The Confederacy of Dunces
April 15, 2008 6:34 PM   Subscribe

The Confederacy of Dunces. The Village Voice's comprehensive election-season guide to right-wing political bloggers, by Roy Edroso of alicublog.
posted by XQUZYPHYR (52 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- Brandon Blatcher



 
Best of the dreg.
posted by Poolio at 6:51 PM on April 15, 2008


COMUNISS!!
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:53 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


About that stupid/evil ratio: they're not mutually exclusive.
posted by Brian B. at 6:53 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Paging Ignatius J. Reilly.
posted by tellurian at 7:05 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 7:06 PM on April 15, 2008 [4 favorites]


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.
posted by jtron at 7:11 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


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.
posted by I Foody at 7:14 PM on April 15, 2008


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

?
posted by Brian B. at 7:18 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by Justinian at 7:19 PM on April 15, 2008 [5 favorites]


What the hell does Suburbative mean?
posted by nola at 7:20 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by emjaybee at 7:23 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


A "cuckoo bananas" score would probably be more informative than the stupid/evil ratio.
posted by never used baby shoes at 7:28 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:31 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


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, 2008 [3 favorites]


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.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:32 PM on April 15, 2008


This whole article makes my valve just want to seal right up.
posted by xbonesgt at 7:34 PM on April 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


Who?
posted by gwint at 7:35 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


What the hell does Suburbative mean?

Suburban + conservative?
posted by sharksandwich at 7:41 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by Drastic at 7:45 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by octothorpe at 7:46 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by caddis at 7:49 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by maxwelton at 7:52 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by device55 at 8:02 PM on April 15, 2008


Heh. Great article with funny, lol writing.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:16 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by Freen at 8:49 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by wendell at 8:57 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by kosher_jenny at 9:01 PM on April 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


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.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:13 PM on April 15, 2008


I liked that trading card profile format a lot. It made reading about jerkasses fun!
posted by ignignokt at 9:47 PM on April 15, 2008


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.)
posted by Makoto at 10:01 PM on April 15, 2008


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.
posted by Avenger at 10:17 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Never assume evil when stupidity is a sufficient explanation.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:41 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Somewhere Rachel Marsden is gnashing her teeth at being left off that list.
posted by jokeefe at 11:51 PM on April 15, 2008


Maybe shes trying to seduce/stalk Roy Edroso, the author of that list.
posted by Iax at 12:47 AM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:47 AM on April 16, 2008


"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
posted by Locative at 1:48 AM on April 16, 2008


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."
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 3:37 AM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by slater at 7:08 AM on April 16, 2008 [1 favorite]


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.
posted by pardonyou? at 7:17 AM on April 16, 2008


I feel like drinking a Dr. Nut and then heading off to my job at Levy Pants.
Or Paradise Hot Dogs.
posted by willmize at 7:18 AM on April 16, 2008 [2 favorites]


Instapunkit

I'm still pushing for the official funny name for this blogger to be "Glennnnnnnnnnnn Reynnnnnnnnnnnnolds". I no longer remember why though.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:31 AM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by COBRA! at 7:53 AM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by cell divide at 7:53 AM on April 16, 2008


No discussion of rational commentators who completely lost it post-9/11 would be complete without a mention of Phil Hendrie ParisParamus.
posted by caddis at 8:26 AM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by Justinian at 11:14 AM on April 16, 2008


You said it, cell divide.
posted by darkstar at 11:17 AM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by longdaysjourney at 11:36 AM on April 16, 2008


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.)
posted by JHarris at 12:37 PM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by octothorpe at 12:39 PM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by Caduceus at 2:37 PM on April 16, 2008


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.
posted by Zonker at 6:53 PM on April 16, 2008 [2 favorites]


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.
posted by caddis at 7:31 PM on April 16, 2008


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