“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader

When Did Vulgarity Replace Reason?

(Written and posted 19 February 2007)

In the 2004 Democratic primaries, I proudly cast my vote for John Edwards. At that time, he seemed to me the most sensible and grounded of all the candidates, and someone who I thought would make a great President. I will not vote for him in 2008. Why the change of heart? Call it “The Blogger Affair”, which showed a severe lack of good judgment. The country has suffered through six years of a President with poor judgment (e.g. “I’ve looked into the soul of President Putin and he is an honest man”), and we don’t need another four.

I first heard about “The Blogger Affair when Edwards defended the bloggers; prior to that point, I was blissfully unaware of the controversy. At first blush, my opinion was that perhaps, once again, the Right was making much ado about nothing. But, for some reason, there was just a little doubt in my head that perhaps this wasn’t a typical political smear job, so I started digging a bit further, even visiting the two websites, but I still didn’t see much. Much ado about nothing? I was beginning to wonder; until, that is, I read Amanda Marcotte’s statement as to why she quit. Then I truly understood what the fuss was about.

Somehow I stumbled upon her parting shots, and what I found was a hate and vile-filled diatribe, absolving herself of any blame, and casting it upon the “wingnuts”, as she derisively calls them. Throughout her rant, she attempts to wear the mantle of a political martyr, someone who was persecuted by the big, bad Catholics and evangelicals who take themselves way to seriously and don’t have an iota of a sense of humor. In her view, she was only trying to be funny, she was only trying to bring on a discussion through humor. You know what? She isn’t funny. Whiny? Yes. Self-absorbed? Yes. Pathetic? Yes. Funny? No.

There was a reference or two in her “feel sorry for pitiful me” ramblings to some Right-leaning websites, sites that maliciously attacked her honor. Being the curious sort that I am, I rode the wave that it the web to those sites, to get their perspective on things. Were they being mean and ugly and slanderous, or was Ms. Marcotte just being a tad bit melodramatic. It as only after I visited one of those Rightside sites that I discovered why I didn’t see much on the first two offending websites – one of them had been sanitized. Yup, one of the entries, which concerned the Duke lacrosse case, had been replaced by a sanitized version that didn’t even mention the case at all!

As longtime readers of this column know, over the past thirteen years I have written many things that are controversial or otherwise hack people off. Not once have I ever edited or sanitized any of my pieces; I claim everything I write, good, bad, and ugly. Five years from now you know that you can go back and read this column and know that it will say the exact same thing that it says right now. If I engaged in the practice of revising my columns and trying to slip a fast one by you I would lose all credibility! It’s one thing to change your mind and end up contradicting yourself sometime in the future; as we grow and age and change, that is the be expected. People are not static; they have the ability to grow and change. On the other hand, to just erase wholesale something that you said and pretend it never existed – that is just cowardly. Not only that, your credibility goes out the window. Who can take seriously someone who changes reality because it is expedient to do so?

As if the bait-and-switch wasn’t bad enough, there was another, more important, reason why I really didn’t notice much when I visited the two websites – there is no substance. All I read was mindless drivel laced with profanities, which reminded me why I don’t read blogs and why I take great offense when someone refers to this column as a blog. The Left has decided that the way to convince people you are right is use a lot (and I mean a lot) of really bad cuss words and hurl mean-spirited insults about the other side. Take, for example, the evangelicals. I have never agreed with the religious zealots, and I have stated why numerous times. Hopefully, those who have been reading for all these years have been able to follow my reasoning as to why I disagree; you may not agree with me, but at least you understand why. Now, if I were a Left-wing blogger, I would call the evangelicals a bunch of vulgar names and that would be it; there would be no appeal to reason. From what I can see, that seems to be the common template among the Lefty bloggers.

Even though I did not find the blogs that started the controversy, I also found the tone of both blogs to be rather offensive. There is no place for such nastiness and vulgarity. Period. Which brings me back to John Edwards. What was he thinking? Did he not look at these two blogs before hiring these people to be his campaign blogger? If he didn’t, then that shows that he didn’t do all his homework, which bothers me. I want a President who does his homework. (That is my number one beef with the current occupant – he seems to act a bit rashly without thinking things out or doing his homework.) If he did, then that means he was trying to pander to the liberal left extreme wing of the Democratic party, which bothers me even more. I don’t like my politicians to be ideologically pure, either to the left or to the right, but to be pragmatic. (My second beef with the current occupant – he pandered to the extreme wing of his party to get elected and that handicapped his ability to do what was best or right, because he was beholden to the zealots for his political survival).

What the liberals don’t get is that Left-wing ideologues are as dangerous to this country as the Right-wing ones. Were not the Marxists as wicked as the fascists? Are not the radical Left-wing bloggers as mean as vile as the reactionary Right-wing talk radio hosts? Bad is bad, no matter how you label it.

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