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December 7, 2007 - November 30, 2007

Sunday, February 11, 2007

UPDATE. You are all most welcome for the preview I have given you of two issues that will be part of the 2008 presidential campaign. Since no one seems in the mood for humor, I'll explain these for everyone who finds it impossible to delve below the most superficial level of provocation for insight.

First, though, a couple of observations and assertions.

Dean Barnett has proven that he can be trusted. The most prudent response he could have chosen to my post was no response. That he attempted to address the questions I raised speaks very well of his integrity.

Even the angriest commenters here still did not stoop to the four-letter filth that is not just common but pervasive among leftwing blog folk. That their jibes were mostly wide of the mark was unfortunate, but it does highlight one of my reasons for posting what I did.

And what about all those irate Presbyterians? I mean, how could they get that furious just because I slammed John Calvin about as hard as I did the Mormons? Uh, what? You didn't notice any irate Presbyterians? Hmmmm. I wonder why.

For the record -- and as most regular readers of InstaPunk should readily have determined -- I don't hate Mormons. If Romney turns out to be the Republican nominee, I will probably support him. I don't think he's the best candidate available because he's a Massachusetts Republican on the wrong side of some key conservative issues. I also -- and separately -- don't believe he's electable, no matter how smart and rich he is. All you enraged Mormon commenters have just helped illustrate why.

InstaPunk makes fun of everyone. That's a big part of what we do here, and we're not going to stop doing it because we are not political players with some obligation to be politically correct. We romp up and down on the sidelines shouting catcalls and sticking out our tongues. Because we can. I don't recall receiving anything like the amount of grief you Mormons expressed when I was just as "borderline offensive" (Dean's words) about Richard Dawkins's atheist agenda a few weeks ago.

So here's the first point. Did all you Romney adherents and Mormons really think that the subject of Romney's religion wouldn't come up in the course of a campaign for the presidency? The most disturbing thing about the comments was how offended and surprised everyone seemed to be that anyone would bring up the subject. That is truly absurd. And is this how you're planning to persuade the electorate that it's not a problem?  By immediately resorting to ad-hominem attacks without bothering to look past the first incendiary remarks for more information about the person who offended you?  (Leaping to the conclusion that InstaPunk is a liberal and/or Jew hater and doing nothing to verify such assumptions before making a fool of yourself is really inexcusable if you're actually trying to help your cause, not just blowing off steam.)

Romney's religion is definitely going to be an issue in the campaign. If you want your man to win, the time to drag this looming iceberg into the open is now. The worst possible strategy is to ignore it until after Romney is nominated, because that's when the left will go to work on it, and if you thought I was unfair, you ain't seen nothing yet. We've just seen how unafraid the lefties are of using genuinely obscene ridicule against the Roman Catholic Church. They despise evangelical Christians even more than they do Catholics. You need to think long and hard about how unscrupulous they'll be about the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints.

Some facts everyone in the Romney camp needs to accept pronto. It is remarkably easy to make fun of Mormonism. You're going to see a lot of it, and I mean a ton. And it's not going to be as simple to handle for Romney as it was for Kennedy to handle his Catholicism. Nothing I read in the comments reassures me that you Romneyites understand this reality. I am especially concerned about the intimations I read that there are Mormons who are good Mormons even though they do not really believe all the harder to believe stuff!? Talk about your slippery slopes. Serious thought has to be given to how Romney advocates and the Mormon community generally should respond to the doubters. And there will be a great many doubters who are not "arrogant twits" or "bigots" or "haters," but mere conventional traditionalists who think that what and where a person comes from says a lot about who he is and what he will do in a pinch.

This brings me to the second issue -- the role and responsibilities of "players" like Hewitt and Barnett. Though he circled around the question quite a bit, Barnett never did quite draw a clear line between being a blogger and a semi-official advocate for a political candidate. In fact, his posture of taking offense at InstaPunk's Mormon abuse rather than recognize the size and danger of the iceberg does no service to his readers or his candidate. He wound up falling through the rift between blogger and campaign-worker. As a campaign worker he shouldn't have linked me at all. As a blogger, he should have remembered that satire is in InstaPunk's DNA and addressed the fact of a political problem that is best not wished away.

This is a significant issue of its own, irrespective of the Romney candidacy. In the 2008 election, the political world is going to reach into the blogosphere in new ways, drafting bloggers as political soldiers and thereby creating much confusion and potential conflict of interest. Last week's flap about John Edwards's blog girls is only the first of what will prove to be many controversies. What is the line between bloggers and campaign soldiers? What are the ethical questions that should be anticipated and thought through ahead of time? Specifically, what should bloggers-turned-campaign-workers tell their readers about what they will or will not do with their writings on behalf of a candidate? Or are we just supposed to read between the lines and guess how much is honest discourse and how much is pragmatic political spin?

Frankly, I'm not comfortable with that, and it seems to me that Dean Barnett is still grappling with the problem but has not quite come to grips with it yet.

For all of you who found it impossible to read this because you're so blinded by the conviction that I'm just a bigoted idiot, my condolences. Shooting off your six-guns at anyone who says unflattering things about Mormonism is naive at best and self-destructive at worst. Whether you know it or not, I've just done you a big favor. Get a grip.

And finally, to Dean: I know you'll sort your way through the ethical issues. That's why I picked on you rather than someone else.

UPDATE 2/12/07.  A more specific response from InstaPunk to a commenter who's still angry and bitter.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Thursday, February 08, 2007

RATIONAL INQUIRY. I've been busy on other matters, so I missed most of the flap about the two women John Edwards hired to do "outreach" to liberals in the blogosphere. Conservatives especially have been irate about several things: their seeming prejudice against Christians, particularly Catholics; their propensity for earthy Anglo-Saxon diction; the opportunity seized by the MSM to characterize them as typical of all bloggers; their belated attempts to sanitize the blogs they wrote before hiring on with the Edwards campaign; and, most recently, John Edwards's decision to keep them on staff because he believed their assurances they meant no insult to any race, sex, or religion.

What are the facts? Amanda Marcotte has a B.A. in English Literature from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. She wrote numerous posts for a blog titled Pandagon in which she repeatedly explained the impeccable logic and moral superiority of the liberal (i.e., tolerant) preference for secular reasonableness over the irrational and largely hostile prejudices of white, male, Christian, Republican varieties of the American populace.

Melissa McEwan studied cultural anthropology, sexuality, and gender at Loyola University, Chicago. She wrote her posts for a blog called Shakespeare's Sister and almost incredibly demonstrated the same level of proficiency shown by Amanda in persuading her readers of the greater appeal of liberal policies when they are examined in the specific context of conservative ignorance, fear, and reaction.

Yet despite these dazzling accomplishments, multiple otherwise clear-thinking conservatives have not only failed to defend them from the winds of political opportunism but have even presumed to make fun of them.

For this kind of unacceptable behavior I must specifically indict:


For shame. Regular readers of InstaPunk will already have understood that these two remarkable ladies deserve praise rather than ridicule for persevering in their commentary despite being afflicted with New Tourette's Syndrome, which is running epidemic throughout the liberal universe and is by no means limited to the blogosphere. Here is what Dr. Tourette wrote of the ailment when he first identified it in 1884:


No surprise, I suppose, that it's the intolerant conservatives who so abysmally fail to understand what is obvious to all liberals about all who come to grief: THEY CAN'T HELP IT.

No less an icon than Dr. Samuel Johnson was afflicted with (old) Tourettes. As to the new strain, it's apparently even more pernicious and resistant to treatment than the old. So what good does it do to repeat and exaggerate their spontaneous explosions, to parody them in deadly bursts of satire, or to tear away the veils of modesty they apply after the fact to conceal the grossest acts of self-humiliation a normal person can conceive of?

I say, be done with the ridicule. Let us follow the worthy model of John Edwards in understanding their plight. God bless him. And good luck to these poor, pitiable, benighted liberals of the female persuasion. May God lend them aid and comfort in their hour of need, just as they have so often afforded aid and comfort to the enemies of our nation.

Amen.

UPDATE. Thankfully, the Anchoress knows what's what. She almost always does.

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