Blog on Blog Crime: Glenn Greenwald, Thomas Ellers, Rick Ellensberg, and Wilson Combine for Unfair Charge and Absurd Apologia For Wright

Instapundit linked an Easter-related poem at Instapunk. (Emphasis just to keep the players straight.)

Then Gleen(s) made hay over Old Punk at Instapunk writing a nasty, racially insensitive post that called black people he didn't like "niggers."

Gleen(s) of course claimed that this was just like Obama and Wright, of course. Which has the curious effect of simultaneously damning Glenn Reynolds while excusing Barack Obama.

Dean (not Randy; sorry) Barnett wrote the so-painfully-obvious-it-should-never-have-been-written, but apparently Gleen(s), the most important blogger on the face of the earth (citation: Wilson) needs this explained to him:

"I missed the part where you spent twenty years using that secondary Instapunk guy as your spiritual mentor. I must have also missed the part where you declared your candidacy for president."

Gleen(s) and the left would like to pretend that Reverend Racist is just some dude who Obama had the misfortune to pass one day in the hallway. Of course he's not. Wright is Obama's close political ally and patron and has been such for 20 years. I hate even calling him Obama's "spiritual mentor," as Barnett does, because that's a sham. Obama wasn't attending Wright's church for the theology or Jesus-talk; he could have that from dozens of other black Christian churches in his neighborhood. He chose Wright because Wright's politics were sympatico to his own and he could give him credibility among voters he needed but who might otherwise be suspicious of him due to his tainted-by-white-blood heritage.

(Oh, and here's an important parenthetical: the "Black liberation theology" to which Wright subscribes isn't much about the transcendent or spiritual at all, but rather just rejiggered Marxism and smash-the-state radicalism with footnotes to Matthew and John. So, let's call it for what it is: As Wright and similarly-minded hateful radicals practice it, it's simply Farrakhanism with citations to a different nominal God and holy text.)

Gleen(s) and the left would do well to observe that Obama himself could not make the claim that Wright was "just some guy." Indeed, so profound and enduring were their connections that Obama had to go 180 degrees the opposite direction in attempting to relieve himself of blame: He had to actually claim that Reverend Wright was a de facto family member.

Obama himself thus bars the defense the dishonest left (but I repeat myself) finds most useful -- "He's just some dude I barely know!" That doesn't stop Gleen(s) or his various cobloggers (who really are like family to him; after all, the share the same DNA, and I do mean "the same") from making the dishonest claim, of course.

Not to be Instapundit's defender or anything, but the guy is a blog booster and likes linking other smaller blogs (and "smaller" to Instapundit means all but three or four of them). And yet he doesn't, as most of us don't, read many blogs. I think it's pretty obvious from his frequent linkings which blogs he actually reads, and, by implication, the great mass of blogs he doesn't.

I don't read many blogs myself -- every blog-reader has three, four, five, maybe six or even ten blogs she reads regularly. As in daily, or every other day. I'd like to read more blogs, but I don't have the time -- as I joke (but only partly joke) my job here is writin' shit, not readin' shit. I rely on self-tips from other bloggers to point me to their good stuff, and of course the tips of readers to do the same.

For Instapundit, Instapunk (and his coblogger Old Punk) really is "just some guy he met in a hallway"... except he's not even that, of course. I rather doubt Instapundit ever even heard of Old Punk before. I don't think I did.

So, the defense that the left wishes, in their Community-Based Reality, that Obama could and would make of his Wright problem -- just a casual and tenuous connection which means practically nothing at all -- actually does in fact apply to Instapundit here.

Gleen(s)' typically silly-shit partisanship thus denies to an ideological enemy a defense, where it actually applies, while insisting its applicability to an ideological ally, where it most emphatically does not.

Par for the course, of course.

You know, when Sean, Patterico, and I exposed Gleen(s) for the liar he is a lot of people laughed it off as no big shakes.

I have to claim vindication here, I think: Liars lie. It's what they do. They can't help themselves, even were they actually inclined to try.

Glenn Greenwald is, was, and always will be a thoroughly dishonest hack and shamefully disingenuous partisan douchebag. The entire Attack of the Clones episode -- and its sequel, Revenge of the Magic Cabana Boy, and even more egregious doubling-down on the initial dishonesty -- revealed Greenwald's slimy and sleazy character. Or caricature, perhaps.

He never even confessed error and apologized, something any man of even a shadow of integrity would do, if simply to avoid further embarrassment and shame. But he knew he could get away with continuing to lie, because his (their?) readers like the lies. The left has a rather bad tendency to conflate the usefulness of a premise with its actual reality.

It's useful for the left that Obama never heard Wright's vicious anti-Americanism and pro-Hamas terrorist apologism and anti-white racism -- and thus that must be the reality of the situation.

Just as it was useful for the left -- and Gleen(s) especially, of course -- to pretend that there was a Magic Cabana Boy living at Gleen(s)' house typing furious defenses of Gleen(s) at all hours of the night in Gleen(s)' online voice, with all his telltale tics and in one case actually previewing a post Gleen(s) would write later that day in his own name, using substantially the same language.

If it advances the cause, it must be true. How could it be otherwise? The cause is just and mighty; it contains multitudes; it is the path of the righteous. And no one following that path can possibly be dishonest.

Past is prologue. He'll continue lying, because that is what he knows best.

I really don't know why people even rise to Gleen(s)' shabby bait. I realize that this is the sort of charge that needs to be responded to, but for the love of Obama, don't link to him just because he makes yet another dishonest charge. Talk about perverse incentives.

PS: Even the ridiculous Andrew Sullivan knows better than to link one of my aggressive critiques of him.

I don't even blame him for that-- why on earth would he want to encourage me or direct his readers to a critique which (in his mind) is blatantly unfair?

Do I have to forward the memo again?

How the Fuck Did I Get Dragged Into This Shit Now? Before I even posted this, Old Punk included this poor-pitiful-me bit:

The good news is this. If I were a member of most any of the popular, "influential," conservative blogs -- like Ace of Spades or Protein Wisdom -- I'd already have been told to "Take my knives and go." They know they can get away with endless cock and boob jokes but nothing that might deeply offend gays, women, or ethnic minorities. That's actually why I was drawn to InstaPunk. Not a lot of gratuitous cock and boob jokes. They convinced me that my cock was my business and boobs weren't a punchline all by themselves. They also didn't think the word "gay" was automatically synonymous with gales of hysterical laughter.

Well, I don't think the word "gay" is "automatically synonymous with gales of hysterical laughter." Though, like another offensive playground putdown -- retard -- it can be funny. I actually cringe when I realize how often I write both.

I confess to overdoing it and lapsing into simple gay-bashing-for-cheap-laughs on occasion. Too frequently, in fact. (See the post I just linked -- I'd completely forgotten I even included all that anti-gay stuff. I don't buy that gay jokes = "Nigger," but neither do I think they're harmless. Just because something isn't as bad as something else does not mean it's not bad at all. I'm aware of that. And I do it anyway. Knowing full well that for every guy I mean to piss off (like Gleen(s)) I also upset about twenty or thirty gay readers or allies I have no intention of upsetting. And yet: I keep doing it. Because I'm a hypocrite, and because I can be nastier than I like admitting to myself.)

So, if his point is that none of us are saints, true enough. The hypocrisy and preening on these and related issues sometimes becomes outright fantastical (and I include myself as an occasional fantasist).

But cock and boob jokes = "I don't like niggers"? What? That's the stand he's making here?

Eh. Personally, I'll stick with the dick and tit jokes and eschew drawing up any "Nigger Lists." But that's just me.

And, oh: You wouldn't have been asked to take your knives and go home because you never would have been asked in the first place. For a site calling itself "Instapunk," man, there sure are some dreary prigs posting there.

And one more thing: Vagina.

posted by Ace at 10:36 AM

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