without a national consensus, the country can’t take decisive action.

I’ll see Travis’s Noah’s ark and Gavin’s Ark of the Covenant and raise them with my “Ancient Book of Psalms”. Blah; all that Travis’s and Gavin’s archeological coups prove is the greatness of God or Jebus or the Hamburglar or someone. Mine, on the other hand, does that and considerably more: it justifies whatever Israel does!

Pammy describes it as a “miracle”, as evidence of “G-d weigh[ing] in.” We’re told that the book was found open at Psalm 83, which apparently augurs well for wackos like Pam (and you thought Randroids were athiests — nope, not when believing in “G-d” is a necessary part of tribalist hategasms), the great multitude of Rapturist nutbags in God’s (other) country, and the relatively small number of fundamentalist Jews in Israel.

Yet happy as Batshit Shrieks is about the artifact, Psalm 83, and all that it allegedly portends, I’m certain that deep down she’s disappointed in “G-d” that He didn’t see fit to “make found” an ancient book of Deuteronomy — open, instead, at chapter 25, verse 19. That‘s some explicit justification for genocide right there and thus would be the greatest possible spiritual food (in comparison, the Psalm is but an hors d’oeuvre) for all the heirs of Kahane in Israel and America now cheering so wildly, “Shoot, apartment building, score!”

Andrew McCarthy sneers:

Watch Your Language [Andy McCarthy]

… at least if you find yourself in Iran or Russia.

AP reports (h/t Iran Focus) that “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as ‘pizzas’ which will now be known as ‘elastic loaves,’ state media reported Saturday.”

I could quote someone’s recounting of a neoconservative meeting where someone said that it was ominous that the Soviets didn’t have a word for “detente“. Or I could mention how Ronald Reagan righteously condemned Russian culture on the basis that it “didn’t have a word for ‘freedom'” (it does, of course. I think it’s swoboda, but I might be wrong). But instead I think I’ll confine my response to two words, two delicious words of potato-y goodness: Freedom Fries.

Nope, no Orwell or Confucius references. Not on this post. I’m too hungry now, and it’s dinner time.

Mark A. Kleiman finally finds something as awful as a liberal cursing at or otherwise using ad hominem attacks against conservatives:

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