January 27, 2006 by s.z.

FYI The the three things that liberals despise in that photo of Chris F. are, per him: The Holy Bible, an American proudly waving the flag and, of course, Dean Christopher Flickinger: I think we can all agree that he got that last one right.  But I have to say that your answers for the other two are much more persuasive. And, as a bonus, here's part of "the Dean's" column "Pandora's Box is Now Wide Open" -- in it, he falls off the Terri Schiavo slippery slope, starts an avalanche, and is crushed by falling boulders.  (It's from March 2005 -- Chris's Human Events Online gig seems to have ended last year, possibly because he needed to save all of his God-given talent for the Nitwits, er, Network of College Conservatives.  Or possibly because he found that yet another job was too fake for his tastes.  In any case, it's HEO's loss.) A pregnant woman who learns her unborn child will go through life with a severe handicap now has a couple of options. She could abort the baby altogether, but that's a costly procedure in terms of both money and health! So now she can choose to deliver the child, starve it to death (a cheaper option), and be innocent in a court of law. Poor Chris -- he believes that it's both cheap and easy on a woman's body to deliver a child.  I blame that childhood exposure to Rush Limbaugh. As our nation embraces social Darwinism, don't be fooled into believing its kiss of death pertains only to those with physical handicaps and disabilities. It also includes the unintelligent, ignorant, idiotic, mindless, illogical, moronic scatterbrains we have to deal with everyday. [...] A young boy in the 3rd grade can't seem to get the hang of his multiplication tables. He's been struggling all year while the other boys and girls were learning long division. The teacher calls in the boy's parents for a conference and explains the situation: "Your son just doesn't understand multiplication. He can't grasp the concept, and I doubt he ever will. All of the other children are well beyond him. To be honest, I don't think he possess enough cognitive ability to analyze these simple mathematic equations. I'm sorry, but tomorrow I'm going to have to send him to the nurse's office where he'll be starved to death. Don't worry about a thing mom and dad. Given his inferior intellect and inability to reason, I'm sure he won't feel a thing." You can now see why the Schiavo case was of such concern to some people on the right. 5:29:08 AM

The Last Word InstaGlenn once again explains why he doesn't allow comments at his blog: it boils down to "HEH. crap." HEH. Pretty much the last word on the should-InstaPundit-have-comments subject. And if anyone actually tried to swamp me with hate-email, I didn't notice. Message to trolls: Not only do I crap bigger than you, even my spammers crap bigger than you. No surprise, really. posted at 07:31 PM by Glenn Reynolds The "last word" turns out to be from MisterSnitch!, and it's titled "Unable to comment-spam Instapundit, troll suggests new tactic." A bitter swipe at Glenn Reynolds leads to new scheming from the nothing-better-to-do set. A seemingly endless diatribe blaming Reynolds' famous lack of comments for most of the world's ills sets off a comment suggesting that the left send him hate-mail, instead. The "seemingly endless diatribe" is Digby's post about the WaPo comments panel.  You probably read it, not realizing that it was all about Glenn (and that it was a bitter swipe).  You probably best remember this section: Please, please spare me the crocodile tears about leftist incivility. We are living in a political world formed by rightwing commentators who have made a fetish of harsh eliminationist rhetoric hammered over and over again into the ether until it sounds like normal discourse. And we've been waiting for more than a decade for the mainstream media to notice that rightwing celebrity pundits, who reach millions upon millions of listeners and viewers a day, routinely accuse liberals of treason and celebrate our deaths. It's made us a little bit testy. When important news outlets like the Washington Post see "leftist incivility" as a topic worthy of the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth it makes us wonder if they are even living in the same universe we do. And even though you read and applauded Digby's words, you may not have known that the most important part was a comment made by "AssParrot". So here's a proposal ... let's make it tougher for him to get through his mail. Everybody compose a letter full of pap about how great he was on the WaPo panel, but that ends by saying something like, 'Just kidding about all of the compliments above ... I really think you're a partisan tool who 'manages' reader participation by forbidding it!' Then, if he catches on and starts skipping to the end of emails, we can start putting the disclaimer in the middle of the text. C'mon now! Email ambush on InstaHack! So, according to MisterS, the remark "I really think you're a partisan tool who 'manages' reader participation by forbidding it!'" is hateful, and so any email containing that phrase would be considered "hate-mail."  I imagine that's the same standard the Post used when characterizing the emails that Ms. Howell received. And since it's obvious that the commenter AssParrot wasn't serious about this "hate barrage" plan (and as a review of the rest of the thread reveals that nobody seconded or even commented on the idea, and no mob was formed), you may wonder why Glenn considers this the "last word" on anything. But then you remember that Glenn has a reading comprehension problem (or else just doesn't want to devote the time necessary to read the items he links to), and it all makes sense. But Snitchy isn't done sucking up to Glenn -- he still has to damn to hell the other members of the WaPo panel who failed to give their lives defending Glenn. And then he pronounces sentence on them: no InstaPundit links for you! Glenn can thank the pandering Jay "What profanity? We're all reasonable people here" Rosen and Jeff "Watch how I miraculously bring all parties to common ground" Jarvis for the hate barrage they themselves sidestepped. No way were they going to stand up for his (or Brady's) right to set the rules in their own house. Not when there's posturing to be done. LOL! Yes, the purpose of this chat was to stand up for Glenn's right not to allow posts (and for Brady's right to set the rules after the fact, the main rule apparently being, "Don't let us know when we are wrong"). The pandering Rosen and Jarvis should have known that the Post didn't actually want their thoughts about the Howell situation, they were just there to defend Glenn, the King of the Blogosphere to whom all have sworn fealty. Since Rosen & Jarvis' 'see no evil' campaign looks to leave Reynolds with a bucketful of email spam, they'd better not try to send him any links (to themselves, of course). These are not two guys you want by your side in a bar fight, and we won't hold our breath waiting for them (or Brady, who's probably too gunshy for further engagement) to rally to his defense. As they taught us all in Blogging 101, your main duty as a blogger is to defend Glenn when he gets into a drunken bar fight -- and if you do your job well, he will reward you with sweet, sweet links.  And since Rosen & Jarvis fell down on the job (and left Glenn with a bucketful of nonexistant spam), then they are dead to Glen.  He haffs no Rosen and Jarvis! What's the real issue for this crowd? Free speech? Unlikely, since their first instinct is always to stop someone else's. By saying uncivil things about Glenn, they stopped someone else's free speech? But it might be jealousy: "I've always been puzzled by Instacracker's ongoing popularity. Early adoption, that's all. And he's ultra-sensitive about being called on the little he adds. He's exceptionally good at ignoring or dishonestly editing email criticism. Bedwetting chickenshit." That was another comment from the same thread. So, maybe Glenn's point is that the reason he doesn't allow comments at his blog is because MisterS would probably use them in one of his stupid posts. Okay, perhaps Glenn's point was actually, "If there were comments at my site, maybe people from the left would misinterpret and mischaracterize them, and it would reflect badly on me" -- but since the misinterpretation here reflects badly on Glenn's sychophant, not on Digby, that would be a pretty stupid point. Or maybe his point was that if he had comments, his excitable and not-that-bright readers would actually foment email attacks and lynchings at his site, and he'd be held liable for them. That may actually be a good point, albeit not to flattering to his audience. Why does the left crow about "openness" in their comments? Could it be because nobody's organizing attacks to shut them down? Hey, if MisterSnitch! wants to organize an attack against Atrios that's just as serious as the one launched against poor, martyred-and-abandoned-in-a-bar-fight Glenn, I will join it, just to prove my dedication to "openness" (and to show that I'm no good in a bar fight). And Glenn, you certainly picked a persuasive last word. You've definitely convinced me that your blog shouldn't have comments, because they would most likely be of the same caliber as Snitchy's post -- and while I'm all for openness, I really can't see a need to multiply the stupidity of your site.  4:30:38 AM