Voices From The GOP Base, Ctd

Althouse responds:

Sullivan is upset/annoyed that some homophobic things show up in the threads here, as if it says something about my blog. He doesn't have comments, but I'll bet if he did, he'd collect plenty of homophobic crap at his place too. Probably even more than shows up here. Maybe that's one reason he doesn't have comments. But I've chosen to open my place to comments, and I have a strong free speech policy.

Fair enough, I guess, so far as it goes. But it's disingenuous on several counts.

The Dish has polled its readers annually on whether they want comments threads that degenerate the way Althouse's and anyone else's can. The readers don't want them by a massive majority. What we do here is read and post the most intelligent and eloquent reader responses we can find and readers can judge whether I allow dissent and push-back on this blog. All I can say is: show me another blog that airs as much self-criticism and dissent as this one – without the vile ad hominem, anonymous hate-speech she relies on for traffic.

Secondly these were not just homophobic comments. They were vicious personal attacks on a specific human being, using both my sexual orientation and my illness as targets. I find attacks on someone because he is gay and has HIV to be disgusting – and I would obviously feel the same about anyone else in my position. I'm all for free speech and I respect her open comments, but there has to be a line somewhere and this kind of personal abuse has been a feature on her blog now about me for years. It's perfectly possible to lambaste me for daring to ask questions about a national politician's fishy personal stories, without accusing a 16 year HIV-survivor of AIDS dementia. If even that does not prompt her to remove a comment, then what would? She then says:

So I did engage with a commenter in that thread. I answered a specific question that was addressed to me, and that I happened to find interesting. What I don't do — and what Sullivan is wrong to infer — is monitor the hundreds of comments that come in every day. I don't systematically keep track of anything. Sometimes I read haphazardly, and I am a very busy person… a very busy person who is committed to free speech and to creating a place where people with different opinions can talk with/at each other.

I am glad she does not deny that she engaged in this thread herself, and she did so long after many of the references to my HIV were published. It seems to me that if you are actually contributing to a comment thread, you tend to have read the thread leading up to that point. So the idea she had no idea what was afoot is ludicrous. She has already accused me of being a racist, a heterophobe and a misogynist and she teed off the most recent and most vicious assault by accusing me of having no shame because I cannot pretend to have resolved the doubts I have about Sarah Palin's stories about her fifth pregnancy. (I'm sorry but I cannot. God knows I know I'm in a tiny minority and that my own dear colleague, Patrick, has blogged in this space arguing I'm off-base and on and on. But I owe my readers honesty. I'm here answerable and accountable at all times and I feel duty-bound not to bullshit my readers, even if it makes me look like a loon. That's why I went silent as I first tried to figure out if this bizarre story could possibly be true. I had to address it if I were to be honest, but I simply didn't know. So I shut up, simply asked for the thing to be resolved (as it easily could be), and have never ever claimed that I knew the truth. I have always, always only expressed my lingering doubts and asked them to be resolved.)

Anyway – deep breath – even if everything Althouse says in her defense is true, it says a lot to me that she is unable even to offer a word of apology or regret, or to remove any of the vilest personal attacks in that thread. I offended her a while back with a post on her announcement that she was getting engaged to one of the commenters on her site. You can read the post here to see how offensive it was. Her immediate response was:

Not sure he quite sees the time line…. but… thanks for noticing.

I subsequently apologized for any offense she subsequently felt. I was too glib, and insensitive, but it's in a different universe from the hate speech she publishes. In that same Althouse post in March, the following comment soon appeared:

The years of HIV infection have taken a toll on his body and his brain. He can beef up with testosterone and steroids, but there's no drug to cure AIDS-related dementia.

If Althouse had not partially built her traffic on this kind of stuff for years, and if she weren't a big blog, and a contributor to bloggingheads and other MSM outlets and a professor at a university, I'd let this slide as I usually do. But at some point, you have to say: enough. And someone on the right has to say: no more.

Conservatives Embrace Gay Citizens

In Britain, of course, where the resurgent Tory party, facing a national election, threw its first official convention event for its gay members and supporters:

Party chairman Eric Pickles told partygoers: “We’re very, very proud of this event tonight and I Spiritbar think that this has shown just how far the Conservatives have come. “Next year I want to see another official gay pride night and I hope to see you all there!”

Openly gay shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert told the crowd he was "living proof" of the fact the party had changed. He said: "I am lucky enough to be in David Cameron's shadow cabinet as an out gay man, I was elected as an out gay man, I have never experienced any prejudice or obstacle along the way."

Herbert added that the party was proof that "gay people are not the property of the left." Party host and Conservative blogger Iain Dale told PinkNews.co.uk: “I’m really pleased that so many people have come and that people are having such a great time, I think that it is really important that we have events like this.”

The British Tories make Obama look like a member of the religious right. Unlike Obama, they have openly gay figure in real positions of power and have married gay future cabinet members. And they make the current Republicans look like the fearful, retrograde bigots so many of them are. 

Peace Prize Reax III

This seems to be all anyone wants to talk about. I seem to be one of the few who sees this as a downpayment on a potential transformative period in world history. History alone can judge that, and history hasn't happened yet. Michael Steele:

It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain — President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.

"Outshined?" DNC:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.

Classy. I hate this loony partisanship. Ambers:

[O]ne argument I'm hearing and reading from Democrats and others who are skeptical of the prize: it will turn the volume and enthusiasm level all the way to the extreme end of the dial for conservatives — overmodulating at 110%; the resulting hyperpolarization will hurt Obama's agenda.

But they turned the volume up to 11 a day after his inauguration! He's already Hitler and Stalin combined to them. And, of course, their derangement has only accelerated their decline as a serious political party. Win-win for Obama. Lindsay Beyerstein:

Of course the Republicans are going to freak out. Our guy wins a Nobel Peace Prize after 9 months in office, primarily for tinkering with the worst excesses of the wars their guy started. That's humiliating. Humiliated Republicans lash out, news at eleven.

Joe Klein:

I'm as relieved as anybody that the Bushian gunslingers have been given the gate and, as regular readers know, I'm a big fan of patient, rigorous diplomacy–and there's a certain lovely irony to any prize that brings the Taliban and the neoconservative Commentary crowd together in high dudgeon–but let's face it: this prize is premature to the point of ridiculousness. It continues a pattern that holds some peril for Obama: he is celebrated for who he is not, and for who he might potentially be, rather than for what he has actually done. If he doesn't provide results that justify the award, this Nobel will prove a millstone come election time.

Freddie DeBoer:

No one is above the outrage cycle. We have now, in our culture, synthesized the two worst elements of pre-9/11 and post-9/11 media: the pre-9/11 obsession with meaningless bullshit; and the post-9/11 obsession with filling every story with apocalyptic portent and over the top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert hysteria. We still care too much about J-Lo’s dress and the Summer of the Shark. Now, we get around the idea that we are shallow for giving a shit about such things by infusing them with pseudo-political importance and our current national drug of choice, outrage. Everything is an outrage. Everyone is outraged. Every turn of the news cycle gives us a new opportunity to pound the table.

Coates:

My thoughts? I just don't think it matters much.

DiA:

One suspects that the Nobel committee may have been trying to reinvigorate their own public image by choosing someone "relevant", rather than someone like Thich Quang Do, the 80-year-old Vietnamese dissident monk. Or they may have wanted to lend Mr Obama some extra mojo for his upcoming pushes on climate change in the Senate and then in Copenhagen. But one fears the effect may be the opposite, on both counts. Every Facebook response I've seen so far has been a variation on the theme of "huh?" Maybe he can re-gift it somehow.

Matt Welch:

Among many other things, this selection illustrates the United States' way-too-oversized role in the world's imagination. And it shows how people–almost touchingly–remain suckers for likeable politicians who replace guys they hated, investing in them a kind of faith mere mortals usually don't merit. As Chili Davis famously (and presciently) said about Dwight Gooden, "He ain't God, man."