People Unclear on the Concept

A few days ago, I posted a protest piece about a certain right wing blogger. We'll call her Madame Ego since I have pledged never to use her name or link to her again. One way or another, it came to the attention of a left wing blogger by the name of Patriot Boy. He delightedly included it in one of his posts slamming Madame Ego. He completely missed the point of the post and this blog.

The Sratching Post is a libertarian, Catholic, hawkish, flower child blog with a writing style strongly influenced by P. J. O'Rourke. We believe that God made people in his image to do kind things for each other free from the tyranny of local or distant governments.

The whole point of my post about Madame Ego was that she was contributing to the Balkanization of the blogosphere. Madame Ego is clever, venomous and spiteful. Patriot Boy is simply deranged with hate.

The title of his post is "Moving Malkin-Belsen." Three words into his post he fails the reasonability test. He not only calls his opponent a Nazi, but a death camp operator. You know you've lost the argument when you call someone a Nazi. Patriot Boy doesn't just lose, he gets blown out on word three.

Sports analogies usually involve baseball or football. Even my beloved New Orleans Saints couldn't lose that bad that fast. This is like a swim meet where you trip diving into the pool, smack your head on the cement and then swim in little circles near the starting line while everyone else is racing away.

PB's post is written in the form of a letter to Madame Ego, suggesting places where she might wish to move. He addresses her like this.

Michelle Malkin
Our Lady of the Concentration Camps

More of the same.

You can see right away that there's no need to include much more of it here. I'll throw in a little more and then move on. Madame Ego is called a racist.

Well, if I were you, I'd be looking for a community where nearly everyone shares your views, a place like Almost Heaven, Idaho. Although now in decline, Almost Heaven was once the promised land for men who hate brown people as much as you do.

Is there anything more tired and overused than racism? Predictably, PB goes for the jugular with a KKK reference.

So how do you get around not being seen in a very small town? A burka is out of the question. Burkas haven't been given Our Leader's seal of approval yet. You're left with only one option until that finally happens, the Tancredoic robes of the Ku Klux Klan.

If you're going to be hate-filled, you might at least try to be entertaining. PB isn't entertaining, he's just mundane. Nazis, racists, the KKK, it's the standard, overworn bag of tricks for PB. Novelty and imagination are quite beyond him.

PB even includes a picture of Madame Ego with a KKK hood photoshopped on. Technically interesting, but about as clever as sticking your tongue out at someone.

Thanks for the link, PB. I would have hoped you would have read the post and gotten the point, but after reading your blog, it's obvious that you'll need to start with something simpler. May I suggest The Children's Book of Virtues? Look under politeness and kindness for starters.

And spare me the Bill Bennet immorality comments, please, it would only embarass you further. Thinking people can separate messages from messengers.

By the way, PB, you might be interested to know that your readers are very similar to you. To provide a contrast to people like Madame Ego and yourself, at the bottom of my post I linked to one of my World of Good posts about a woman who is paralyzed after saving her children from a tornado. Only about 10% of your readers followed that link. Once they had supped on my criticism of Madame Ego, they had no appetite left for a request for kindness for a beautiful person.

How telling.