WATBs

Recently the Washington Post shut down one of its user comments sections because harsh language was being used.

"Howell's inadvertent error prompted a handful of bloggers to urge their readers to go to post.blog to vent their discontent, and in the subsequent four days we received more than a thousand comments in our public forum. Only, the word "comments" doesn't convey the obscene, vituperative tone of a lot of the postings, which were the sort of things you might find carved on the door of a public toilet stall. About a hundred of them had to be removed for violating the Post site's standards, which don't allow profanity or personal attacks.

To my dismay, matters only got worse on Jan. 19 after Howell posted a clarification on washingtonpost.com. Instead of mollifying angry readers, the clarification prompted more than 400 additional comments over the next five hours, many of them so crude as to be unprintable in a family newspaper. Soon the number of comments that violated our standards of Web civility overwhelmed our ability to get rid of them; only then did we decide to shut down comments on the blog."

So whines Jim Brady.

As many people have correctly pointed out, the Post still hasn't gotten this right: Abramoff donated only to Republicans, and some of his clients did donate to Democrats, but in lesser amounts than they had previous to Abramoff's influence, and there appears to be no evidence, none at least offered by the Post, that funds offered to Democrats were directed by Abramoff. He was busy ripping off these various tribes, so it's far more likely they were giving money to the Dems to spite Abramoff. rather than to please him.

Point is, it's a Republican scandal, but the Post still clings to the fiction that it's bipartisan.

The point I'd like to make, though, goes more towards political strategy than to facts and spin. And it has to do with the very language that Brady cries about.

The rightwing noise machine has been levelling harsh words, to say the least, against the liberal left (which is anybody politically left of Mussolini,) for decades now.

"A late January 2002 quote from Coulter's address to CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference).

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

Her words were applauded by National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, and Lynne Cheney (wife of Vice President Cheney), all of whom were in attendance."

From the venerable pie-target Ann Coulter. So not only are roughly half of us fellow Americans likely to become traitors, a few of us need to be killed just to set an example.

We all know the names. Hannity, Limbaugh, Wiener A.K.A Savage, Hewitt, and the rest of the porcine meaty pieces stewing in the belly of the beast.

Well, it turns out that they are very thin-skinned, and we on the reality-based end of the political spectrum can easily draw their attention simply with the creative use of coarse language. The rightwing noise machine has been doing this for years, but because of their so-called family values, they've always held back.

I do that myself on this blog, as generally the language I use here stays within vague bounds of propriety.

But let's face it: people like Jim Brady are Whiny-Assed Titty Babies, to the core, and the more we call them on that, and the more we assure them that if they just did their jounalistic jobs we'd let up maybe just a little, the more they pay heed.

From the Atrios' comments section on Jim "Wanker of the Day" Brady:

"Jim Brady is SUCH a sensitive flower.
Is it because his dad jacked off in a flower pot and Jim came up a blooming idiot?"

bo | 02.11.06 - 8:32 pm | #

More:

"Well I think he's giving us some very valuable information here. When we hit them the same way that the right has been hitting them for years, we draw blood. We've got to keep on doing whatever it takes to draw blood. Eventually at least some of them will figure out that if they're going to get beaten up no matter what they do, they might as well go ahead and print the truth. I say we flood the WaPo again telling him what a WATB right-wing hack he is. Oh, and he's still a liar."

Hecate Malificent | Homepage | 02.11.06 - 8:44 pm | #

And my personal favorite:

"As a liberal Democrat I've been called a communist, a socialist, a terrorist, a terrorist-sympathizer, objectively pro-terrorism, a terrorist appeaser, a traitor, a fascist, an Islamo-fascist sympathizer, a collectivist, a Fifth Columnist, a fag, a fag-lover, an elitist, an intellectual elitist, a moonbat, an idiotarian, a welfare cheat, a heretic, a baby-killer, a hater of troops, a hater of America, a tree-hugger, a pussy, a liberal pussy, a liberal faggot, an anti-Christian bigot, a Nazi, and a Bush-basher.

Only the last one has any basis in reality.

So when Jim Brady accuses me or any other liberal commenter in blog-land of obliterating genuine, civil discussion, my friendly suggestion to him would be to go tie himself to a rail fence and take 20 inches of stallion up his tailpipe."

Buzz Bomb | 02.11.06 - 8:44 pm | #

Oh my. People who fight back. Well, I say when they're down, don't just kick them. Crotch-punch 'em hard then twist their little squirrel hangers off and shove them up their gaping brain-ports so far they choke on 'em. And when they puke out their own well-travelled macadamias, feed 'em to the dogs. Lying whiners. Uncivil indeed.