It Was A Hit Piece, Okay?
Billmon called it Payback, but by any name, the Washington Post article on Maryscott O’Connor was designed to portray all of the liberal side of blogtopia™ [skippy the bush kangaroo] as the American version of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.
Along with many others Shakespeare’s Sister in Angry for a Reason and Echidne in The Angry Moonbats , point out reasons for anger, but not the reason for the piece. Both notice that the article seems to point to the anger as a reaction to the anger from the right.
The Washington Post started this leitmotif of the angry foul-mouthed liberal blogger when Deborah Howell got caught spinning a Republican talking point in the Jack Abramoff story. They had to shut down the comments because liberals were so angry and vomited filth.
Then they got caught again when they decided to hire Ben Domenech, a move that was the equivalent of a certain Sicilian gesture associated with an Associate Justice towards liberal bloggers. Poor Ben had to resign when it was discovered that he was more of a copy-and-paste than use-your-own-words writer.
They apparently figured out how to use Google, or hired someone to do the search for them and discovered Maryscott O’Connor, an angry liberal blogger who swears. They would have probably preferred to use The Rude Pundit but figured out that everyone knows that the blog is a persona, not a real example of your typical liberal ranter.
This will be the only link I will ever provide for My Left Wing. Maryscott didn’t write it, but she promoted it to the main page. I have no tolerance for whiners. You earn respect and links by your writing.
Look at Phinky’s capture of the The Dixie Chicks video. That’s how you harness anger and use it to further your goal. They received death threats for a comment made at a concert. There were active attempts to destroy their ability to make a living. They have used the anger to mold their art.
There are a lot of reasons to be angry at what the government has done in our name. The absurd vilification of liberals by the right is nothing more than annoying. It’s unreasonable to get angry at a puppy that isn’t housebroken. It is when the supposed adults, the people with power and the responsibility to use that power for the general welfare, fail in their duty that you get angry.
The media in general seems to have forgotten that it has been granted special protections under the Constitution to speak truth to power. That is when liberals get angry. When lies are parroted, when corruption is overlooked, when incompetence goes unnoticed by those granted privilege to address these issues, liberals respond with sadness for the memory of what was, and anger at the realization of what is.
9 comments
Bryan,
I’m gratified someone in Florida addressed this issue, because what the Post did was so very blatant, as Billmon says, it can be understood only as ‘payback’. Which is pathetic, given the Post’s recent scrwball moves, from the Howell mess to last Sunday’s editorial failure. Much as I love Billmon, I think Glenn Greenwald has it nailed in his latest —
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/04/mistaking-caricature-and.html
“The tactics in the article are as intellectually lazy and empty as they are transparently deceitful and trite.”
In my opinion, this is the core of Greenwald’s statement:
Word. We’re not institutions or a grand collective; we’re individuals. David Finkel pretends otherwise, admits having never read a blog before writing his hit piece, and also confesses to conceiving a title having something to do with the “angry Left” before he began. The depth of his intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking.
When the WaPo got into a dispute with firedoglake about the comments on Deborah Howell’s refusal to accept correction of her errors, someone got in and archived the thread before the WaPo scrubbed the comments. The overwhelming majority of comments removed by WaPo were not profane or obscene, but they were quite negative about Ms. Howell’s determination to stick with GOP talking points even in the face of known facts. In other words, the WaPo censored the thread and then lied about it.
It’s a pattern with the Post. Finkel’s new piece is offensive but unsurprising.
Finkel went for every stereotype he could manage. I wonder if the Post bought her a bathrobe to write in. I know I’m old fashioned, but no one I’m not related to or really friendly with has ever seen me in a bathrobe.
I would venture to say that the total number of bloggers who have appeared in television as a blogger is extremely small, and on Fox even smaller. Other than local articles, like the one that ran in the Pensacola News Journal, most of the MSM ignore the existence of bloggers. My local, Northwest Florida Daily News, has their content behind a subscription wall, so I can’t cite them.
The majority of liberal bloggers are on their own sites, not on diary sites like My Left Wing or Kos, and are using one of the free services.
I doubt either of you guys would appreciate my views on the Second Amendment, although if things keep going the way they are, you may come to see the Founders’ reasons.
We agree to disagree on a lot of things, other than the base fact that the current crew in charge have taken the country in the wrong direction and something needs to change.
The Post is attacking critics: it’s really that simple. I’m waiting to see if they decide to offer Maryscott the position of the official left-wing blogger.
Thanks for the link. I have to admit, I sometimes have problems to avoid going into Maryscott territory. Some of my family members, think my blog is unhinged. But only one of them has read the whole blog.
Phinky, we both know that sometime you need to release the pressure, but My Left Wing has a daily rant. We are restricted in what we can say by what we know and there is a lot of pressure when you know something is wrong, but can’t explain to people why.
Hang in there. The longer you’re out of it the more you can say.
I think a lot of people, especially in the media and on the right, have trouble distinguishing between anger and hatred. Anger can be useful if it is channeled productively; after all, the American revolution grew out of anger at the way the British were treating the colonies. Hatred, on the other hand, is a visecral and raw emotion that can only fester and destroy. I can be angry with someone and still like/love them; on the other hand, hatred blinds and kills.
The Right bases a lot of their basic philosophy on hatred of one kind or another. They have to constantly feed their anger, hence their perception of persecution and paranoia regarding the world around them.
I can’t imagine living in the ocean of fear that much of the Right inhabits.
An aside, Bryan… you might be surprised at my Second Amendment views. While I’m neither an NRA member nor particularly fond of guns, I do see the Founders’ purpose in protecting ownership of the tools of a “well-regulated militia.” OTOH, I’m not convinced that beered-up veeps incompetently wielding shotguns are afforded the same protections, at least not by the Second Amendment. YMMV.
For what it’s worth, I just sold my late father’s rifle to the same neighbor who is buying the trailer. It will presumably join the four rifles he already owns in the rack on his wall. AFAIK, he hasn’t criminally assaulted anyone with them, and I’ve long since stated that I do not oppose hunting for food, even if I don’t do it myself. There actually is a middle ground on this issue.
I do understand that you’re using this as an issue on which liberals sometimes publicly disagree, and I agree with you that utter unanimity on all issues, in the manner of the freepers, is far from a good thing.
Steve, I wish we could have a “well-regulated militia” in the 18th century sense: trained and disciplined. Everyone of “good character” should be be able to buy a weapon after they prove they can use one safely.
Cheney proved he can’t be trusted with a weapon. He didn’t identify his target before pulling the trigger.