Poor Brittney Gilbert. Seems that being a staunch progressive—and a consistent critic of vile chickenhawk wingnuts— isn’t enough to save you from a wagon-circling lefty pogrom, particularly if you’re not terribly well known outside your bailiwick.
Be sure to check out the comments, where Gilbert is torn limb from tender, sisterly limb by those whose job it is to protect The Collective.
My favorite moment from the lynchmob is this comment from Phoenix Woman—who, in her haste to pen a screed aimed at cartoon conservatives, manages instead to indict of one of her own:
Just as the trial-lawyer-hatin’ righties are the FIRST ones to reach for an attorney when things get heated, and just as the affirmative-action-hatin’ righties all worship right-wing affirmative-action recipient Clarence Thomas, the women-hatin’ righties are the FIRST ones to hide behind “SEXISM!†screeches whenever one of their female mouthpieces puts her foot in it.
Gee, I should post something on my blog attacking her and her fellow wingnuts for trashing Steve. It’d keep them from building pipe bombs or mailing anthrax letters for at least five minutes.
Of course, it wasn’t the “women-hatin’ righties” who were “the FIRST…to hide behind ‘SEXISM’” in this case, but—and rather predictably, I’d say—a besieged progressive falling back on identity politics in an attempt to get the progressive swarm to keep from eating one of its own.
Poor thing: Brittney’s progressive pals were trying to send you a signal, Phoenix Woman! And now you’ve gone and tasted liberal flesh anyway. Cannibal!
Oh well. If one is eaten alive so that The Collective may thrive, so be it. The ends justify the means and all that.
Nuance.
The moonbats just go off on everything that isn’t consistent with their twisted worldview.
When I first heard about this, I was amazed that the left was eating one of their own.
Gilliard, you moldy bastard, we hardly knew ye!!
Is it just me, or are we seeing more of this lately? Maybe its a leftosphere/blog version of the Night of the Long Knives. Sure, they be on their side of the spectrum – but if they aren’t exactly correct, then it’s time for the Purge.
Maybe they could have some fun show trials?
“I hereby sentence you to serve a term as Wanker of the Day.” <gasps from the gallery, defendant faints dead away…>
This is the best comment in that thread, in my view, though (orionATL @170):
What exactly resulted in her being pronounced anathema?
She reproduced something unkind about the departed by Smantix, another Tennessee blogger who posts at Six Meat Buffet, with a headline that ought to have made it clear that she disagreed. Moron boy took umbrage, thinking that she was endorsing the post, and got his peeps to start an abuse campaign aimed at getting her kicked off of the blog, which was a paying gig. They fragged one of their own, and now they’re ass-covering for being a bunch of stupid douchebags. A liberal friend of Brittney’s, CatPants, made the charge of misogyny in attempting to defend her, when moronicity would have worked just fine.
Don’t feel bad for Brittney. It is true that this latest episode was the straw that broke the camels back, but she had been planning on resigning for several months, and probably would have left whether this happened or not. The last thing anyone needs to do is to give more credit to the nincompoops on the left than they deserve. They still should feel stupid for eating one of their own though. That part to me is hilarious.
What doesn’t get mentioned in the story is that Brittney has used her considerable blogger influence to affect the employment of others in the past, Bill Hobbs for example, so the sympathy should be limited. What she should be given credit for was her ability to post links from both sides of the aisle despite her obvious leftist politics. Nashville has developed a close-knit blogging community over the last few years, and both sides of the aisle rose to defend Brittney when she was lambasted by the left, myself included. We here in Nashville are protective of this community, and are proud of the fact that we have a local news network that has embraced the blogosphere instead of the opposite.
By the way, Oliver Willis must be so bloated from the seven honeybaked hams deepfried in beer batter that he just ate that he is unable to see the ridiculous hypocrisy he displays by feigning offense to the Six Meat Buffet Gilliard obituary whilst pissing on Falwells grave like it’s a urinal.
Just thought I’d mention that.
After reading orionATL’s plaintive “where would you find” post, I’m wondering where one would find good grammar.
I hope these people calm down before they go to their jobs at the coffeehouse, or else there’s going to be some nasty scalding injuries incurred.
Doubt it would have worked as well. Declaring “misogyny” is like upping the ante to a portion of Progressives. Now Jesus’ss’s’’s General has to find a more abused identity group to claim membership to for defense. Time for him to convert?
I feel kinda dirty ‘cuz I take such a great pleasure in seeing the screeching left savage one of their own. The unparalleled ability to instantly morph from fuzzy den mother to rabid grizzly bear is both amusing and horrifying.
Wither intentionalism? Jebus Generallisimo doesn’t know and his various minions don’t care.
BECAUSE OF THE NARRATIVE!
Because nothing says meanness like Glen. What with the puppy blender and all.
Tman–
Maybe if Jeff adds that in, he can retitle the post “Hobbesian Dilemma”
OLE OLE OLE OLE
OLE OLE OLE OLE
GOOOAAALLL!!!!
Ooops, make that an own goal.
What better example of Joe Sobran’s characterization of the Left as “The Hive.” The Hive took its cue from one of their own and, literally mindlessly, swarmed and eliminated a fellow Hive-dweller. This just too, too delicious, including the post-hoc ass-covering.
Do you all think that what these folks propose represents progress?
Then why do you call them “progressive”?
I suggest that we all drop that word from our lexicon, unless we are referring to something/someone that we think represents actual progress.
I think I may have located Che-Che.
Wasn’t there some *ahem* unpleasantness with a hobo or hoboes, as well?
As Muhsfeldt said to Nyiszli in The Grey Zone, it’s not a war, it’s a putsch. Why else would they have a different word for it if they were the same thing?
Or, to extend the eat-their-own metaphor, an autoimmune reaction. Behold the internet version of the fearsome cytokine storm in action. Yowch.
Is no one going to highlight the comment referring to the “powerful legacy” of Jesus’ General? Because if there’s anything that comes to mind when thinking of that one, it’s “powerful legacy.” And “originality.”
By the way, I should note that I found the post at SMB insensitive. Gilliard was a very very marginal public figure (which gives you some idea of how marginal I am—I don’t think I’d rank an obit in the HOA newsletter, much less the NYT), and his death at 41 was, to me, at least, quite sad—regardless of what I thought of his politics.
One of the reasons I’ve considered retiring from blogging is that I’d hate for my wife and son to see some of the nasty shit that would be doubtless be written about me were I to die while still doing this.
Gilliard’s family is blameless; and I can’t imagine the pain of their loss. Why do anything that might hurt them more?
Attacking him in death like that makes the personal the political. And it’s not—or at least, it should not be.
Having said all that, Oliver Willis is still a creamy turd.
I agree with Tman. The poo flinging by O-Dub is really galling, BECAUSE OF THE BLATANT HYPOCRISY ! Senor Twinkie did the obese tub o’ lard happy dance all over Falwell’s grave, yet suffered no ill effects from the cognitive dissonance when he complained about people doing the same to Gilliard. And, surprise surprise, it became a race issue to the man-mountain.
A creamy turd ? As another comment so eloquently stated, he is a pimple on the scrotum of humanity.
I would concur that the post was insensitive, and even more it was incredibly inappropriate timing. In an era where information is available at our fingertips, it appears that manners and decorum have taken a back seat. Gilliard was patently offensive, on his good days, but a base level of common sense and decency would keep one from posting that before the family had a chance tp bury their son, brother, husband, father, etc …
I love it when one lefty accuses another of racism or sexism. The accused always argue that they were misunderstood, or that the accusation is patently absurd. Basically they end up asking that they be granted the same assumption of good faith and common decency that they so regularly deny their political opponents. Payback’s a bitch.
Yeah, Jeff. Descending beneath a certain level of civilized behavior isn’t designed to make one feel better about one’s self. So you get the last word, so what? Once in a while it pays to remember that real people are involved. We write things electronically we’d never say in person.
That said, Willis reminds me more of a crunchy turd with 10% more peanuts, but we can agree to disagree.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if Gilbert shows up on this side of the aisle one day. It sounds like an epiphany to me.
And did anyone else catch Klein’s fingering of the true culprit here, i.e. those dirty, feces-flinging mossbacks like Limbaugh? Oh, how virtuous and genteel the port side would be if it didn’t have those mouth-breathers provoking them so!
ill69? I’ll take it however I can get it.
Creamy turd ? Cruchy turd ? He reminds me more of those flaming liquid shits, the projectile hershey squirts, one gets after eating Taco Bell AND White Castle at 2:00 in the morning after a long night of drinking cheap bear and cheaper whiskey.
Jeff,
I agree that SMB’s post was over the line. No one needs to be dancing on graves to make a point, even less so on a blog. The irony here was that SMB’s post would have probably remained in obscurity from the left had Brittney not linked to it, and even more ironic is that Brittney hates the guys at SMB with a passion. Then to make things even more confusing, Brittney did not do enough to distance herself from the post, and most people who didn’t know any better thought she was endorsing the SMB opinion of Gilliard.
I think I now have a better understanding of why you keep dangling over the edge of shutting down PW. Brittney’s Mom ended up commenting on one of the threads to thank those of us who stood up for her, but that meant she read some of the hateful bile that was spewed from the “tolerant, progressive” left. And some of that stuff was just horrible. I’d hate to have my Mom read stuff like that about me if I ever passed before her.
We’d still miss you, and I’ll always hit your tipjar, but family comes first in every situation. And you’ve already dealt with more than anyone should have to from the blogosphere.
Maybe you could start an anonymous Jesus Haiku blog or something. That shit is getting priceless.
Heh! Indeed.
These guys and gals might want to read about Maximilien Robespierre, Leon Trotsky, and Ernst Röhm to get an idea of what happens to totalitarians who stray off the reservation.
You can bet that their murderous hero Che would’ve suffered the same fate, had he survived.
I don’t.
Every time I type the term ‘liberal” or “leftist”, it’s prefaced with “reactionary”.
‘Cause that’s what they are, economics, politically, hell Jeff proves all the time even linguistically, they are a Borg mind made up of primatives.
They aren’t progressive, RonF. – they’re ‘progressive’. As Major John said today and I noted yesterday, they are incredibly retro-styled, all the way to the 1930’s.
‘Progressive” is used ironically to describe people who haven’t had an original thought since Karl Marx died.
When they call Reynolds things like “mean” and “conservative”, it’s a reminder just how whacked they really are.
ahem,
Don’t bet on it. The attacks on her were only a response to the conservative hate machine. No one would ever act that way unless there was a conservative at the bottom of it. It’s not the lefty’s fault that they can’t or don’t read.
It’s Rush Limbaugh’s fault.
Where’s that pic of Don Sutherland at the end of the remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”?…
Damn. Can’t find it.
It’s best to just stand back and watch when confronted with a circular firing squad from the other team.
Indeed, there’s quite a bit of evidence that Che did indeed suffer the same fate–Castro sent him off to Bolivia, ratted him out, then made a martyr of him once he was killed.
‘Progressive†is used ironically to describe people who haven’t had an original thought since Karl Marx died.
That’s not quite true. As jug-headed as he was on most issues, Karly was all about the technology thang. As recently as the 1940s, hard-core lefties like Woody Guthrie were singing paeans about the Grand Coulee Dam. They (quite rightly) saw modern technology as liberating and transformative.
The “technology is eeeeeeeeeeevil” meme didn’t infect the corpus of leftoid received wisdom until mass-murderers like Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and John Gofman entered the public sphere in the 60s and 70s.
It’s all Rush Limbaugh’s fault.
Except when it’s Bill O’Reilly’s. Or Sean Hannity’s.
BTW, B Moe – almost, but there’s no crying or hugging, which makes me suspicious.
Emotion and attempting to control language seems to be their only currency nowadays.
JD,
I second all of that. And yet, I can’t help noticing that patriotboy seems to have fashioned an interesting legacy for Mr. Gilliard.
Smantix decides to eschew any sort of decorum and says what any number of people are thinking. JG decides that instead of ignoring the screed, he should publicize it and gin up some outrage but winds up taking out a kindred female soul, while Smantix is likely sniggering. And since being ‘progressive’ means never having to say you’re sorry, there’s no “Oops, my bad”, but only stomping on the fellow progressive further when she tries to correct the record. It’s an object lesson their progressive new world, and I can’t help but note that were he still with us, Steve would be lighting a torch of his own.
Very nicely done, “General”. You’ve finally carved out a place for yourself in history.
Remember the circus when Steve Gilliard died?
Because ‘retards,’ ‘imbeciles,’ and ‘morons,’ were already taken.
This behavior seems, at least to me, echo some of the purges and whatnot seen between the revolution and Stalin’s death.
Actually, they call themselves ‘progressive’ because it sounds so much better then socialist or communist.
That’s it? Nothing about “intentionalism” or “privileged narratives”?
Because I was so counting on it.
TW: Looked49. And was only 46. Feh.
I usually call those who style themselves ‘Progressives’ Stalinists because I can observe their behaviors and draw proper conclusions.
My favorite was Jane Hamshire’s “driving the roundabout” argument:
…..cause you know if Gilliard was alive now he would write something that would win him the Nobel Prize and put you wingnuts in the insane asylum all at the same time, but you waited until he was dead to courageously insult him because now that he’s dead you can say whatever you want about him without fear of his mighty pen that he would have surely unleashed on you, simultaneously winning a Pulitzer and causing many right bloggers to die of shame, if he were alive like the genius he was going to be if……..
“Look kids, Big Ben!”
That’s not quite true. As jug-headed as he was on most issues, Karly was all about the technology thang. As recently as the 1940s, hard-core lefties like Woody Guthrie were singing paeans about the Grand Coulee Dam. They (quite rightly) saw modern technology as liberating and transformative.As long as it was paid for by public money
Posted by Andrea Porkin
There. Fixed that for ya.
Rusty: good point.
Ugh. the accusation of meanness in politics is always such a snore. Everyone shrieds like the pod people in Body Snatchers at the parries and thrusts of the other side, while blissfully ignoring their own fury, or, at best, blaming their righteous anger on the other side’s perfidy.
That said, the willingness of some to disassociate the anger from the actual transgression speaks volumes.
There is still no truce in the blogosphere. Likely there never will be.