The Left, Online and Outraged

[lizschup]

<p>FS,
It has nothing to do with your political persuasion and everything to do with your contempt.</p>

[lizschup]

<p>From FS:</p>

<p>There are, as you say, “dads,” and a feisty mom or two, here who have in fact spewed hateful invective in my direction in place of a reasoned opinion, rational defense or show of dignity, but I always felt that there lack of grace–sadly considering their years–reflected more upon their aged and souring etiquette than upon their fresh and ripening target…but, in their defense, perhaps I have an inflated impression of their once-upon-a-time youthful gentility: some fruit sours even while plump and hanging from the tree…</p>

[UCLAri]

<p>Does that even mean anything?</p>

[FountainSiren]

<p>Liz,</p>

<p>so sorry, didn’t mean to hurt your feelings (as I understand, hurt-feelings are the gold-standard for many liberals)…everything else I said still stands. </p>

<p>Anger is bad. Hate is bad. </p>

<p>That is, unless every wise person who ever lived was wrong: from Socrates, to Jesus, to Muhammad, to Thoreau, to Gandhi, to Martin Luther King Jr., to Mother Theresa and on and on.</p>

<p>On the other hand, Herod, Machiavelli, Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot, amongst other angry revolutionaries, have found a great deal to value in their own righteous anger…of course they are all rather unpopular now-- but at one time they were all angry revolutionaries with a very important cause.</p>

<p>It’s an indefensible position.
Let’s just be honest about it.</p>

<p>Show me a responsible person who says the opposite is true.
You won’t.
There isn’t.</p>

<p>.</p>

[FountainSiren]

<p>

FountainSiren being arrogant, obtuse, and needlessly derisive?</p>

<p>This is almost as unheard of as me being sarcastic, crass, and brazen. My goodness, what is this forum coming to?

</p>

<p>UCLAri,</p>

<p>I have enjoyed the above, it was not the sarcasm, don’t remember any crassness but I take you at your word…brazen, sure, but all I have ever objected to in your posts is that you were usually wrong, and there is nothing wrong with that (fwiw, by wrong, I mean maintaining a view that is the opposite to my own, which, as a rule, I deem to be right at the time…pending further developments:)).</p>

<p>…Thanks.</p>

[driver]

<p>NOW YOU KIDS! Get on out there and roll some Easter eggs or something. It’s a beautiful Easter Sunday, and you shouldn’t be inside riling the august Council of Grim and Angry CC Parents. Whippersnappers! Now be off with ye, afore I give your ears a tweaking, by crackey!</p>

[UCLAri]

<p>driver,</p>

<p>What if you’re a Jew, like yours truly?</p>

[logosprincipal]

<p>I’m an infrequent visitor and less frequent poster to these boards, but I always look forward to reading Fountain Siren’s posts. Apparently there is a wide difference of opinion as to what constitutes bad manners.</p>

[driver]

<p>uclari:
I suggest you get together with FS and make some “Sufi-Hebrew” eggs, and roll them. We live in a multicultural world, and should freely enjoy each others’ traditions. You could try dying some matzoh-balls, but I don’t know how they would work on grass.</p>

[driver]

<p>I had never heard of Maryscott O’Connor (known to her fans as MSOC) before reading that article. Nor did I know that she is considered some kind of phenomenon within the left-wing blog world; I check in on the Daily Kos from time to time to find out what some of you will be saying here, but I’ve never gotten into the culture there enough to wade through all the individual “diaries” and discover MSOC. She describes her work product as “one long, sustained scream.” Would that it were so; she’s actually a pretty good writer when she puts her mind to it. Most of the time, her blog appears to be a sustained series of random screams out the window, interrupted as she slams the window closed and goes back for another ruminative smoke. Here’s a piece that she wrote about her WaPo interview:

A couple months ago I got a cryptic email from someone claiming to be a reporter from the Washington Post; he asked me to call him in regard to a story he wanted to write.</p>

<p>I looked him up on the Internet… turns out David Finkel is a Pulitzer-prize nominated reporter for the Washington Post. Still, easy to write an email and use someone else’s name, right? So I called him.</p>

<p>It was for real. Finkel said he got my name from an email someone sent him, which led him to My Left Wing. He’d never been to a blog before (gasp! I thought EVERYBODY read the blogs!), and was intrigued not only by the medium but by my particular ‘blog voice,’ if you will.</p>

<p>And he wanted to write a piece about me. For the Style section, no doubt, I guessed.</p>

<p>Nope. Front page, baby.</p>

<p>Finkel pitched the story to his editors and got the okay, on the condition I promise not to write about it before it ran on the Post’s website, which I did.</p>

<p>A week later, he was here in my living room. He sat on my couch and explained that he didn’t yet know what he was going to write, didn’t have in mind any angle. He did have a phrase weaving in and out of his mind: “The Angry Left.” Apparently I am the Angry Left personified.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, he sat on the couch with a notebook and we conversed. He watched me work on the blog, he asked me a million questions, some quite provocative: for a while there, I got the feeling he thought my writing on My Left Wing and all my passionate, vitriolic rhetoric was so much ****ing in the wind. What did I hope to accomplish? Why was I so… “mean?” That was the word he used, too, which didn’t bode well for my eventual representation in the article, I mused.</p>

<p>Finkel asked what time I woke up. 5am, I replied. That threw him a tad, but he was game: we agreed that the next day he would wait outside my house until I turned on the porchlight, to signal he could come in and be with me for an “ordinary day.” That plan kind of fell by the wayside, though – there is nothing ordinary about having a Washington Post reporter watching your every move and taking note of your every random exclamation and mutter…</p>

<p>Still, we achieved a sort of rhythmic normalcy as he observed and took notes for almost 12 hours. He came back the next day and we did it again, though we did manage to go out for lunch. The Post paid the tab; I was shocked to learn that Finkel would not accept a glass of water from me; he didn’t want the slightest hint of impropriety, which meant not even using our bathroom, I discovered. Very strange, I thought.</p>

<p>We never did fully discuss that, but suffice to say I think David Finkel is an almost preternaturally ethical guy. At one point he brought out a camera (don’t even get me started on my neurotic fear of having a horrible picture of me on the Front Page of the Washington Freaking Post)… but the light was bad. I asked if it would be better with the curtains open and he demurred; that, apparently, is creating the news rather than reporting it. (I keep thinking about that scene in “Broadcast News” when Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter chastise a cameraman who tells a Sandinista to put on his boots so he can get a good shot…)</p>

<p>Finkel returned for a fourth visit, but just to wrap things up and say goodbye. As the weeks passed, we spoke on the phone intermittently; at one point he got assigned to another, more time-sensitive story and mine was put on the back burner. Still, he assured me, the story would run.</p>

<p>But for the immigration brouhaha, Finkel’s piece might have run last week… As it is, for better or worse, the front page of the Washington Post’s Saturday edition tomorrow features an article by David Finkel about My Left Wing, left wing bloggers and… me.</p>

<p>And it’s already up on their website. Go figure.

Not bad, but the bad news is that this is, from what I can tell, the best thing she’s ever written–and it’s basically just about *her<a href=“as%20was%20the%20WaPo%20article”>/i</a>. There was a very thoughtful piece written by another DailyKos diarist (essentially agreeing with TheDad’s earlier post here) who also thought that MSOC ought to tone it down, and focus on style and content, rather than anger…this woman recommended Carl Hiaassen or Molly Ivins as alternative models of how to get the left’s message through, and I concur! The blogs that I read regularly are opinionated, informative, and occasionally droll, but, as one of them recently commented regarding the article about MSOC:

The right-wing has its fever swamp, but they generally don’t dominate the upper echelons of the conservative blogosphere as it appears the fever swamp of the Left does with the liberal blogosphere. I don’t know anyone among conservative bloggers who wake up foaming at the mouth and retire at night barking at the moon in the manner ascribed to O’Connor. Most of us blog to improve our lives and the nation instead of indiscriminately venting spleen.

Good advice for all of us.</p>

[lizschup]

<p>FS, no hurt feelings here - I’ve learned to have a thick skin and I didn’t think your post I resurrected was aimed at me. I thought it was a particularly nasty comment about older women on CC . If my son or daughter talked to me that way I would tell them they were being disrespectful and mean. I’m all for saying what you think but I think you cross some boundaries.</p>

<p>Congratulations for making a direct comment in post #45 - I understand your sentiment but personally think life is much more complex than that. It’s not always easy to tell whose anger is righteous, noble or self serving sometimes. Jesus got angry at the tax collectors and pharisees and those who called Mary Magdalene a whore.</p>

[wjb]

<p>“I have heard the nit-picky critiques from your side of the dial, but until I hear the same from the other side (which I haven’t) I will consider this nothing more than a partisan rhetorical tactic.”</p>

<p>To what side of the dial are you referring, FS? I don’t think I’ve ever weighed in on either side of any political argument on CC. I try to stay out of the political fray here. Too scary. ;)</p>

[lizschup]

<p>Actually I think politics in real life is scary - CC is nothing compared to what takes place in the White House and Iraq.</p>

[poetsheart]

<p>FS, don’t you know by now that poking fun at the sacred cow called, “liberal outrage” is a class one felony? How uh, “obtuse” can you be…?:D</p>

[FountainSiren]

<p>“Obtuse” must be the word of the month; in the spirit of Sesame Street’s Word of the Day. Some, apparently, do not even think it is “derisive” to apply such a barb to others. Though, I believe it would be considered quite borish to keep repeating it on Sesame Street.</p>

<p>Used here so, so often. That is to say, “you keep using that word…I don’t think it means what you think it means,” in the immortal words of a marvelous swordsman. </p>

<p>Obtuse:
1.<br>
a. Lacking quickness of perception or intellect.
b. Characterized by a lack of intelligence or sensitivity: an obtuse remark.
c. Not distinctly felt: an obtuse pain.
<a href=“http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=obtuse[/url]”>http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=obtuse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Thanks for the mild words, Rorosen, Xiggi, Logosprincipal and Poetsheart…like an antidote to the mildly-toxic venom of say, a wasp, or buzzing yellow-jacket. …bzzzzzzzzz-------windshield ahead.</p>

[UCLAri]

<p>FS,</p>

<p>I can’t help but wonder if those who provoke aren’t a little guilty themselves.</p>