Shakespear’s Sister and Glenn Greenwald respond to “The Left, Online and Outraged” in today’s WaPo by David Finkel. He want to make the case that the lefty blogosphere is all about neurotic, angry nutjobs blinded by hatred of Bush and the GOP.
Shakes nails why I blog:
I blog because their leadership is thoroughly incompetent, corrupt, untrustworthy, and beholden to corporate and conservative Christian interests that are bad for me as a worker, a consumer, a believer in the separation of church and state, and a woman who values her bodily autonomy—and bad for the LGBT community, the poor, the ill lacking healthcare, undocumented workers, public school children, and lots and lots of other people, not to mention bad for our civil rights, the environment, national security, the economy, our international reputation, etc. etc. etc.
That’s exactly how I feel about the administration and my motivation for blogging. I wasn’t angry about Bush winning in 2000, I was dismayed that he was allowed to steal the election here in Florida. I was astounded that so many Americans would vote for such an obvious empty suit shill for wealthy corporate interests. Then came 9-11, and like many others I rallied our president, such as he was, because we were attacked and bloodied by a small group of radical Islamists.
I was supportive of the war in Afghanistan, but have never understood the determination with which the nation was dragged into Iraq. About that same time, the realization of what Bush was doing with tax policy became clear (see my post on Krugman’s op-ed below). It’s about incompetence and lies, not which party is in charge.
Glenn rants about the shear dishonesty and intellectual laziness displayed by Finkel:
The tactics in the article are as intellectually lazy and empty as they are transparently deceitful and trite. There is no cheaper or emptier form of argumentation than to isolate a specific individual, describe her, and then, without any basis, ascribe those attributes generally to some larger group — in this case, a much, much larger and more diverse group — of which she is ostensibly a part. Anyone who has even minimal exposure to “the blogosphere” knows that it is insusceptible to the sort of sweeping generalization oozing from every misleading paragraph in this article.
The classic straw man attack on left blogs rings hollow to those who know anything about the blogosphere. Finkel was clearly cherry picking his example comments and posts to suit an a priori assumption to a pre-ordained conclusion. I have my moments of anger about the state of affairs in this country, but it’s based on proven incompetence and mendacity from the Bush administration, not from a pathological hatred for Bush. To me he’s an empty suit serving a purpose for others. His job is to be the likable guy that makes falsehoods, idiotic tax policies and disastrous foreign policies seem like the right thing to do. To sort of “catapult the propaganda” as W once put it.
