Fulcrum Ruminations

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Slap Fight

I've been following a sort-of story for the past few days. It's another good example of the unbalanced lunacy of the poles. You kind of have to shake your head ruefully as the usual suspects go thru their usual motions . . .

This one started with an incident at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Some recruiters for the military were forced off campus by a protest group (demonstrating again, btw, that the Left's "tolerance" and "inclusiveness" only extends to ideas they agree with). The group is called, in a fairly straightforward assertion of position, Students Against War, or SAW.

As an aside, one must point out the curious habit of protesting against the people and organizations that literally bleed to defend the right to protest, but that's a discussion for another time.

At any rate, SAW engaged in some tactics of a questionable nature - slashing tires, throwing rocks, that sort of thing.

In commenting on this story in her blog, Michelle Malkin posted the group's contact information. The information was taken from a press release (which, last I checked, made it public knowledge) and found herself under attack from the more extreme members of the Left for doing so.

One would think that those on the Left would be gratified that someone as far to the Right as Malkin was helping to spread such information and thereby assisting their cause, but of course applying logic to the actions of the reality-impaired is a futile exercise.

Another aside, if you will indulge me, gentle reader - protests are often successful only in drawing greater attention to the thing being protested against, which makes the protest largely self-defeating. One must suppose, however, that the act of protest itself fulfills the human need to do something. And some protests do in fact succeed in doing what they set out to do, so it's not always a wasted effort. Just mostly a wasted effort. Hence the ancient advice to "choose your battles carefully."

Back on topic, as noted at PajamasMedia, Malkin found herself under sudden and savage attack for >gasp!< reporting publically-available information. The attackers went so far as to publish her home address, email, phone number, and even photos of her house and members of her family. Malkin details this here.

The upshot of all of this is easily predictable: more venom, more hatred, more childish name-calling and invective coming from both sides. I personally am waiting for someone to come out with "I'm rubber, you're glue" at any moment.

In the long run, this bodes poorly for our country. One cannot conduct public discourse at this level. This is behaviour that you would expect to find in a kindergarten schoolyard. It's getting worse and worse, as bloggers engage in slanderous personal attacks that would make previous generations of political commentators hide their faces in shame. Right-wing bloggers are rushing to attack the left-wing bloggers, who attack the right-wing bloggers right back, in a never-ending cycle of tit-for-tat.

Maybe someone should turn a hose on the lot of 'em.

2 Comments:

Blogger jurassicpork said...

Yeah, and more intimidation and death threats from Malkin's rat hordes from LGF, more squealing from Malkin about how Malkin's the victim in all this. Yeah, Lanz, let's talk about intolerance.

And obviously you're not checking in the right places. The contact info in a press release is not intended for public consumption unless it's actually part of the press release (and it very rarely is). It's attached to the press release in case the reporters want to do a follow-up story.

Ergo, Malkin fucked up and found out the hard way that turnabout's fair play.

But I guess that inconvenient fact got lost in your thankfully balanced "fulcrum ruminations", you stupid blowhard.

Now let's see you grow a set for a change and allow dissenting comments like I do on my blog. But I think we both know what your response will be.

10:54 PM  
Blogger Lanz said...

Well Porkie, thanks to your heads-up I became aware that comments were being submitted. They're all visible now, so you can continue to spew your venom and make my point for me.

Have at it.

10:19 AM  

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