FireDogLake To Black Bloggers: Mind Your Tongue When Speaking To "Your Betters"

It's changed now, but here's what the post, written by FDL flunkie/blogmoll Trex, once said:

So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing your betters and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off, maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion. Although judging from your other posts that I read, mediocrity may be a chronic condition for you.

But remember, they're the party of "racial sensitivity."

So long as the darkies don't get uppity.

When they do, all bets are off.

Incidentally, Kos and Firedoglake have both de-linked the black blogger that rant was directed at.

The top of the sinistrosphere can get away with this because "blogpower" -- the ability to throw traffic -- is so concentrated in a few hands. It's a, err, meda oligarchy, to use a term beloved by the left.

The dextrosphere doesn't have this rigid-pyramid type structure. This may be because the top right-leaning blogger, Instapundit, isn't a conservative at all, and isn't even ar Republican. The second (or so) biggest blogger, Charles Johnson, is a single-issue blogger, more or less, on the War on Terrorism. I don't think he's really a genuine conservative, or even RINO, either. Not sure about this, but I think he's more of a 9/11 Democrat type. At any rate, the fact that I know so little about his politics says something.

Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt the Powerline guys are, of course, both huge bloggers and conservative Republicans. But there really is not one Blogfather on the right as there is on the left; there are multiple big bloggers, and the two biggest are simply not even Republicans (or, in the case of LGF, if he is a Republican he doesn't really discuss Republican domestic issues on his blog).

Dissing Kos or even an Atrios denies you the main source of blogolanche traffic. There's a definite top-down heirarchy on the left that isn't really present on the right. I could piss off Glenn Reynolds if I wanted (hey, I've done so before) but because he's just the biggest of several large bloggers it wouldn't really hurt my traffic any. Sure, I'd miss the bimonthly Instalanche, but it's not like I rely on those like all the leftwing bloggers rely on Kos, Atrios, and their newest "made man" Jane Hamsher.

That difference in structure says something. What, I'm not really sure. On one hand it prevents the right from coordinating a message the way the top-down heirarchy of the left can, and makes it harder for the right to unify behind candidates.

On the other hand, it does help prevent the creepy lockstep conformity of "freethinking" progressive opinion.

I'll say one thing about "TRex," the coblogger at FDL who told Liza not to speak out of turn to her "betters:" He's really let Jane Hamsher's success get to his head.

And Jane Hamsher ought to watch it herself. She's had a number of missteps. She got big based upon her shrill fantasias about the Plame case; seems like that dog won't hunt anymore. She really ought to think a bit more before delinking smaller bloggers that dare to talk back to her.

Petty.

And arrogant. And stupid. You've got a fucking blog, Jane. You really want to start acting like you've got the sort of real power you had as a production assistant on Double Dragon?

By the way... "TRex" of FDL says he didn't realize that telling a black woman to mind her tongue when "assailing [her] betters," and accusing her of having an eighth-grade education, would be misinterpreted as carrying any racist baggage.

Ahem.

Smart, tough. Racially sensitive.

I guess when you spend all your time accusing others of lacking in racial sensitivity you don't bother devoloping any of it yourself.

And why should you? You're a liberal. You can't be a racist.

By definition.

posted by Ace at 09:36 PM

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