Comments on: The Confederacy of Dunces

The Confederacy of Dunces

XQUZYPHYR — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:34:28 -0800

The Confederacy of Dunces. The Village Voice's comprehensive election-season guide to right-wing political bloggers, by Roy Edroso of alicublog.

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:43:00 -0800

Single-page version here for people who hate multiple-page list articles.

By: Poolio

Poolio — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:51:38 -0800

Best of the dreg.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:53:51 -0800

COMUNISS!!

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:53:59 -0800

About that stupid/evil ratio: they're not mutually exclusive.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:05:59 -0800

Paging Ignatius J. Reilly.

By: Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America

Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:06:46 -0800

About that stupid/evil ratio: they're not mutually exclusive. Right. A stupid/evil ratio wouldn't make any sense if stupid and evil were mutually exclusive. I guess we knows yours now.

By: jtron

jtron — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:11:19 -0800

Nice little article; love to see the same author do a write-up on the other side of the aisle. I guess we knows yours now. MPDSEA, I didn't know you were Skwizgar from Metalocalypse.

By: I Foody

I Foody — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:14:45 -0800

But still having a stupid to evil ratio is silly, say you compare McCardle and Malkin. McCardle is much less stupid but also less evil. Little green footballs is particularly stupid and particularly evil. So using ratios instead of just points makes comparing these jerks less fun.

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:18:45 -0800

Right. A stupid/evil ratio wouldn't make any sense if stupid and evil were mutually exclusive. I guess we knows yours now. ?

By: Justinian

Justinian — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:19:40 -0800

Now, now, MPDSEA, what Brian clearly meant is that a "stupid/evil ratio" only provides half the information we need for a real evaluation. The other metric being "total amount of stupid&evil". For example, while it may or may not be true that Charles Johnson of LGF has a stupid/evil ratio of 40/60, that number doesn't provide the whole picture. The whole picture being that the amount of both stupidity and evil at LGF is staggering. It's like they gave a bunch of 1920s brownshirts frontal lobotomies and then dumped them all in an echo chamber where they can jerk eachother off while drool runs down their chins and they vacantly stare at the walls, mumbling about defeatocrats and islamofascists.

By: nola

nola — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:20:16 -0800

What the hell does Suburbative mean?

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:23:16 -0800

I thought I knew them all, but some on there I hadn't seen. I don't know if I would call Lileks prominent anymore; he's a lifestyle blogger, and also doesn't blog for the Trib anymore. (grumble) And the "large-breasted" blogger attacked by Althouse was Jessica Valenti at Feministing, and she's a perfectly normal-looking person*; Althouse and her hurf-durf-breasts fellow bloggers were simply insane. I wish the writer had pointed that out, instead of making Jessica sound somehow freakish. Link to the whole stupid blogtempest here. *not that this matters; my point is, the writer compounded Althouse's error with his characterization by focusing on Jessica's appearance and not the true reason she was attacked, which was because Althouse is cuckoo bananas.

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:28:15 -0800

A "cuckoo bananas" score would probably be more informative than the stupid/evil ratio.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:31:30 -0800

What the hell does Suburbative mean? My guess is that it's a non-exclusive, non-mutual 1:1 ratio of suburb and combative, as in the usual crop of keyboard warriors who hate what ~~black~~ ethnic people do in urban environments, would never stoop to live in the city, yet blahg endlessly about the imminent collapse of ~~white culture~~ civilization as we know it because of rap music.

By: jtron

jtron — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:31:41 -0800

Careful, that's Metafilter's Own Ann Althouse you're talking about. She could appear just through the repetition of her name, like Bloody Mary.

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:32:37 -0800

Poor Lileks. I wish he'd just stuck simply to collections like Interior Desecrators ... and kept them all available online instead of pulling most from view to fill a damned book.

By: xbonesgt

xbonesgt — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:34:15 -0800

This whole article makes my valve just want to seal right up.

By: gwint

gwint — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:35:08 -0800

Who?

By: sharksandwich

sharksandwich — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:41:16 -0800

What the hell does Suburbative mean? Suburban + conservative?

By: Drastic

Drastic — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:45:34 -0800

I'd argue that Lileks' stupid-evil ratio should lean much more strongly to stupid, because the non-political stuff generally painted a picture of a good heart, just a, you know, somewhat dim one. But the ratio across the lot suffers a lot from the lack of a third axis, as mentioned.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:46:51 -0800

I used to read most of these blogs via. Salon's Blog Report but in they've gone and canceled that feature. I miss my daily dose of nuttery.

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:49:46 -0800

Ahhh, I've met Althouse and she is really quite a bit scattered sometimes. It comes out in her blog to be sure. I've also heard that if you take one of her courses you don't have to face your grades for months afterwards, which kind of sucks because I hear they are great courses.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:52:42 -0800

Lileks reminds me of a local radio personality up here in rain city named Dori Monson. A harmless, likable person who did a lot of cultural observation and other meaningless but pleasant drek until 9/11, when he went batshit insane. Now, as far as I can tell, he advocates shooting anyone swarthier than he is.

By: device55

device55 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:02:49 -0800

Lileks makes me sad. Back in his day, when he was 'on', he could be really funny. After 9/11 happened he went crazy-go-nuts - and beneath the ranting you could easily make out that this grown man was just really really scared.

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:16:51 -0800

Heh. Great article with funny, lol writing.

By: Freen

Freen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:49:06 -0800

gwint: Your point bears repeating. These lunatics get less combined traffic than either mefi or the complete opposite of the spectrum, dailykos. These people are ranting on soap boxes. Their message would reach the same number of people were they shouting in your average subway station in NYC.

By: wendell

wendell — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:57:12 -0800

By his recycling of old media that he could feel safe was either out of copyright or abandoned by its creators and sponsors, Lileks set himself aside from all the other "commentators" whose modus operandi of copy, point and laugh risked legal repercussions. Which somehow made him 'beloved'. As Instapunkit would say: "Heh." The article could have been much funnier as well as more vicious and more accurate (and yes, I mean all at the same time), but it'll have to do for now.

By: kosher_jenny

kosher_jenny — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:01:33 -0800

Careful, that's Metafilter's Own Ann Althouse you're talking about. She could appear just through the repetition of her name, like Bloody Mary. posted by jtron at 7:31 PM on April 15 I can believe that. I mean, she already killed that hobo, she's liable to do anything.

By: Optimus Chyme

Optimus Chyme — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:13:57 -0800

Althouse is a fucking nutcase. Bevets without the charm, Malkin without the irony. And like every blogger mentioned in the article, hideously self-absorbed. I think she only has an account here so she can talk about herself. Fifth-tier internet quasifame was never so undeserved.

By: ignignokt

ignignokt — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:47:29 -0800

I liked that trading card profile format a lot. It made reading about jerkasses fun!

By: Makoto

Makoto — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:01:43 -0800

I was actually looking forward to seeing the writer's take on Redstate, but it doesn't appear he elected to include it, despite the fact that it's far more popular than many of the blogs he did include. That's a pity, since it's the one conservative blog I find more or less reasonable, and therefore more or less readable. I would've been interested to know if there was some seamy underbelly of the site that I'd been missing. (Ditto Hot Air. Although not something I'm inclined to read myself, it is one of the most popular conservative blogs on the web.)

By: Avenger

Avenger — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:17:45 -0800

Count me as someone who followed Lileks before 9/11 for the witty Americana/nostalgia but then grew gradually disillusioned with his newfound belief that the War on Terror is the new World War II, Saddam/Osama are Hitler, GWB is Roosevelt and so on. You can tell that he wants to live in the 1940's so bad -- you know, back when The Boys were kickin' ass across the Pacific and you could follow the course of the War on a map with little red and blue arrows showing where the Front is. Lileks isn't evil -- just lost in time. Charles Johnson, OTOH, is a repugnant brown shirt who would have been equally at home as an anti-semite had he been born in a previous era or some other country. I followed his blog shortly after 9/11 because of the translated Al-Jazeera stories that he would post -- but eventually got turned off by the apparent Jewish-supremacy tone of the website. Theres a not-so-fine-line between saying that Israel has a right to exist in peace and saying that Arabs are sub-human who deserve nothing but death because they "only understand violence". I haven't visited either website in a long time but I imagine that the content is still mostly the same.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:41:23 -0800

Never assume evil when stupidity is a sufficient explanation.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:51:38 -0800

Somewhere Rachel Marsden is gnashing her teeth at being left off that list.

By: Iax

Iax — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:47:37 -0800

Maybe shes trying to seduce/stalk Roy Edroso, the author of that list.

By: Ian A.T.

Ian A.T. — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:47:50 -0800

No discussion of rational commentators who completely lost it post-9/11 would be complete without a mention of Phil Hendrie. Hendrie had the brightest, funniest, most slyly subversive radio show on the air, and then after September 11 he became just another ranting right-winger. (Though he still claimed to be a Democrat, he was pro-Bush and pro-Iraq.) Actually, it was totally weird, because his comedy bits were STILL bright, funny, and slyly subversive, but whenever he was out of character and just doing a host segment, it was like a whole different guy was on the air. Ah man, in spite of everything, I still miss Phil Hendrie.

By: Locative

Locative — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:48:11 -0800

"It's so depressing that 'people of color' has replaced 'colored people' . . . the practice is just one small sign of how completely the racialist Left has abandoned the moral juggernaut that was Martin Luther King's original argument: that everyone should be judged by the content of their character . . ." ARGH JONAH GOLDBERG AAAAAAAAHHHH

By: Emperor SnooKloze

Emperor SnooKloze — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:37:00 -0800

Gah. I'm not sure anyone brings the (presumptuous, self-absorbed, ill-informed, nutbar ) stupid like Jonah Goldberg. "Liberals... are actually... FASCISTS!!! And I'm going to bloviate for several hundred pages so you can see just what sort of fever-dream projection I'm engaging in when I say this."

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:16:51 -0800

kosher_jenny, there is no evidence that Ann Althouse is any way connected to hobo murders. She has never been convicted of any hobo murders by a jury of her peers. Please stop spreading false allegations about Ann Althouse and hobo murders.

By: slater

slater — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:08:52 -0800

Loved the write-up of LGF... I used to visit his site religiously pre-9/11, mainly cos he had interesting things to say about web-dev stuff. Then 9/11 happened, and his toilet backed up. I remember sitting there, reading his nationalistic gibberish, and wondering why the fuck I had his site bookmarked.

By: pardonyou?

pardonyou? — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:17:37 -0800

What the hell does Suburbative mean? Suburban + conservative? My guess is that it's a non-exclusive, non-mutual 1:1 ratio of suburb and combative, as in the usual crop of keyboard warriors who hate what black ethnic people do in urban environments, would never stoop to live in the city, yet blahg endlessly about the imminent collapse of white culture civilization as we know it because of rap music. Funny that Lileks lives in Minneapolis. I'd argue that Lileks' stupid-evil ratio should lean much more strongly to stupid, because the non-political stuff generally painted a picture of a good heart, just a, you know, somewhat dim one. Yes, Lileks is "stupid" and "dim." Unless your metric for those terms is "the extent to which his views differ from mine," there's no basis for those claims.

By: willmize

willmize — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:18:37 -0800

I feel like drinking a Dr. Nut and then heading off to my job at Levy Pants. Or Paradise Hot Dogs.

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:31:11 -0800

Instapunkit I'm still pushing for the official funny name for this blogger to be "Glennnnnnnnnnnn Reynnnnnnnnnnnnolds". I no longer remember why though.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:53:15 -0800

I don't know if I would call Lileks prominent anymore; he's a lifestyle blogger, and also doesn't blog for the Trib anymore. Pfft. The Strib just made him a Metro columnist; where he's a little less than impressive. His role is to be the God Cop half of the Strib's new conservative columnist array. When the Governor handed down some extremely contentious big-deal line-item vetoes (funding for a light rail branch, every City of St. Paul project he could get his hands on), Lileks responded with a har-har column about an outstate sheet music museum that got vetoed, completely ignoring the contentious shit that mattered.

By: cell divide

cell divide — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:53:35 -0800

I kind of feel with a lot of these guys that they're punishing us just because they were totally ignorant about what was going on in the world pre 9/11.

By: caddis

caddis — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:26:28 -0800

No discussion of rational commentators who completely lost it post-9/11 would be complete without a mention of ~~Phil Hendrie~~ ParisParamus.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:14:58 -0800

Yeah. I agree with ParisParamus that Bush should be impeached. I don't think he ever quite recovered from that one; just sort of slunk off into the darkness in a puff of hypocrisy.

By: darkstar

darkstar — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:17:46 -0800

You said it, cell divide.

By: longdaysjourney

longdaysjourney — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:36:50 -0800

I wonder if any of these people will pull a John Cole and join the reality-based community (Lileks, maybe?). I can't explain how heartening it is to read posts like this and realize there are still conservatives out there who have the maturity and decency to admit they were wrong. Gives me hope.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:37:50 -0800

This may be off the topic slightly, but is worth noting Lileks just did a RiffTrax with Mike Nelson. (seems Mike is actually a bit righty, although he isn't obnoxious about it.)

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:39:06 -0800

longday, Cole at Balloon Juice is one of my favorite bloggers now but I'm sort of amazed that no one seems to have followed him out of the wilderness. Even with all the evidence piled up over the last seven years of how totally wrong the right has been on everything, most of them refuse to admit that they were (or could be) wrong.

By: Caduceus

Caduceus — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:37:09 -0800

there are still conservatives out there who have the maturity and decency to admit they were wrong. Too bad none of those are in government.

By: Zonker

Zonker — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:53:20 -0800

Never assume evil when stupidity is a sufficient explanation. Point well-taken, Stavros, but remember that on the other hand any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from evil.

By: caddis

caddis — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:31:09 -0800

there are still conservatives out there who have the maturity and decency to admit they were wrong. yadda, yadda, yadda. It only matters when we see it. I haven't seen much of that.