YOu know what is really making me sick? Is how now on the leftie blogs they are just referring to Gannon as a "gay hooker" and Scott McClellan as "gay." Like it has been proven and done.
These are people's lives! I haven't seen a shred of evidence that either is true and I don't know why they are even talking about their sex lives! It makes me want to puke.

Damn. I have to uncritically agree with Right Wing Sparkle.

"Like it has been proven and done." Exactly.

Sparkle, like I told Bill, this along with a number of other things has driven me over the edge away from the left... it's an insane witch-hunt and those who have participated should be ashamed of themselves - not to mention sued.

But that said, you personally have very little to say about anyone else's "meanness" or evidence-free assertions. Your semi-literate commentary consists of little more than impossibly broad generalizations based on some caricature that you apparently believe applies to all liberals everywhere. Grow up. Take some English classes. Read a book.

A bunch of bloggers made themselves feel like big men by beating up on the retarded kid at recess.

(I now retreat back to bed.)

Mike, I assume your talking about Jeff's site because I haven't seen any meaness on the sites I frequent. Jeff G is mean to Willis but Jeff's site is all about parody and I know that if I got on to him about it he would just laugh at me. The sites I referred to above were commentary, not parody.
Btw, I have an english degree and read about 3 books a week.

I'm not talk about any site, just the comments I've seen you leave in various places. They come off as spiteful and mean-spirited. But whatever... sorry about the English crack. That was probably a little too harsh.

Mike, here's the deal. This is my site, and personal attacks on my commenters are over-the-line.

For the time being, I'll let the above remark stand, since you apologized, RWS didn't take it too personally, and the thread doesn't make sense if I edit them now. But in the future, please know that you debate ideas on this site. Or, if my posts are harsh, you can call me names. You may not call anyone else names here, and you're subject to editing if you do it.

OK. My bad.

Mike, could you please point out to me one or two examples of me being spiteful or meanspirited? I honestly don't think I ever do that. (except in the case of a argument I had with one blogger and even that wasn't that mean)
Seriously, I want to know if it seems that way.

Okay, then. She wants to know. Go ahead and lay out your best case, in a civil fashion, if you like.

Honestly Sparkle, my biggest impression of you came from the time you called me a bigot because I brought up the possibility that Christian end-times prophecies might have a significant influence on the religious right's view of the Middle East. It's possible that impression is wrong, and really, even if true, it doesn't make you any worse than a large percentage of blog commenters. Mostly, I guess I'm just irritated with both the left and right (the left because of the absolute inanity of going after Gannon like this, and the right for reacting with the online equivalent of a fainting spell over the meanness of liberals while utterly ignoring its own history of the same type of behavior), and maybe I directed a little too much of that at you.

Joy's right, though - I much prefer civil discussion as well, and I really had no call to single you out like that anyway.

Mike, when did I do that??? I honestly don't remember that discussion at all. I don't even have much of an opinion on evangelical Christians end-times prophecies.
I don't remember ever calling anyone a bigot ever actually. Which blog was it?

Just to throw a different POV into the mix, it looks to me like the Left wing bloggers have a profound case of "penis envy" towards the RW bloggers. Look what has happened. RWers took down Jordan and Rather, and, I dare say, were particularly instrumental in Kerry's loss. Furthermore, RW bloggers have made some inroads in containing the rampant liberal partisanship of the MSM's. Accountability. Facts. LW blogs have little of that.

Hm. There is a strange disconnect between "Dan Rather used obviously bogus memos on 60 minutes" and "some guy you never heard of working for an obscure news site was once an online gold-digger."

Hence, the tendency to emphasize his "fake name," and imply that security checks were not done under his real name, and that the President was somehow put at risk ("gay hookers were roaming the White House"). Or make it sound like he was involved in the nonexistent "outing" of Valerie Plame.

Exectamundo. I have asked multiple lefties on their blogs, as well as forums, what is the big deal? I have yet to be given an answer, other then, "if the situation was reversed, the RWers would be going crazy." Huh? So, no real answer.

Sure, it's an issue, but a minor one. My personal conspiracy theory is that this came out now to distract the lefties from SS and tax reform. And they took the cheese in teh trap.

Well, if you parse it out, there are five issues:

1) journalist who had a pen name. Our friends in the leftosphere would like that to mean that his security clearence wasn't done under his real, legal name--but of course that's not so. Both names were provided for the check.

2) Journalist worked for a small website. The leftosphere might want to think about this for a moment: if the rule becomes "big-name news agencies only," all bloggers will be excluded from getting day passes, because even the biggest names in blogging don't get the traffic TV and newspapers do.

3) Journalist offered his services online as an "escort." Again, this appears to imply that anyone with a checkered past shouldn't be allowed to ask the President questions. So, no Hunter S. Thompson types. (For that matter, P.J. O'Rourke would fail the morals test, too, on the basis of his past drug use.)

4) Valerie Plame blah blah blah. Give me a break.

5) Bill Clinton's impeachment was about blow jobs. No, it wasn't: it was about denying Paula Jones her day in court, and relates to the rather exotic, American notion that in this country the President is not supposed to be legally above someone like Jones that he regards as trailer trash. In this country, she is supposed to be allowed to establish her case that Clinton had a pattern of hitting on his subordinates.

If it weren't for the sexual harrassment issue, I wouldn't have cared who gave him a blow job and when--though I would have preferred that it not happen in the Oval office, and the idea that he was discussing troop deployment while getting sucked off is profoundly offensive.

I think the serious objection to Mr Gannon was the possibility that he was a paid to shill for the administration (ala Mr Williams) and that Talon News was a front for GOPUSA. His function (as the logic goes) was to provide user-friendly questions for the Prez or press sec'y to deflect attention from more unpleasant or unfriendly questions. Hardly earthshaking, but at least a little tacky.

Well, the payola issue is problematic. But more Presidents have made a point of having at least one person in the room who was very friendly to them, and on whom they could call if things got rough. This tradition goes back at least to the Kennedy administration.

But I also get the impression that if that were the strategy, Mr. Gannon took it too far, and was so clumsy in his "friendly" questions that he just came off as fawning. That is, the entire attempt was unsuccessful, if it existed.