Sunday, August 04, 2002
Does Josh Marshall Visit monchieland?
The first blogger I read on a regular basis was Joshua Micah Marshall, a D.C.-based left-of-center pundit who, miraculously, has mostly avoided the dreaded Beltway Blowhard Syndrome. Alone among his colleagues, early on he declared on national TV that the White House trashing story was most likely a crock of BS -- which is exactly what it turned out to be, according to the expensive GSA investigation requested by the terminally insane Bob Barr.
Yesterday afternoon, in the introductory post timestamped August 3rd 5:06 PM EDT, the following passage appeared on monchieland:
While ideologically he's at the center or even a bit toward the right in the Democratic Party, Mr. Monchum has no time for those he calls "pink-tutu Democrats." "While over the past 20 years the Republican Party has increasingly been taken over by totalitarian thugs, some Democrats think the proper response to this bizarre situation is to cower in the corner and beg the right-wing bullies for forgiveness. They remind me of abused wives who constantly make excuses for their brutal husbands."
Then, just minutes ago, I was checking out Josh's blog, Talking Points Memo. In a post about the ridiculous Republican complaints of a "double standard" with regard to Robert Rubin, Citigroup, and Enron, timestamped August 4th 12:06 PM EDT, I came across the following paragraph:
It's time to say it: this is a stupid argument. It's being made by a) mau-mauing Republicans and their journalistic allies, b) morons, and c) chumps. Absent any new information those are really the only groups who can be involved. The first group I don't much begrudge. They're involved in a political fight and that's how the game is played. The second group requires no explanation. The rest are journalists -- largely, but not all, of vaguely liberal politics -- who have so long been slapped around and cowed by conservative complaints about liberal bias that the desired Pavlovian response has become second nature. In the seedy vernacular we call this being 'whipped.' The better analogy might be to the emotionally-damaged battered woman who perversely respects her abusive husband for keeping her in line.
Great minds think alike? Or did Josh suffer an attack of Mike Barnicle Disease after reading monchieland?
Either way, I'm flattered.
The first blogger I read on a regular basis was Joshua Micah Marshall, a D.C.-based left-of-center pundit who, miraculously, has mostly avoided the dreaded Beltway Blowhard Syndrome. Alone among his colleagues, early on he declared on national TV that the White House trashing story was most likely a crock of BS -- which is exactly what it turned out to be, according to the expensive GSA investigation requested by the terminally insane Bob Barr.
Yesterday afternoon, in the introductory post timestamped August 3rd 5:06 PM EDT, the following passage appeared on monchieland:
While ideologically he's at the center or even a bit toward the right in the Democratic Party, Mr. Monchum has no time for those he calls "pink-tutu Democrats." "While over the past 20 years the Republican Party has increasingly been taken over by totalitarian thugs, some Democrats think the proper response to this bizarre situation is to cower in the corner and beg the right-wing bullies for forgiveness. They remind me of abused wives who constantly make excuses for their brutal husbands."
Then, just minutes ago, I was checking out Josh's blog, Talking Points Memo. In a post about the ridiculous Republican complaints of a "double standard" with regard to Robert Rubin, Citigroup, and Enron, timestamped August 4th 12:06 PM EDT, I came across the following paragraph:
It's time to say it: this is a stupid argument. It's being made by a) mau-mauing Republicans and their journalistic allies, b) morons, and c) chumps. Absent any new information those are really the only groups who can be involved. The first group I don't much begrudge. They're involved in a political fight and that's how the game is played. The second group requires no explanation. The rest are journalists -- largely, but not all, of vaguely liberal politics -- who have so long been slapped around and cowed by conservative complaints about liberal bias that the desired Pavlovian response has become second nature. In the seedy vernacular we call this being 'whipped.' The better analogy might be to the emotionally-damaged battered woman who perversely respects her abusive husband for keeping her in line.
Great minds think alike? Or did Josh suffer an attack of Mike Barnicle Disease after reading monchieland?
Either way, I'm flattered.
