Rod Dreher Finds the Subtle Nuances in Mass Murder

Rod Dreher was shocked by the story of a Texas man whose wife and children were slaughtered by his daughter and her friends. But he wasn't shocked by the brutal murder itself. Murders happen all the time. Big deal. What shocked him was a passing remark by the father who survived the attack by Erin, his little murderess. After he moved his family from the small Texas town of Celeste (pop. 800) to the liberal Emory (pop. 1200) his daughter was subject to the horrors of big city debauchery. "Emory has a lot of bisexual kids; it's like it was almost cool to be bisexual. One of the first things that happened was some girl wanted to be Erin's little girlfriend. And I was like, 'That ain't happenin'.' "

Dreher was understandably shocked by this revelation. "This is a tiny East Texas town -- and there's a bisexual culture in one of them, among the teenagers?" he wrote. "WTF? What do I not get about teenage life these days? What do I not get about the cultural air kids breathe? I am so not going to give my children over to this culture, if I can help it." If for some reason Dreher's children decide to murder him, though I can't think of any reason why they would off the top of my head, at least he'll go to his grave comforted by the thought that he saved them from the evils of bisexuality.

But as horrifying as this story of bisexuality is, it does have a silver lining. As soon as Erin's parents realized that the public schools in Emory were cesspools of bisexual Bacchanalia, they took their kids out of school and started home schooling them. When they re-enrolled Erin in public school three years later, she was armed with the values she learned from being home schooled and didn't fall back into a lesbian lifestyle. Instead, started dating an 18-year-old boy, which must have been a big relief to her parents. Unfortunately, it was this boy who then helped her murder her family. But if you look past the murders, this story actually has a happy ending because it shows that it is possible to save our kids from homosexuality and that should give Dreher some solace when he gets over his shock.

Unfortunately, some people willfully misread Dreher's column and claimed that Dreher was saying that bisexuality caused the murders when in fact he was just focusing on the most horrific aspect of the story. Dreher is used to being willfully misread like this and having his values and priorities questioned. Recently, for example, he wrote a column pointing out that our "social decline" did not begin with the Sixties but back in that dark period known as the Enlightenment. "The question, though, is not whether the Sixties (or the Enlightenment) were good or bad, but whether on balance the Sixties (or the Enlightenment) were good or bad. I answer in the negative," he wrote. Again, some people misread his column to mean that he thinks we should revive slavery or the Inquisition. But if you read his column carefully, you see that he is just saying that on the whole things were better before we had homosexuality, abortion, feminism and horseless carriages even when you balance those things against slavery and torturing heretics.

But Dreher is not the only conservative intellectual who is sadly misunderstood. Unfortunately, a lot of liberals just don't get the subtle nuances of some of Rush Limbaugh's thinking either. Some conservatives, like David Frum, are saying that Rush does not help our cause when he says, for example, that he wants President Obama to fail. Others even claim that we should be disingenuous and talk down to people instead. "The problem is, Americans have short attention spans and don’t always do nuance well," says one of our most nuanced thinkers, Paterico.

But I agree with Jeff Goldstein who says, "I don’t want to have to measure every word I say with the thought in mind that somebody is going to take me out of context. Instead, I’d like to be free to say what I mean." Goldstein is tired of pandering to people who think "it’s just too damn difficult to demand that what we mean be presented honestly, and so rather than fight that kind of complicated battle, it’s best just to learn to self-edit in a way that placates those who don’t do nuance well."

Although I often don't understand what Goldstein is trying to say, it would be a tragedy if he tried to pander to people like me and write things that people can actually comprehend. And I don't think Dreher should worry if people believe that he cares more about bisexuality than murder or that he wants us to return to a time when people who were not Catholics like him were burned at the stake when that is not what he is saying at all. And if some people cannot understand the subtle difference between wanting Obama to fail, plunging America into a Great Depression or wanting Obama's policies to fail, plunging America into a Great Depression, then is it really worth the energy to try to explain to them what Rush really meant?

So I hope that conservatives will say more things that can be taken out of context by the liberal media and continue to make subtle distinctions that can't be understood in 30-second sound bites. It is time for us to gird our loins (whatever that means) and fight complicated battles. Sure, we might lose a few elections and we might give people the false impression that we are homophobic or racist or misogynist or that we want America to fail and be punished for its decadence, but that's a small price to pay to hold on to our integrity, which is what is really important. Instead of making compromises, the way to get back into the good graces of the American people and start winning elections again is to stick to our guns and not be afraid to call Americans who don't understand what we mean "idiots." And if you don't think this is a winning strategy, then you're an idiot.

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Swift Reactions 10: Curtis Sliwa Gives Jon Swift Some Slum Love

I have often said that if you want to see what conservatives will be saying tomorrow today this modest blog is the place to go. WABC radio host and former vigilante (in a good way) Curtis Sliwa not only reads this blog, he invited me on his show last night, Thursday, February 26, to talk about why Gov. Bobby Jindal is America's Slumdog Millionaire, which I wrote about here. After I wrote that piece, Mr. Sliwa also referred to Gov. Jindal as a "slumdog millionaire" when he interviewed Republican chairman Michael Steele and even got Steele to send out some "slum love" to Gov. Jindal. I must confess I'm not really sure what "slum love" is and in fact I didn't understand a lot of their interview as most of it was conducted in hip-hop, or as we used to call it, jive talk. I explained to Mr. Sliwa at the beginning of our interview that I am still a little rusty when it comes to speaking in this new Republican vernacular but I did my best and I've been studying this video (which the RNC should send out to all of its members) to help me learn how to speak like a real Republican:



Mr. Sliwa, who loves Gov. Jindal as much as I do, agreed with me when I said that Gov. Jindal is "the new face of the Republican Party" and that comparing him to what he called the "feel-good movie of the year" was apt. Update: Here is a recording of my appearance on the show:



Unfortunately, however, some people apparently took offense to referring to Gov. Jindal as a "slumdog millionaire," such as Amitabh Pal, writing on a website called The Progressive, which claims to have been on the Internet since 1909, which strikes me as being highly unlikely. He wrote that "comments relating to [Gov. Jindal's] Indian background" are "repugnant" and insultingly referred to my piece as "satirical." He also took issue with the photo I used to illustrate it, calling it "a weird-looking photo of Dev Patel," who is the star of Slumdog Millionaire. I must admit I did get a little mixed up and actually thought it was a photo of Gov. Jindal, though I think this illustration does go with the theme of the piece (and I don't know what is so "weird" about it) so I don't think it's necessary to change it or post a correction as I did when I accidentally posted a photo of Thurgood Marshall in a piece about Clarence Thomas.

While I'm used to being criticized by liberals like Mr. Pal, I was very upset when he then attacked one of my dearest commenters, Bukko in Australia, who wrote, "I applaud Gov. Jindal's efforts to make Louisiana into a replica of the slums of the country where his ancestors came from. Look what a roaring success India is! Why shouldn't New Orleans be as prosperous as Mumbai? The weather's just as bad, and although I've never been to the Black Hole of Calcutta (yes, I know it's politically correct to call it Kalicut now) I reckon it must smell a lot like Bourbon Street." Mr. Pal said his remarks were "totally uncalled for," though I'm not sure who called for Mr. Pal's remarks. While I don't agree with everything my commenters say, Mr. Pal, they are my guests and I will not stand for someone insulting my guests. If anyone is going to insult them, it should be me. What's more, Mr. Bukko cannot even defend himself because The Progressive does not allow comments. Maybe websites did not have the technology to allow for comments back in 1909 when The Progressive supposedly started but we do have such technology in the 21st century so I suggest that your 100-year-old software may be due for an upgrade.

Another frequent commenter, yellojkt, implied that I should have compared Gov. Jindal to Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock as he and a number of others did. I hope he won't take this the wrong way but I have to say I agree with my good friend Ann Althouse that comparing Gov. Jindal to a white person would be racist. If I had thought about it, I might have compared Gov. Jindal to the film director M. Night Shyamalan, like the unidentified bloggers Mr. Pal refers to in his Progressive piece, though I think such a comparison would have been unfair considering Mr. Shyamalan's career trajectory. It did occur to me to compare him to Ramesh Ponnuru or Dinesh D’Souza, but after Mr. Ponnuru called me a "feminist racist" for this piece I thought it better to let sleeping slumdogs lie. I'm afraid being called a feminist again at The Corner would seriously damage my reputation. I might also have compared Gov. Jindal to Amitabh Bachchan, the actor who is featured in an early scene in Slumdog Millionaire, is the former host of India's version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, and shares a Christian name (or perhaps, more correctly, a Hindu name) with Mr. Pal. Although Gov. Jindal does not bear a physical resemblance to Mr. Bachchan, they do share a certain wonkiness, which goes right over my head, at least from the evidence of this clip from one of his films, where he sounds a little like Jeff Goldstein:



In fact, some of the comments from my readers go over my head, too. Comrade PhysioProf used quite a lot of esoteric scientific jargon in his reference to Gov. Jindal's criticism of volcano monitoring. "Eleventeen f---tillion gigajoules of magmatic energy is no match for the home-spun down-to-earth common-sense ingenuity of real hard-working Americans!" he wrote. I don't have a clue what he was trying to say and I could not find any of these terms in Conservapedia, which as Dave S and Barefoot Bum rightly pointed out, is the site I should have mentioned as a home-schooling reference instead of the liberal, Wiccan-influenced Wikipedia. My bad, as the hip-hoppers say. (See, I'm learning.)

Finally, while The Progressive may be afraid to let its critics comment on their pages, I am not only unafraid of criticism but I am also fearless enough to highlight the attacks of my harshest critic, Anonymous. In response to my piece "President Bush's Legacy: One of Our Greatest Presidents" Anonymous wrote, "Good luck getting ignorant fools to believe this crock of crap!" As usual there was no need for me to defend myself because another commenter, Gentlewoman, immediately stepped up to the plate and slayed Anonymous with an allusion to one of President Bush's greatest triumphs. "Mission Accomplished!" she wrote. Indeed, if I can get even one ignorant fool to believe what I write, I do feel like President Bush on that aircraft carrier.

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Swift Reactions 7

As I am feeling a bit too lazy to write an actual blog post today, I think it is time for another edition of Swift Reactions, where I focus on what you, my dear readers, have written and do as little of my own writing as possible. And this week I focus as well on what my non-readers are saying about me after not reading what I have written.

One of the great things about having a blog is that sometimes I get to interact with people who probably wouldn't give me the time of day if I met them on the street and asked them what time it was. My piece "Journalism 101," which laid out a handy list of the 20 basic Rules of Journalism, provoked responses from a number of real journalists who emailed me or commented on their sites, including Eric Alterman, Dan Gillmor, The Spokesman-Review, Ed Cone, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Aregood of The Guardian, Jeff Cohen (who sent me a very kind email) and Dan Froomkin, who emailed me to say cryptically that he found my piece "painful." But perhaps none was so generous as former Vanity Fair writer Jesse Kornbluth, author of six books I have not actually read and founder of Head Butler, who took time out of his busy schedule to send me an email schooling me on the finer points of journalism. "You worked on your high school paper --- could you have worked on your college paper with those views? Doubtful," wrote Mr. Kornbluth. "I practiced the craft for 30+ years. At a high level. I love objectivity. But 'John Kerry lied about his service' and 'John Kerry is being slandered' --- that, pal, is where journalism BEGINS, not ends. You get the bucks to find the truth. And report it clearly, while acknowledging the path that led you there. But why I am writing to you? You wrote for a high school paper. And now you have a blog. And you're a finalist in some blog contest. Is this a great country, or what?" Indeed, it is a great country, Mr. Kornbluth, and I'm happy to see you have not forgotten Rule No. 3, that "journalists are Americans first, journalists second and human beings third."

Rule No. 6 according to the Rules of Journalism is "If both liberals and conservatives criticize you, that must mean you are doing something right," and considering all the negative feedback I got for this piece, I must have been doing something right. Not surprisingly, much of the harshest criticism came from my most frequent commenter, Anonymous, who has been acting very strangely recently. Either he has developed multiple personality disorder or a number of different commenters are impersonating him. Michael Plank, Julia and Porlock Junior all pointed out that Anonymous was coincidentally once Joe Klein's pseudonym. It wouldn't be too surprising if Klein himself might have commented here as Anonymous, though he would no doubt deny it vehemently. In fact, he would probably stake his credibility on it. While Anonymous did not deny being Joe Klein, he did deny being Mark Halperin, Ann Coulter, Alex Rawls, and Michael Fumento, which narrows down the possibilities considerably.

Anonymous called my piece on Mark Halperin "line after line of waspish, envy driven ad hominem," and called my "Journalism 101" piece " a huge load of excrement" and claimed his "head just exploded" after reading it, which sounds quite painful and certainly was not my intention. My friends Carl and Chuck Butcher valiantly defended me throughout these threads and Chuck even challenged Anonymous to post a comment on his own blog under a recognizable moniker, which he did in this post under the name "a reasonable conservative," apparently in tribute to me. (Type the words "reasonable conservative" into Google and hit "I'm feeling lucky" and see what happens.)

Several of my critics boasted proudly here and elsewhere that they could not manage to even read the entire piece before they felt compelled to comment on it. I have long said that you don't have to read a book to review it and I have to admit sometimes I can't even read my own posts all the way through, much less entire posts on other people's blogs. In fact, recently, someone I have never heard of reviewed my blog, but I'm afraid I have no idea what she said because the type just seemed a bit too small for me to bother reading the review. I did, however, leave a comment thanking her for the review and expressing how much I liked the background color and the little icons she appended to the end of the review. I do hope it was a positive review.

Not reading the work of someone you are criticizing also seems to be surprisingly popular in the halls of academia, where I thought reading was actually required as part of the job description. Professors Jeff Goldstein and Ann Althouse, perhaps fearing that their heads might literally explode, both claimed that they had not read my blog before launching very personal attacks on me. Mr. Goldstein not only claimed several times that he had not read a post he then proceeded to subject to painful semiotic analysis, he even claimed, somewhat dubiously, that he had actually gone to the post's page and scrolled down (no doubt with one hand covering his eyes as he pressed the PgDn key with the index finger of the other) in order to attack one of the comments on the piece.

When I left a comment on yet another of Ms. Althouse's continuing series of anti-Hillary pieces saying that it appeared to me if Hillary got elected she might suffer the same unfortunate fate as David Broder, a comment that was full of genuine concern for her health, she took it all wrong and lashed out at me. At first it was quite upsetting, though then I realized that may just be how she expresses affection. "Don't you think you should have to be more of a wit to live up to your name?" she asked me. I replied: "I don't quite understand how living up to my name, which I have said on many occasions is a tribute to the brave Swift Boat Veterans, requires me to be witty anymore than your living up to your name requires you to be a creaky old house." When I pointed out that she had apparently misread the piece, she replied, "I didn't read your piece. Don't flatter yourself," implying, it seemed, that her actually reading another person's work before she attacked that person was a privilege she bestowed only on a rare and worthy few. "Who's flattering whom?" I wondered.

Both Goldstein and Althouse are teachers and if any of their students are reading this, they might like to know that they don't have to bother reading any of the assigned texts (since their teachers probably haven't) or worry about putting too much effort into papers they write for class because their professors are probably not going to read those either before giving them a low grade. If you can now get a job at a university without having to read and you can just spout whatever crazy things happen to come into your head, then this just might be a line of work for which I am especially suited.

Not all of the comments on my recent pieces here were negative ones, of course, and there were some very constructive contributions to the discourse. Commenting on Mark Halperin's proposal that journalists stop covering campaigns like horse races, Out of Context suggested, "It may be easier to improve things by changing the way horse races are covered." My good friend Miss Cellenia very kindly said, "No one ever needs to say anything about journalism again, because you've covered it all here," which considering her exhaustive and encyclopedic coverage of everything from Alien Abduction to Zombies was very high praise indeed. skippy the bush kangaroo paid me a very kind compliment by starting a rumor that I not only write all of the comments on my blog but all of the comments and posts on his blog as well, which I don't mind people believing but I am forced to deny. But perhaps the best suggestion I have received recently was from -- you guessed it -- Anonymous, who said, "I can only assume that George Soros pays you by the word." All I can say to that is from your lips to George Soros' ears.

Swift Reactions 6

Last week I received an email from one Alex Leo that began "Dear Jon (which I am sure is not your real name)." It was an invitation to join a new comedy site called 236.com, a joint venture between Arianna Huffington and Barry Diller, both very funny people. I assumed she was writing to me because this modest blog was declared by the Weblog Awards to be the third-funniest blog on the Internet and because of my expertise in comedy and that her salutation was a humorous reference to my recent battle with Facebook on behalf of Pseudonym-Americans. Of course, I am always eager to join any club that is willing to have me as a member, but then Ms. Leo informed me that I would need to send her a color picture of myself and my real name. At first I wondered if this was some kind of trap set up by my creditors to trick me into revealing my personal information and a quick look at the quickly slapped together "comedy" site did nothing to allay my suspicions. When I told Ms. Leo that I would be unable to comply, she said that the site has a "non-anonymity rule" and she would be withdrawing her invitation. She claimed the rule is designed to foster a "personalized relationship between our bloggers and our readers." It's the kind of "personalized relationship" that is only possible, I suppose, on a site where all the main stories are unbylined and comments are disabled.

It's bad enough that I must once again suffer discrimination because I am a Pseudonym-American, but when Ms. Leo devalues our relationships as well she has gone too far. Are the personal relationships of Pseudonym-Americans any less worthy than the relationships of "real name" Americans? Apparently the relationship that Mark Twain had with his readers was not "personalized" enough for the editors of 236, and this made him somehow less funny. Now, of course, the bond I have with you, my dear readers, is not on the same level as the religiously and legally sanctified marriage bond I have with Mrs. Swift, that Barry Diller has with his wife Diane von Fürstenberg or that Britney Spears had with Kevin Federline, but it is at least as worthy as a gay relationship or the relationship the anonymous writers of 236.com have with their non-commenters. Ms. Leo concluded by saying, "We think this is important for our readers and for our reputation of standing behind what we publish 100%." So while 236.com may not be the funniest comedy site on the Internet, you can rest assured that it stands 100% behind stories like "George Bush Is a Junkie." Even if this blog does not have quite so good a reputation as 236.com, I am grateful for the relationship I have with my readers. In fact, Mrs. Swift sometimes jokes that I spend more time with you than I do with her and has suggested on many occasions, "Why don't you just marry your blog?"

Lately, I have been particularly proud of the comments here. I think that in the wake of the Writers Guild strike, many are beginning to realize that writing for free is not such a bad thing after all and soon everybody will be doing it. Mr. Hepplewhite, for example, can post his lovingly crafted mini short stories here without having to worry about "notes" from moronic studio executives. I'd like to think that as the money writers make from writing dwindles and the aggravation they get from producers and editors grows, they will always be able to come here to express themselves without any interference or remuneration at all.

My post on the treasonous lady Bridge players sparked a particularly heated discussion here that was a veritable banquet of food for thought as a commenter on one Bridge forum pointed out. Apparently, this incident is the biggest thing to happen in the cut-throat world of competitive Bridge since the Lanzarotti-Buratti cheating scandal in Tenerife 2005, and we all know what a terrible ordeal that was. ZenYenta wondered if there would have been a problem if the sign was worded differently. Kevin Hayden created his own new and improved sign. My most frequent commenter, Anonymous, wrote a very moving tribute to what freedom means in the world of Bridge. "At a bridge event world champions mix with beginners and those from oppressed countries mix freely with those from those of us blessed to live in freedom," Anonymous wrote. "Using this stage to air what are personal political views undermines the whole concept of an organisation free from political shackles." In other words, real freedom can only exist in an environment that is free of distracting free expression. Anonymous went on to say, "You may have the right to bare arms but it would be irresponsible to bare them in a public school," a point that fish enthusiastically seconded: "I too think bare arms in school is atrocious. Long sleeves for all!!"

After the United States Bridge Federation's attorney Allan Falk sent me an email calling me a "nutjob" and comparing me to Ted Kaczynski, I wrote him back to thank him for his very kind words and offered him a chance to respond to the charge of one of my commenters, Den Valdron, who said, "Their legal counsel has embarrassed himself and his entire profession with an unprinciples and offensive stand. A lawyer should talk sense to his clients, not cater to their worst impulses." Mr. Falk replied almost immediately, which I'm sure will make Susie Bright doubly jealous: "I can't do my job and worry about what outsiders think of me. I'm representing the USBF as a volunteer, and have been targeted by both sides for caustic comments. Being very pachydermatous and concerned only with fulfilling my responsibilities to my client, I don't let such things bother me." Frankly, I had no idea what "pachydermatous" meant so I looked it up and according to the dictionary it means "like an elephant," which left me even more confused. How exactly is Mr. Falk like an elephant? I wondered. Does he have a long memory? Is he afraid of mice? Does he have big ears or a long trunk? If a group of blind men touched different parts of him would they each think he was a different animal?

Mr. Falk was not the only luminary from the world of Bridge who wrote to me. Robert "Bobby" Wolff, who has won 11 world championships and 30 national championships, and was quoted in the original piece on the "criticize-one's-leader-at-a-foreign-venue-in-a-totally-nonpolitical-event exception to the First Amendment," wrote to me in an email, "This is of course a complex question. We have not heard the last of it. The TV and blogs will keep us involved for longer than we care to be, I suspect!" Possibly even longer than that, Mr. Wolff. And "World famous" Bridge player Petra Hamman wrote me to say, "It would be so refreshing if journalists gathered all the facts before publishing so much self-serving hyperbole…" Mrs. Hamman, I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, my post did elicit some criticism, most notably from someone calling himself "Man enough to admit he's afraid of morons like you," who said, "Jon, You are truly terrifyingly stupid. I'm more fearful of idiots like you than anything overseas. "

While I encourage free-wheeling discussions on my blog, other blogs have a different purpose. KT Cat's blog, The Scratching Post, is not just a blog, it's a work of art. "I've been deleting one or two of my old posts and portions of just a few others lately," he wrote recently. "For me, this blog is as much an artistic expression as it is a recording of thoughts and interactions with friends. Painters remove some unwanted brushstrokes and poets rewrite lines. The end goal is a work that expresses you and not the steps it took to get there." One of the "brushstrokes" KT Cat decided to remove was this statement, which I wrote about here: "Blacks in America have become the perfect laboratory for the consequences of annihilating traditional sexual mores. At 70% illegitimacy, they have destroyed civilization at the molecular level. Still think it doesn't matter? Live it up, guys. Enjoy."

Unfortunately, some critics gave him very bad reviews for this statement because they believed that blaming blacks for the destruction of civilization was somehow racist. KT Cat responded by deleting those bad reviews from his blog, something I'm sure a lot of artists wish they could do. Now, I had to delete my notorious April Fool's Day post this year to avoid a nasty lawsuit, but I think KT Cat may have taken this whole creative destruction thing a bit too far. When he complained on his blog that "lefties" were unfairly characterizing his post as racist without actually referring to the words that led to this charge, I thought I would helpfully direct his readers to places where they could read what he said like here and here so that they could see just how unfair those "vicious" attacks were. But Mr. Cat deleted my comment and replied, "Dude, take a long look at this blog and then fill in the blank in this sentence. 'I make this blog better at what the author wants to do with it by __________.' Hint: The correct answer does not involve giving me moral instruction." Unfortunately, I have to admit, Mr. Cat, I am at a complete loss as to how to make your blog better. Perhaps, more cat pictures and less sociological analysis would help.

He may want to get some pointers from Jeff Goldstein, a writer and teacher at a private college, who has turned his blog into a performance piece entitled "How To Guarantee That I Will Never Be Offered a Better Job at a Big Name School." This way we can always point to Jeff Goldstein as an example of how conservatives are discriminated against in academia. Usually, I have no idea what his posts mean at all. He is vaguely more lucid when he is attacking people for making fun of him for thinking Michelangelo painted the Mona Lisa or engaging in homoerotic verbal fisticuffs though not much more enlightening. I think he was worried that someone might mistake the murkiness of his prose for profundity so he brought on someone named Dan Collins to make sure that that any potential employer will definitely think twice about hiring him. Some thought Collins had put the final nail in the coffin of Goldstein's future career when he called Glenn Greenwald a "faggot," but apparently Goldstein didn't think that was enough to permanently blackball him. So Collins decided to help out by attacking his ex-girlfriend from 25 years ago (though the pain of his emasculation stings like it happened yesterday).

At first, even Goldstein thought Collins might be going over the line (and apparently succeeded in getting him to take down her personal information, which Collins had posted for other stalkers). I was puzzled because I thought the conservative strategy was to go after gays, immigrants and Muslims first and then go after our ex-girlfriends. Had the strategy been changed without informing me or had Collins gone rogue? Apparently, Collins has the blessing of Jeff Goldstein, however, because he is still posting there and is completely unrepentant (and if you have a lot of time on your hands, check out the comments to this post). I think we can all safely run those "Harvard Discriminates Against Conservatives Because They Won't Hire Jeff Goldstein" posts now. Maybe we can convince Harvard to make amends by hiring KT Cat as an artist in residence since he isn't racist at all.

Update: In a comment on his blog, Jeff Goldstein attempts to school me in the semiotics of comedy in a last, desperate attempt to impress members of the Modern Language Association: "I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of having Mr Swift comment here before. Talk about bringing the funny! The whole, “did I miss something? I though conservatives hated gays, Muslims, and immigrants most of all” schtick never gets old. I mean, the mock confusion — as if his worldview has been shaken? Comic genius. I’d bow down before him, but that would be a bit too Muslimish. And f--k if I’ll even inadvertently show respect to those brown bastards…"

Update 2: In yet another follow-up post, Dan Collins pleads for understanding, invoking the Pachydermatous Man defense: "What I’ve done is so unforgivable that Jon Swift is waving my balls around his head like a bolo. When I point this out, I am special pleading." Not only does he claim to have had no idea that attacking one's ex-girlfriend and linking to her private information is considered stalking, he also doesn't seem to realize that referring to another blogger and not providing a link is considered very bad manners. I believe both of these lessons are taught within the first days of blogging Kindergarten, which Collins may have to repeat next year if he's not careful.

Update 3: More comedy lessons from Jeff Goldstein, who devotes an entire post to railing against me and absolving himself from responsibility for anything that happens on his blog. And Dan Collins just can't stop writing about me. Apparently, I struck a nerve.

Update 4: Simon Owen has a very thoughtful post at Bloggasm about KT Cat, which includes some comments from Mr. Cat himself, who claims that his contention that blacks are destroying civilization is based on "statistical analysis" and that only "slavering, rage-filled crazies" could possibly disagree with him since he has "advanced degrees in mathematics."

Proud to Be a Chickenhawk

Jeff Jacoby, writing in the Boston Globe this week, attacked the use of the insult "chicken hawk," which is often hurled by anti-war activists at those who support going to war but have never served in the military. "'Chicken hawk' isn't an argument. It is a slur -- a dishonest and incoherent slur," writes Jacoby. "It is dishonest because those who invoke it don't really mean what they imply -- that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force." You can imagine the frustration and anger conservatives feel at having this insult lobbed at us. Considering all of the thought and hard work we put into coming up with various rationales for the War in Iraq, it hardly seems fair to respond by making personal attacks against us. We conservatives are morally opposed to ad hominem attacks and use them only as a last resort. The fact that these left-wing Moonbats (as we conservative bloggers endearingly refer to liberals) feel they have to resort to name calling just shows that they have no argument.

In response to Jacoby's article liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald jumped into the fray, claiming that Jacoby has "completely distorted" what "chicken hawk" means. He says that it is not merely aimed at those who advocate war without having served in the military but "is the belief that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness. A 'chicken hawk' is someone who not merely advocates a war, but believes that their advocacy is proof of the courage which those who will actually fight the war in combat require."

Greenwald has become something of a bête noire for conservative bloggers lately. Ever since he accused some conservative bloggers of hypocrisy for making death threats against Supreme Court Justices and New York Times editors, many of them have been on the warpath against Greenwald, undermining his credibility by attacking his résumé, pointing out that he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), revealing that he spends half the year in Brazil with his boyfriend who cannot spend more than six months in the U.S. (though he is perfectly free to marry a woman if he really wanted to stay here) and investigating whether he or someone from his household has allegedly been posting comments in other people's blogs under various names that are not their own, a practice known as "sock puppetry" (and something no conservative blogger would ever do). Hiding under more than one pseudonym, of course, is a despicable practice and the revelation that prominent blogger might have done this (though he denies it) has sent the right-wing blogosphere into a frenzy. Once Greenwald adopted the persona "Glenn Greenwald" he should have stuck to it as any expert in blogger etiquette will tell you.

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse, who delightfully calls Greenwald "Your Puppetress," which cleverly spoofs both Greenwald's sexual orientation and the accusations of sock puppetry in one fell swoop, has attacked Greenwald for defending the use of the unjustifiable ad hominem attack "chicken hawk," accusing him of trying to redefine the word to win the argument. Liberals are always trying to create new, broader definitions of words to win arguments. For example, liberals would have you believe that the word "torture" should include things like waterboarding and that we should follow the vague definition outlined in the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. signed, which defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person." The Justice Department tried to clear up all this ambiguity by defining torture more precisely by saying it "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." As Jeff Goldstein, whose blog Protein Wisdom was the Archduke Ferdinand of this latest blog war, points out in a balanced piece about how liberals want to kill your children, "controlling the narrative--first by bending it to fit your will, then by repeating it until it becomes provisional 'truth'--is at the heart of a progressive 'activism' that, let's face it, has failed to win people over using an unrigged marketplace of ideas." In other words, because liberals know they can't win arguments with ideas they have to resort to redefining words and making personal attacks.

However, the more I thought about the term "chicken hawk," the more I wondered if it really is an insult. Jacoby says that if in fact only people who serve in the military could advocate military force, then "US foreign policy would be more hawkish" because "soldiers tend to be politically conservative." Apparently, if we let the military decide when to use the military we would be at war all the time, which would wreak havoc on the economy. In fact, according to Jacoby, the American system of government is based on the idea that civilians have supremacy over the military. "Those who wear the uniform in wartime are entitled to their countrymen's esteem and lasting gratitude," he writes graciously. "But for well over two centuries, Americans have insisted that when it comes to security and defense policy, soldiers and veterans get no more of a say than anyone else."

Cliff May, writing in the National Review's blog The Corner, agrees that we should not be giving more weight to the opinions of military men. He says that in fact conservatives who advocate military action though they are not in the military are equally important as the soldiers themselves fighting in Iraq. "There is a war of arms. And there is a war of ideas," he writes. "They are not just inter-related, they are interdependent. They are equally consequential."

But I would take this one step further. I think that the fact that we pro-war bloggers are not in the military makes our voice even more important than the opinions of people in the military. Liberals who call people "chicken hawks" have got it backwards. I think that people who have never served in the military should be the only people allowed to advocate military action. While pro-war advocates who have never served in the military have the necessary detachment to objectively analyze the military situation without being distracted by emotion, people who have served in the military have lost all perspective. Look at people like Jack Murtha, who is "a rank coward" according to one conservative blogger and "a traitor," according to another, or John Kerry, whose reputation will never recover from the attacks of the brave Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Then there are all the generals who came out recently against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's leadership of the War in Iraq, who were accused by the right wing of insubordination after the fact. Clearly, these former military men have had their point of view distorted by their experiences in the military. On the other hand most of the men responsible for the success in Iraq, including Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush, Dick Cheney and the neo-cons on his staff have never served in combat. I think what many in the conservative blogosphere are saying to the military is that while we value your military service, you cannot really be trusted to make policy. So while I object to the use of ad hominem attacks like "chicken hawk" in principle, I wonder if it is really an attack at all.

There was a time when I felt guilty about the fact that I have been unable to serve in the military because of my inconveniently located boil, which as I have said before is a malady that I am proud to say Rush Limbaugh shares and is the reason he didn't serve in Vietnam. I realize now that it is the very fact that I have not served in the military that gives such enormous weight to my urging other people to fight in places like Iraq. Unlike Mr. Jacoby I am not angered by liberals referring to me as a chicken hawk. In fact, I am proud to be a chicken hawk.

Jon Swift, Chicken Hawk, Chickenhawk, Chicken-Hawk, Sock Puppet, Jeff Jacoby, Glenn Greenwald, Rick Moran, Jack Murtha, John Kerry, Iraq, War on Terror, Terrorism, Bush, Foreign Policy, Politics, Beltway Traffic Jam, Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots OTA #19, Blue Star Chronicles Open Trackbacks, carnival of Trackbacks LXXIX

Shooting Frisch in a Barrel

In a severe blow to our Second Amendment rights Louisiana became the 22nd state this week to ban Internet hunting. Internet pioneer John Lockwood came up with the brilliant idea to let hunters shoot exotic animals on a game farm in Texas from the comfort of their own living rooms, without having to suffer such inconveniences as severe cold or the sun getting in their eyes or other hunters' faces getting between them and their quarry. Sportsmen from around the country had the opportunity to sit in front of their computers in their pajamas, order up the game of their choice, aim the crosshairs with their mouse and shoot. Their prey was then mounted and shipped directly to their homes.

Unfortunately, some Luddite legislators don't appreciate that Internet hunting represents a shining example of what the Internet does best, which is to give people a sense of distance and objectivity that frees them from the distraction of having to deal with the messy consequences of their actions. Sadly for Deb Frisch, though, she learned the hard way that sometimes the virtual hunter can become the prey when the conservative bloggers sighted her in their crosshairs. Like the unfortunate creatures on John Lockwood's farm, Ms. Frisch didn't have a chance once she had become a target conservative sharp shooters. And before the left-wing blogosphere even had time to take their virtual bee-bee guns out of their holsters, they had already lost the latest blog war.

Jeff Goldstein is one of the most respected and thoughtful bloggers on the right side of the blogosphere. Michelle Malkin calls him an "inspiration." Mike Patterico marvels at his "clever way with words," which should not be surprising since he is a semiotician and a former college English professor. He delights in battling commenters on his blog with his cocky and colorful wit, which often involves virtual dueling with his male member, which is apparently quite large, at least in Internet inches. I think it would take a semiotician, such as, well, himself, to deconstruct what lies behind this phallocentric obsession, but it's all in good fun.

At first Dr. Frisch, an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona, thought she could play with the big boys when she posted increasingly disturbed comments on Jeff Goldstein's blog, going so far as to say she saw Goldstein as "not human at all." However, she crossed the line when instead responding to Goldstein's sexually charged ripostes with counterripostes aimed at Goldstein himself, she made threatening comments about his two-year-old son. The fact that the comments were easily traced back to Frisch and that she made no attempt to hide her identity after taunting fellow commenters by saying "Bring it on!" hints at a persecution complex that would take a professional psychologist, such as, well, herself, to adequately analyze.

Conservatives were shocked that Frisch would break the sacred covenant that all bloggers follow, which reserves ad hominem attacks only for very special circumstances and attacks on family members only as a regrettable last resort. Many conservatives already believe that liberals are somewhat disturbed and see liberalism itself as a dangerous pathology. Some believe that liberals have a "death wish" and that their ultimate goal is suicidally "destroying the West." Ace of Spades believes that the "madness" of liberalism is the result of their not being able to comprehend how an intellectual like Jeff Goldstein could possibly be a conservative. You can imagine how difficult it is to have rational discourse with an opponent you think is deranged so the fact that conservatives are even able to talk with liberals at all is a testament to our remarkable civility. But when someone like Deb Frisch seems only too eager to present herself as Exhibit A for Moonbat insanity, it is too much for conservatives to resist.

Conservative bloggers piled on like a swarm of killer bees, not only writing outraged posts on their blogs about Frisch but also inundating Frisch's boss with thousands of emails demanding that she be fired. They also did everything they could to make sure any future employers will be well aware of this incident if they do a Google search on her name. Bad credit may disappear after seven years, but the Google cache lives forever. By the end of the weekend she had become a poster child for unhinged liberalism and had been utterly destroyed personally, badgered into resigning from her position at the University of Arizona and suffering the ignominy of having her name turned into an Internet verb. All in a day's work for the right-wing blogosphere. Just imagine if Frisch had represented an actual threat!

But where was the liberal blogosphere while all this was going on? Apparently, liberal bloggers were too busy over the holiday weekend spending time with their gay families and plotting the destruction of America to bother reading the comments section of Jeff Goldstein's blog, which was suspiciously down for much of that weekend due to a denial of service attack. I suppose if Osama Bin Laden himself had left a comment on Goldstein's blog, liberals would claim they didn't notice. But Confederate Yankee took their silence to be more serious than mere inattention to the latest right-wing blogswarm. He theorized that they were signaling approval with what he called the "toddler-threatening community." No matter that this community consisted of only one member, by not condemning Frisch promptly, liberals had become unindicted co-conspirators in the war against America's children. When liberals finally returned from their weekend leisure activities, they offered lame excuses for not hanging on every word that is spouted on right-wing blogs and tardy condemnations of Frisch. "What Frisch did was vile," said Brad at Sadly, No, while Talk Left denounced Frisch's "inexcusable behavior," comments that are sadly typical of the equivocal and ambiguous condemnations of Frisch by the left.

Days later--an eternity in the blogosphere--Glenn Greenwald stepped forward, not to defend Frisch, but to point out what he saw as hypocrisy among conservatives. He highlighted a jocular post by Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, who, with his inimitable sense of humor, called for the lynching of Supreme Court Justices and recommended "shooting the koranimal swine" at Guantanamo. Apparently, liberals don't have a sense of humor. Not content with shooting Frisch in a barrel, conservatives decided they would teach the liberal blogosphere a lesson by going after bigger prey, someone with a blog many people actually read and who also has a book on the bestseller list to boot. Little Green Footballs called Greenwald "the left's most dishonest blogger." Sister Toldjah called him a "hypocrite." Patterico said he was a "douchebag." Glenn Reynolds, as usual, cleverly stayed above the fray by subtly distancing himself from posts he gleefully linked to that attacked Greenwald, while simultaneously managing to get in a few digs at the liberal blogger himself. And Dan Riehl not only called Greenwald a "twit of the left," he attacked Greenwald's credentials as a lawyer and investigated his New York bar status. That should teach Greenwald to be more careful the next time he tangles with the right-wing blogosphere. As Jack Murtha learned too late, the conservative blogosphere takes no prisoners when it comes to enforcing standards of civil behavior, though I might add that if we did take prisoners we would be perfectly justified in torturing them since they wouldn't be covered by the Geneva Conventions.

While virtual hunting maybe dead for now in 22 states, John Lockwood certainly has a visionary idea of the potential the Internet holds for the future. We may not be able yet to fire an actual gun over the Internet at exotic game or Supreme Court members or Muslims or New York Times editors or illegal immigrants or liberal bloggers, but we can fire virtual and rhetorical guns at them, which I suppose will have to do for now.

Jon Swift, Deb Frisch, John Lockwood, Internet Hunting, Jeffrey Goldstein, Glenn Greenwald, War on Terror, Second Amendment, Supreme Court, Weblog, Blogosphere, Internet, Conservative, Liberal, Politics, Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots OTA #17