Category: Blogging

#Metaphor: Academics Sign Their Own Death Warrants by Defending Loomis

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Professor Erik “Head on a Stick” Loomis has established a new precedent in Online Civil Discourse: Any epithet-strewn obscene rant full of violent language against political opponents is acceptable, as long as you explain that it is a Metaphor Right-Wing Morons Can’t Understand.

We thank our enlightened progressive overlords for this blessing.

It has furthermore been established that if you are engaged in metaphor, and sympathizers of your political opponent quote you in such a way as to suggest that your sentiments are deranged, menacing and offensive, this is a “witch hunt,” and anyone who calls attention to this is “orchestrating a campaign” against the user of metaphor.

Such is the essential syllogism of “Statement on Erik Loomis“:

[W]e must stand by Loomis’s side and speak up and out on his behalf, for he has become the target of a witch hunt, and as an untenured professor at the University of Rhode Island, he is vulnerable. Loomis needs our solidarity and support, and we must give it to him. . . .
Glenn Reynolds is now accusing Loomis of using “eliminationist rhetoric.”
Other conservative voices have joined in. The Daily Caller says Loomis “unleashed a flurry of profanity-ridden tweets demanding death for National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre.” Townhall put Loomis’s tweets in the context of NRA members and leaders getting death threats. And just this morning, Michelle Malkin wrote at National Review Online [a column critical of Loomis] . . .
We do not expect any better of the orchestrators of this campaign—this is what they have done for many years, and doubtless will be doing for years to come. We do expect better of university administrators. Rather than standing behind a member of their faculty, the administration has sought to distance the university from Loomis. . . .

In other words, if Professor Wobbly-Gay-Lumberjack Dissertation fails to gain tenure at the University of Rhode Island, the haters win, and the academic right to use fucking bloody hate speech metaphor in Online Civil Discourse will be destroyed.

(Damn it, why did Ace of Spades have to take a vacation this week? How can this douchebag not receive the full-on AOSHQ treatment?)

Nevertheless, in order to show “our solidarity and support” for the unalienable right to employ violent obscene rants metaphor in Online Civil Discourse (and still get tenure at the University of Rhode Island), I will list the signatories to the “Statement on Erik Loomis“:

  1. Chris Bertram, University of Bristol
  2. Michael Bérubé, The Pennsylvania State University
  3. Henry Farrell, George Washington University
  4. Kieran Healy, Duke University
  5. Jon Mandle, SUNY Albany
  6. John Quiggin, University of Queensland
  7. Corey Robin, Brooklyn College
  8. Brian Weatherson, University of Michigan

Perhaps readers can offer appropriate suggestions for what should be done to these subversive Bolshevik intestinal parasites metaphors!

UPDATE: I’ll have to provide the dog-whistle translation for Professor William Jacobson’s eliminationist rhetoric here:

I don’t think Loomis should be fired

Instead, he should be castrated with pruning shears

but that doesn’t mean he should be free from criticism.

And by “criticism,” I mean “Birther lynch mob rage”

And he certainly is not a hero of anything.

Except to the Marxist traitors who voted for the Kenyan usurper!

He’s just a guy who

should have his eyes gouged out with rusty nails because he

wanted to deprive others of the rights he claims for himself.

Right-wing morons don’t understand metaphor, but our ears perk up quick when we hear that secret lynch-mob dog-whistle.





 

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I’d Always Taken ‘Valley of the Shadow’ As A Psalm 23 Reference

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by Smitty

Joe Fein has an important post up about dealing with existential issues. Go read/comment/link.

Americans come in all manner of shades, sizes and ideals.
One of the first lessons I learned in NYC was not to stereotype anyone.
All I can hope for is that we are treated as individuals, not as a group.

If I may offer a positive, non-prescriptive observation, I’ve never heard of a major atrocity committed by someone who:

  • Got decent rest,
  • Took exercise,
  • Ate reasonably, and
  • Was active in some community of faith.

The possible exception that comes to mind is Charles C. Roberts, but even the extreme case gets at my point: be engaged. The well-reflected life is not lived passively, disconnected from those in the immediate vicinity*. The social and political order of the country depends upon Americans NOT being sheep. Progressivism wants to build some Orwellian/Huxlian paradise, where Statism supersedes the Judeo-Christian emphasis upon the individual/family as the unit of societal analysis.

The struggle to be who we are and carry out or individual destinies is really where life is located, at least from a temporal sense. So be about that. Sorry, I can’t pull a “Just do what I did.” My own path was unique to an introverted Navy brat. Though, to divulge a secret, taking a prayerful read through the Bible was life-changing. Especially Ecclesiastes, for whatever odd reason.

The alternative is to permit these political creeps to sell your liberty short on the market for political power, and then use that power to beat you down.

Fight the good fight, Joe.

*Significant medical barrier notwithstanding, obviously.

Dan Collins and His Son

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Childhood Onset Schizophrenia — a condition rare enough that the doctor had never seen it. Guess somebody had to draw the short straw.

Damn. Hard luck, Dan. Did I ever tell you about the time I went all-in with a full house, and the other guy turned over four of a kind?

When I was talking to Cynthia Yockey earlier she offered a suggestion that perhaps Adam Lanza was misdiagnosed, and that he had another personality disorder that was mistaken for (or hidden by) Asperger’s syndrome. It was an interesting theory.

All six of our children have been healthy so far, and for this we should be grateful. Dan Collins and his family should be in everybody’s prayers.

Patterico on Tommy Christopher and the ‘Wheelerization’ of Steven Crowder

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You really need to read the article that Patterico put up about how Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher went “all-in” on the claim that a Michigan union thug’s assault of Steven Crowder was a hoax:

I would love to know where Tommy Christopher got the idea that Lee Stranahan and Breitbart.com had something to do with the Crowder video. Just who are the “[p]eople familiar with Breitbart ‘News’ videographers’ penchant for misleading edits” who “immediately smelled a rat” due to the (non)involvement of [Lee] Stranahan with this video?

How curious a coincidence, and how amazing that Patterico — while the rest of us spent the past four days all up in the Connecticut shooting and aftermath — maintained his focus on the Michigan story. But I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence. Remember what I wrote last week:

After yesterday’s incident in which labor union activists tore down an Americans for Prosperity tent in Lansing and sucker-punched Stephen Crowder, this headline zoomed up the Memorandum aggregation:
Breitbart Folks Appear to Fake Violence in Lansing
Huh? This was a decidedly odd piece of blogging: The claim that somehow the union thug clobbering Crowder was part of a right-wing hoax, based on such “evidence” as the event having been reported by “James O’Keefe’s buddy” Lee Stranahan — because, hey, if anybody at Breitbart thinks it’s actually news, that means it must be phony, right?
Also, the video was edited. Anybody who edits a video is obviously engaged in some kind of evil conspiracy.
What the hell is this silly gibberish? Are these people crazy?

Marcy Wheeler — who is Marcy Wheeler? And how was it that she got this same Stranahan/Breitbart meme about “deceptively edited” video that was ballyhooed by Tommy Christopher? Isn’t it interesting that Tommy also Wheelerized the Patrick Moran story?

Go read Ron Brynaert’s Pastebin file (which I found via Google by searching “Marcy + Wheeler + Rauhauser”) and notice that the names of Tommy Christopher (9 references) and Lee Stranahan (11 references) also occur in connection with the search for the still-mysterious “Jennifer George” angle on the Anthony Weiner scandal. “Alicia Pain” is also an element, along with the SWATtings of Patterico and Mike Stack.

Now go read Patterico’s post, which he projects as the first of a five-part series. Did somebody hit the “SMITE” button on his keyboard?

Still Crazy, After All These Years

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The loony bin, the funny farm, the nuthouse — it is not politically correct to refer to therapeutic institutions in such slang terminology, but this PC attitude of apologetic sensitivity toward the mentally ill doesn’t really help anyone, least of all the kooks themselves. If someone is dealing with clinical depression or paranoid schizophrenia, insensitive slang isn’t their biggest problem. It’s not even in the Top Ten.

Maybe you won’t take my word for it — hey, what do I know about being crazy? — but I’d urge you to heed my friend Lisa Graas:

Msgr. Charles Pope has written a personal story about mental illness that I recommend. He offers that people die from mental illness every day. His sister was among them. I have nearly been counted among them multiple times, having been put behind locked doors for my own safety. Mental illness runs in my family, and so, I am not the only person in my family who has spent time behind those locked doors. As Msgr. Pope points out, not enough people are behind locked doors for their own safety because too many people believe mental hospitals are “inhumane” ways to deal with the mentally ill. In reality, it is inhumane not to confine people who are a danger to themselves or to others.

Read the Monsignor’s story, and when you’re finished with that, go hit Lisa’s tip jar — every time someone hits her tip jar, an angel gets his wings.

 

‘Through a Plate Glass Window’: How Liberal Media De-Legitimize Dissent

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Patterico did a post yesterday about the “Accuse the Accusers” strategy that I meant to link and discuss at length, but I didn’t get around to it because new outrages were piling up quicker than I could keep track. In just the past couple of days:

  1. Stephen Crowder got sucker-punched in the head by Michigan union goon Tony Camargo;
  2. Hot dog vendor Clint Tarver was called the “n-word” when the Americans for Prosperity tent in Lansing was attacked by allies of the same goons who punched Crowder; and
  3. The son of Virginia Democrat Rep. Jim Moran pleaded guilty to an assault charge after police say Patrick Moran broke his girlfriend’s nose and fractured her skull during an argument outside a D.C. bar.

Perhaps you see a pattern here: Democrats and their political allies engaging in thuggish violence which no one could possibly defend or endorse. And in each case, liberals used a variation of the same distracting “Accuse the Accusers” defense: Whatever wrong was done by Democrats was minimized or dismissed as irrelevant in comparison to some greater wrong that liberals alleged had been done by the conservatives involved in calling attention to these incidents.

Call it “Wheelerization,” in tribute to the way Marcy Wheeler deliberately smeared Crowder as having somehow faked his own beating, simply because . . . well, James O’Keefe! Breitbart!

This magic incantation automatically de-legitimizes any story. Also, “selective editing,” as if there is such a thing as non-selective editing.

Today, the Left decided that Patrick Moran’s brutality toward his girlfriend was not a legitimate story because . . . Ace of Spades!

Leftwing Blogs Discover The Real Culprit
Behind Pat Moran’s Woman-Beating: Me

This Wheelerization of the Moran story was expertly performed by the ridiculous Tommy Christopher:

It’s a horrible story that highlights an important, serious issue, but shortly after the news was reported, Michelle Malkin‘s Twitter repository, Twitchy.com, had decided that the real villains were Rachel Maddow, Sandra Fluke, the media, Rep. Moran, and, somehow, me, while using Ms. Hoffman’s injuries as inspiration for pop-culture riffs. . . .
Finally, the folks at Twitchy chose to highlight a series of tweets that featured domestic violence-related riffs on Meadowlark Lemon, Star Wars, and even the headline from one of my columns.

Seriously, notice how this works: The story is not about the heinous brutality of Patrick Moran or the preposterously lenient sentence handed down to the son of a Democrat congressman (who, of course, has his own lengthy history of brutality). Nor is the story about the hypocrisy of liberals who routinely ignore or excuse such misconduct by Democrats while simultaneously accusing Republicans of being anti-woman.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Because the story can never be about the wrong done by Democrats, when Democrats do wrong, the media need some excuse to ignore it, or some pretext to make Republicans the bad guys: “Ken Starr is on a witch hunt! Everybody lies about sex! McCarthyism!”

And, unfortunately, Fox News functions as a foil for this tactic: As soon as Media Matters, Crooks & Liars, Firedoglake, DailyKos and others in the merry band of disinformation blogs find some connection between a story and Fox News — “Crowder and Malkin are both hired stooges of the Murdoch empire!” — then no journalist at CBS, NBC, ABC or the New York Times can possibly treat the story as serious and important, or else his inbox/Twitter feed will blow up with angry messages accusing him of betraying the cause by repeating right-wing lies.

Did I ever mention that studies have shown journalists vote Democrat by margins of at least 7-to-1? And that most reporters, editors and producers are therefore emotionally predisposed to tell stories that favor Democrats and avoid stories that favor Republicans?

This is why, in the Patrick Moran case as in so many other cases, the Left endeavors to distract from the facts of the story by focusing on the political orientation of those telling the story: “Twitchy is run by Malkin and Malkin works for Fox — not a legitimate story!”

Also, Twitchy quoted Tweets by Ace of Spades in which he made sarcastic reference to Tommy Christopher, and therefore Tommy’s a victim, because conservatives hate Legtimate Journalists.

Logic so sharp it could split atoms.

We are watching the Spencer Ackerman idea of smashing conservatives “through a plate glass window” — never mind the truth, just win.

This brute-force approach to Narrative Management is astonishingly successful. Allahpundit is in such a fugue of despair about it that he has resorted to linking me to prove his case:

If you’re a reporter and you’re taking conservatives seriously, you’re doing it wrong. [Chris] Matthews goes so far as to identify Romney’s utterly benign aside in the second debate about “binders full of women” as one of the reasons the media should move, en masse, even further to the left. That’s not a serious critique; it’s a fig leaf of outrage designed to apply pressure towards the desired political outcome. And it works.

You should read the whole thing because, after all, it’s not every day year I get linked by Allahpundit. Meanwhile, returning to the original model of Wheelerization, Patterico recounts this colloquy:

Wheeler: You said Crowder shouldn’t report the assault!
Me: Except I didn’t say that. Prove I did!
Wheeler: Incredible that an ADA doesn’t think crimes should be reported!
Me: Except I didn’t say that. Prove I did!
Wheeler: Wow. I think I’ll tell your boss that you don’t believe in reporting crimes.
Me: Except I didn’t say that. Prove I did.
Wheeler: Sheesh. A law enforcement officer saying crimes shouldn’t be reported. Can you believe it?
Me: Except I didn’t say that. Prove I did.
Wheeler: Looks like it’s time to ask your boss why their ADA thinks crimes should not be reported.
Me: Except I didn’t say that. Prove I did.
Wheeler: [more of the same, ad infinitum]

Marcy Wheeler’s narrative involved the argument that Crowder should have filed an assault charge against his attacker before reporting it as news, and she got it in her mind — an idée fixe — that Patterico had somehow discouraged Crowder from filing charges. Because he is by trade a prosecuting attorney, it might somehow be construed as wrongful for him to be “saying crimes shouldn’t be reported,” and so Wheeler began repeating this allegation as if the repetition proved it was true, and as if Patterico had an obligation to prove himself innocent.

“Accuse the accusers,” see?

As for Marcy Wheeler’s absurd claim, let me offer this example: Hunter S. Thompson was once brutally stomped by the Hell’s Angels, and never reported it to the police. Thompson was a journalist writing a book about the Hell’s Angels, and it might not have been altogether ethical for him to be trying to put several of them in jail for assault as a complainant while he was also being paid to tell their story.

And let’s face it, Thompson was on shaky ground from a legal standpoint, because he witnessed a good deal of other criminal behavior by the Angels that he never bothered reporting to police.

The story you’re covering is more important than whatever hassles you suffer as a consequence, and if those hassles involve getting your head bashed in — well, hey, that’s part of the coverage, too. In that sense, Crowder’s big day in Lansing was totally gonzo.

Speaking of hassles and important gonzo stories, I was intrigued yesterday by that Pastebin file in which Ron Brynaert mentioned Marcy Wheeler in connection with Neal Rauhauser and Patterico and SWATting and the Anthony Weiner scandal. Just happened to find that when, on a crazy hunch, I Googled “Marcy + Wheeler + Rauhauser.”

Maybe just a coincidence. Maybe not.




 


REPORT: @NadiaNaffe’s Lawsuit Against @Patterico Flounders in L.A. Hearing

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The diligent John Hoge calls our attention to the report at Popehat which indicates that the plaintiff was unable to show a valid claim during a Monday hearing in federal court.

Admonishments against sarcasm are duly noted.

Meanwhile — and I’m sure this is just a coincidence, Neal Rauhauser — the pro-Kimberlin trolls decided to create a slam-dunk case of Twitter terms-of-service violations against themselves. One account has already been suspended, and others are likely to suffer the same fate shortly.

It is important to remember why the cyberstalking harassers do what they do. It’s about defending their patron saint, Brett Kimberlin.

So every time they start jumping up on Twitter, I respond by Tweeting out the facts about their hero: “When ‘Jessica’ Was 10, 11, 12.”

How’s that “brass knuckles reputation management” workin’ for ya?

The Neitzschean Existential Angst of Blogging in the Same Sphere as Ace

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OK, the pretentious title is both:

  1. An anti-intellectual mockery of show-offs who throw around terms like “existential angst”; and
  2. An honest admission of inner doubts about my own relevance, given that at least half my blog-shtick is ripped off from Ace.

While I’ve improvised, adapted and, perhaps to some extent, genuinely innovated on the AOSHQ model, the derivative nature of my act is still something I occasionally bump my head against.

Back in the day when I was trapped in a desk-editor’s job at The Washington Times, I’d look over the fence at the green grass of the blogosphere and say, “Wow, those guys are actually having fun.”

Nobody was having more fun than the AOSHQ Morons. So when I finally stepped across the fence, it was certain that I was going to try to do something Ace-ish with my own personal corner of the ‘sphere. And discovered, inevitably, that it ain’t nowhere near as easy as it looks.

You know how, when you were a kid watching baseball, you’d see the games on TV and then go out in the backyard to play ball with your friends? And you weren’t exactly clobbering homers over the fence in every at-bat? As a matter of fact, you were striking out a lot, and hitting foul balls that broke out the neighbor’s window?

People who succeed at something are usually very good at what they do, and tend to make it look a lot easier than it actually is. So if your idea of a career plan is, “Hey, I’ll learn to play guitar like Yngwie Malmsteen,” good luck with that. If everybody could do it, there would be no distinction or honor in the achievement, and it’s the same way with me trying to be an Internet Funny Guy Like My Hero Ace of Spades.

He’s just a hell of a lot funnier than me, so I have to figure out some other formula for “value-added” besides the funny stuff. Also, there’s a lot more to Ace than just the wisecracks, and his serious stuff is pretty damned awesome, too. Either way, it’s a mighty hard dollar, this independent blogging racket and, nearly five years into the gig, my appreciation of Ace’s work has increased rather than diminished. Continue reading The Neitzschean Existential Angst of Blogging in the Same Sphere as Ace →