I’ve just about had enough of the wingnut meme that liberals are hateful, angry people because they occasionally use colorful language. It’s disingenuous at best – and it’s coming from people who regularly accuse liberals of being “anti-American” or “traitorous” for having the gall to talk about a vision of America that doesn’t involve spying on innocent American citizens or torturing innocents. Glenn Greenwald smacks this fastball so hard the skin peeled right off. Note that his criticism of Glenn Reynolds could be just as fairly leveled at a number of conservative bloggers, including some right here in Ohio.
Glenn Reynolds spews bigotry and paranoid rantings as overt as can be imagined, continuously smears the media and political opponents as traitors, calls for one war after the next, disseminates the most baseless and false innuendo virtually on a daily basis, but there is nothing “angry” or “uncivil” about any of that because he refrains from using naughty words.
Indecent accusations and wretched ideology decorated with civil-sounding words are acceptable. But substantive ideas and protests against government action which periodically include a naughty word is an unparalleled bane on civilization that no decent person can accept. Using those (shallow though almost universally accepted) standards, what does National Review’s application of “the C Word” to Valerie Plame reveal about its place in our political discourse?
So, you tell me: what’s more civil? A little bit of habanero sprinkled on a blogpost, or outright hate of gays/liberals/poor/etc ?
UPDATE: This post at Pandagon made me giggle, and not just because of the Lloyd Dobler reference. The enjoinder to Michelle Malkin is hilarious. The language is [conservative-with-a-stick-up-his-ass]shocking[/conservative-with-a-stick-up-his-ass].
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