Sunday, May 19, 2013

I'm Sure The Hardworking Men and Women at OFA (UPDATE)

Will be delighted to know that someone is thinking of them.

As will the cats and kittens at Media Matters:
Until now, the thankless job of bringing global authoritarian behemoths like Media Matters to heel has been left to single-shingle blogger heroes like Jennifer Rubin
 and Bill O’Reilly,
O’Reilly is not one to very often take the time to attack Media Matters for their work in usually monitoring the network, though he seemed to have found their latest attempt to get Orbitz to boycott Fox News particularly offensive. Calling it a “vicious far-left website"...
who have labored in obscurity for years trying to get their message out.

I'm sure J-Rub and Bill-O will be glad of the company.


UPDATE:
The alert reader will have noticed by now that in the post above I actually said nothing at all about the First Amendment implications involved.

Nothing.

At.

All.

OTOH, I do think casually slandering people Mr. Greenwald perceives of as his opponents du jour (such as characterizing OFA as a band of goons who "work for [the First Amendment's] repeal") is a fairly typical example of Mr. Greenwald's seemingly uncontrollable dickishness and worthy of calling out.

Maybe you think this is irrelevant: that the virtue of Mr. Greenwald's causes completely justifies firehosing anyone who differs with him in the slightest degree with unalloyed contempt.  Maybe, like George Bush, there is no room in your universe for any position but with us or against us.

Well, good luck with that.

The alert reader who delves into the comment sections will also have noticed, on post after post, a by-now predictable repetition of this failure of basic reading comprehension on the part of many of Mr. Greenwald's most ardent supporters, who
A) Appear to fly into their rages unhindered by actually reading what I wrote and without actually engaging with the points I actually raise, and,

B) Appear oblivious to the irony of mindlessly attacking someone with accusations of mindlessly defending Barack Obama .
But I suppose IOKIYAG (It's OK If You're A Greenwaldian.) :-)

Because he really just can't help himself:

21 comments:

mahakal said...

Digby seems to think this AP thing is kind of a big deal too. Maybe there is a real First Amendment issue you should not be diminishing here.

Hamfast Ruddyneck said...

What Mahakal said.

Your indie cred is dropping at sufficiently high velocity for it to have acquired equivalent mass to Ceres, at least.

Pinkamena Panic said...

And here we go...

BruceJ said...

Yes Obama is worse the a thousand hitlers for using a perfectly legal supoena to get phone records to conduct an national security investigation that Congress ordered them to do; a leak that quite possibly blew a one or more undercover agents inside Al Queda itself.

Note this is somewhat different from, say, previous administrations who not only got phone lists but tapped the actual phone conversation as well, by the thousands, without even a nod to the fig leaf provided by the particularly compliant FISA court.

But Obamahitler is the baddest bad guy evar!11!11!Eleventy!!

The death of reason said...

Greenwald eats your lunch.
Ever. You ridiculous homer. Will it take "blue-toned" jackboots on your throat for you to realize this?

Tommy said...

I keep waiting for the part where something illegal happened.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Yeah, that's the point, Tommy; I keep waiting for that too.

There is certainly an argument to be had for whether that should be legal at all (I think it shouldn't be legal, but who listens to zombies); but that doesn't seem to be the argument Greenwald wants to have.

Lit3Bolt said...

Hamfast, how did you guess Driftglass' deep dark secret, that he blogs for 1,156 years in internet time and makes 180+ podcasts just so he can wrap himself up in the blanket of "indie cred?"

Do you even realize what you sound like?

The rest of you Glennbots I'll leave you to clean up your oft-kissed autographed portraits of your Ron Paul-pallin', Cato-check accepting stooge as he's hard at work dreaming up new ways Obama can rape a nun and get away with it.

Because apparently that proves something andbytheway Glenn is writing a new book and Obama is worse than Bush and all Dems are goose-stepping stooges worshiping Satan in blackface. Amirite?

While you engage in quixotic fantasies of rescuing every innocent Muslim killed with your anti-Drone mindrays, the rest of us will be here on planet Earth, and not writing apologist tracts for Ron Paul.

That's something that should get you stoned from what passes for progressivism in the US, but we all know Glenn Greenwald shed his mortal form long ago and has ascended into a new, post-partisan form that is immune to reality.

And maybe if you pay him money and buy his books condemning the United States gov't for being 1000 times worse than 9-11 and ignore all of his lies and misogyny and weird political connections you, too, can ascend past US politics.

That'll be 96.57 US dollars plus tax.

steeve said...

Could we take a brief time out to destroy the republican party, seeing as how they're the main roadblock to literally anything good that could ever possibly happen in government?

None of these are the only step, but they're the first step.

To curb executive power, first destroy the republican party.
To solve gun violence, first destroy the republican party.
To break the power of corporations, first destroy the republican party.

And so on.

DocAmazing said...

It is certainly true that Greenwald is a Libertarian and has take Koch money. It is also true that a broad subpoena of AP reporters' phone records in an "investigation" to discover who leaked what Petraeus said publicly is authoritarian at best--though technically legal, in no small part because Obama refused to honor his campaign promise and go after telcos for abetting spying.

One need not support the Republicans to acknowledge that this administration has fucked up in a very large way. "Yay, team!" is not a substitute for thought.

Hamfast Ruddyneck said...

Lit, I didn't say he was trying for indie cred now.

He had indie cred already for his righteous denunciations of the Reptilian wing of the Imperial Property Party during the Chimperial years, but he's losing it now by his puzzling loyalty to the Dinocratic wing of the Imperial Property Party. (IPP = The 1% and its minions)

I tend to blame his Windy City cultural reflexes for that.

Hamfast Ruddyneck said...

Doc Amazing: "'Yay, team!' is not a substitute for thought."

Hammer. Nail. Bang!

Didn't we used to make fun of the wingnuts for taking exactly that attitude toward the Chimperial Cheney Assministration?

marindenver said...

"A) Appear to fly into their rages unhindered by actually reading what I wrote and without actually engaging with the points I actually raise,"

A constant state of outrage appears to be a curious similarity between the Purity Patrol and the Teabaggers/fRight Wing. And both working tirelessly to find Obama's Achilles Heel which they just know is buried under that cartilage somewhere. Interesting.

mahakal said...

So it seems you are saying that your post is not about the substance of what Mr Greenwald is talking about, i.e., first amendment implications of the AP thing, but his style, which you consider dickish and disrespectful. And you express this in your dickish and disrespectful way, which I actually appreciate and admire you for your felicity with. So with that, carry on.

mahakal said...

(By the way, drifty, I do like your UPDATE: in the classic GG style, and you should freely mock by such imitation because he really isn't a very good writer compared to you. I just don't like the friendly fire all the time, even though I can't stand to read the guy, he's making important points and I'd love it if you were to write a substantive post on the AP thing.)

mahakal said...

(Also btw, Your second update wasn't noted, but I tried to find the tweet in question and could not, perhaps it was deleted?)

mahakal said...

(Nope, it's there... I'm just an idiot who couldn't find it on the main profile where he was linking in a positive way to Adam Serwer. Odd.)

Anonymous said...

Has it been a month already? Your Glenzilla hiatus over already? I was so enjoying not missing him.

Are we still operating under the delusion that the Glenster is a progressive rather than a Koch-snorting libertarian in the bag for the Tea people?

The Big Glenzilla Con: http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/04/re-rise-of-the-naderites-glenn-greenwalds-third-party-dreamin/

Anonymous said...

Something to ponder:

"Fox News Correspondent Gets Busted as ‘Criminal Co-Conspirator’ in CIA Leak"

http://www.politicususa.com/gop-demands-invesgiation-leaks-leakersco-conspirators-fox-news.html

P.S. Your "indie cred" is just fine. Not jumping on the band wagon before the facts are in is THE defnition of independent [Hamfist Redneck could use a dictionary].

Sophie said...

Thank you, Drifty, for continuing to expose the asshat sellout Greenwald.

The day he defended Citizen's United was the day I realized who he REALLY IS.
http://www.salon.com/2010/01/22/citizens_united/

Unknown said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/20/obama-doj-james-rosen-criminality

Well said, Glen Greenwald!

Note the Droneglass/DLC crowd keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to stuff this 'Obama is worse than Hitler' line into the mouths of their leftist critics. Pathetic and dishonest.

Exactly which regime has been more toxic to the defense of democratic rights? The Texas nincompoop who trampled on the Constitution without legal authority? Or the sleek and intelligent 'constitutional law professor' who's permanently enshrined two-tier justice and the state's war on individual and journalistic privacy into law?