Would someone please give Matt Stoeller of MyDD a lollipop and tell him to STFU?
There’s a discussion over at The Moderate Voice about whether the Jill Carroll affair damages the credibility of bloggers. I find this discussion irritating, because it cuts to a basic problem with the nonpartisan new media blog pontificators who don’t want to deal with the fact that the right-wing movement is populated by creepy racists. As such, they ignore the AM talk radio circuit and mainstream conservative publications, as if they weren’t part of the charge on Carroll, and pretend like this episode reveals something about ‘the blogs’. It doesn’t.
So let me spell it out. The Carroll thing is a fairly standard storyline that predates blogs. Right-wingers tend to hate a free media. Right-wingers tend to say creepy and racist things. Right-wingers tend to hate reporters who say that all isn’t apple pie in Iraq. This is true on the AM talk radio circuit, at the RNC, in the Oval Office, and on right-wing blogs. I mean the GOP.com blog even has a tag ‘good news from Iraq’.
This has NOTHING to do with blogs. Zero. This has to do with a flat-out racist and warmongering right-wing movement that doesn’t like a woman whose survival cuts against their narrative. So please stop lumping progressives like me in with the right-wing just because we both use a similar web-based publishing platform. NEENER, NEENER, NEENER, NEENER…
(Okay. That list bit was mine. But it isn’t entirely out of place, is it?)
I think at the moment I’m “tending” to throw up.
Actually, this one is an award winner. How many baseless (as in unspecified and unproven), scurrilous, laughably ignorant, witless, jaw-droppingly idiotic charges can one drooling, mouth breathing refugee from the cuckoo land that calls itself the “Reality Based Community” make and still be taken seriously by anyone over the age of 4?
This cannot be serious. There simply is no way that adults of any ideological stripe can read this drivel and say “I think the lad is on to something here.”
Besides being an execrable piece of writing (kinda cliche heavy there Matt, dontchya think?) one wonders what Stoeller had for breakfast. Whatever he ate that causes this much bile to rise in his throat, I suggest he switch to something a little more bland like bacon and eggs smothered in Tabasco sauce. Or perhaps a little Eggs Benedict with a side of raw Hungarian Peppers.
It wouldn’t do any good to try and “rebut” these “charges.” But of course, Mr. Stoeller is not making “charges” so much as he is annunciating a credo. And, like the Islamists he and his compatriots on the left continue to unwittingly and stupidly assist, their beliefs control their lives. Such inflexibility of thought brooks no opposition, no deviation lest their worldview collapse in a heap of broken verities and allow for the truth to blow away all their silly, stupid pretensions of moral superiority.
To quote Bugs Bunny, a philosopher and thinker as brilliant as Mr. Stoeller himself:
“What a maroon.”
UPDATE
Pat Curley has his own thoughts on Stoeller’s idiocy as well as some artwork that describes our buddy Matty to a “T.”
UPDATE
Jimbo in the comments reminds me of the #1 rule in journalistic combat: If you are going to attack someone, make sure you spell his name right.
I apologize to Mr. Stoller for spelling his name wrong. I guess that lets me out as a left wing Hollywood publicist who wouldn’t care about whether his client’s publicity was good or bad just as long as the actor’s name was spelled correctly.
As you can imagine, the loony lefties who visit here constantly spell my name wrong, insisting on spelling it Moron rather than the correct, Irish spelling which is Moran.
I don’t have the heart to tell them that the last time someone consistently spelled my name that way was back in the third grade when I was sitting next to Judy Pignataro who used to pass me notes with nothing but the word “Moron” written on it about a dozen times. The comparison holds up pretty well.
12:05 pm
Hey! Bugs is a far more brilliant thinker and philosopher than Stoller!
It seems to me that the way to get ahead in the Lefty blogosphere is to (as Kos once said) “be more of an asshole”. Matt clearly has taken that advice.
12:08 pm
Well Rick, you really showed him what a sane, articulate and thoughtful post looks like….
12:20 pm
I have to really disagree here. Sure, Matt’s post was not devoid of cliches, insults or attitude, but it actually seems less guilty of all that then your response is.
And his underlying point seems pretty valid. The Carroll-bashing phenomenon seems to me to be better classified as an example of the right-wing attack mode, than of any general tendency of the blogosphere. Blogworld is incredibly diverse, showing examples of the full range of human expression - i.e. some disgusting, some brilliant, a lot mediocre etc.
It is simply not the appropriate category for the Carroll-bashing phenomenon.
Rightwing attack mode however, does follow a pattern, and the Carroll-bashing fits it well. If you want to transcend partisanship, you could broaden the category to include attack-dogs of both sides, for the left has its share as well (though it does seem to me to be a larger and deeper phenomenon on the right). So lets just say that it was an example of the atack mentality in general.
12:31 pm
Tano, in three paragraphs he levels the racist charge three times despite the rather obvious fact that there is no racial angle to the Jill Carroll story. Talk about knee-jerk responses!
12:42 pm
Leveling the racist charge is part and parcel when attacking anyone on the Right. It’s automatic. It doesn’t necessarily have to apply to the subject, as long as it’s said loud enough and often enough.
12:55 pm
[...] Rick Moran sinks it here: [...]
1:32 pm
What Carroll said, by embracing the cause of our enemy, spoke volumes more than any statement she may have made either under duress or under the pressure from her handlers to extinguish criticism. Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon.
1:40 pm
uh, thank you… thank you very much
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the DailyKos cadre for pointing me to The Pirate Armada, which I discovered there while responding to my first (and apparently last) dKos diary entry.
I’d also like to thank them for taking all of …
2:46 pm
Heroes And Villains In Jill Carroll’s Release
Blogs have been the subject of both praise and scorn for their work in the story surrounding last week’s release of Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for The Christian Science Monitor who had been held captive in Iraq for nearly…
3:34 pm
What Carroll said, by embracing the cause of our enemy, spoke volumes more than any statement she may have made either under duress or under the pressure from her handlers to extinguish criticism. Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon.
Someone makes comments like this, but Stoeller’s the idiotic one? Weird.
Jaxebadt
3:55 pm
Tano:
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
The guy calls righties “racists” and “warmongers” and you have the balls to say “it actually seems less guilty of all that [name calling] then your response is.”
Get a fricking life.
4:45 pm
Um, if you gonna attack a guy, you better spell his name right. It’s rule number one of journalism.
8:05 pm
I guess the bloggers have about the same sort of “right/wrong” track record that the print media (NYT-nuff said), the Networks (CBS/Rather), or cable news (CNN Eason Jordan have. For a few examples. We just have to be discerning enough to tell the right and true from the crap. And if we’re here at this site, we’re smart enough to tell the difference, don’t you think?
8:36 pm
Rick,
I am not kidding you - are you kidding me?
Matt has “racist”, “warmonger”
You got:
idiotic
drooling
mouth breathing
refugee from the cuckoo land
[not to be]taken seriously by anyone over the age of 4
like the Islamists
silly
stupid
pretensious
maroon
All right, you win. You are the insightful deep thinker. Gee, can I have your life?
7:30 am
“How many baseless, scurrilous, laughably ignorant, witless, jaw-droppingly idiotic charges can one drooling, mouth breathing refugee from the cuckoo land that calls itself the “Reality Based Community†make and still be taken seriously by anyone over the age of 4?”
That, my friend, is poetry.