The 2,500th Post

The occasion of my 2,500th post, PLUS this by Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic:

...
In one piece, Glenn Garvin talks about how shocked the non-racist Barry Goldwater was to see bigots flocking to his banner. He's especially revolted by George Wallace of, all people, offering to switch parties and run as his vice-president. Of course Goldwater and Wallace deserved each other, because Wallace was also a non-racist.

Wallace was less principled, but he was also much clearer. Goldwater's sin was naivety, and a dangerous underestimation of the precise nature and vintage of evil then stalking the South. Wallace understood the evil too well, and thus set about manipulating it. Wallace knew that this was more than abstract theory, that there was real power at stake.

In that sense, Goldwater is the more appropriate hero for today's generation of blissfully ignorant ("How did that 'White slavery' sign get there?") non-racist Republican. It's not so much that they hate you, it's they are shocked--shocked--to discover that some of their fellow travelers hate you.

PLUS my own, full-flowering laziness has moved me to reprint this piece on the subject of "Never jumping into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are” which I put together for my 2,000th post (with a few of the numbers lined-out and updates where appropriate.)

Because nothing whatsoever but the decibel level at which the Right has been squealing "But we didn't knoooow!" has changed.

Looks like I fixed that P2K bug just in time.

So this is post 2,000 2,500, which is a pretty big number. Big enough to be divisible by lots of other reputable numbers, including 1,000 500, which I’m sure is somehow meaningful if you squint at it long enough.

It also means that I have done, on average, around 1.3 posts a day since I started, which explains why I feel like the morning after an alien probe: I’m tired, don’t know what day it is, and my ass hurts.

For the occasion I went back to The News Blog -- my old home place -- to do a little reconnoitering and see if I could find anything of my misspent, uh, youth.

Walking around the old site made sad, as it always does, to see the words hanging there still vibrant and true as they ever were, while at the same time knowing that no more midnights will ever toll when I can come past Steve Gilliard's site confident that he’ll have just laid out yet another freshly BBQed, blogosphere-agenda-setting haunch of Jonah Goldberg, David Brooks, Victor Davis Hanson, Rich Lowry or Michelle Malkin.

In the end I did find a little something to use today; a comment I left there and Gilly promoted to his front page from back in Thee Olden Days when Liberalism was flat on its back, Steve's powerful writing was keeping a lot of us together, focused and strong, and he was running his comment section 24/7 as the best kind of unabashedly raucous, Dirty Fucking Hippy troll smackin' (Hi, Bloomie!) road house.

All gone now -- June 2 will be the second third anniversary of Gilly's death -- but never let it be said that we didn’t stomp upon the terra.

Because we did. We surely did.

Anyway, this is me, from March, 2005.

IMHO it’s as simple as: “Never jump into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are.”

For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun…

…until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck.

Oops.

And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure our that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.

And Randall Terry and Tom DeLay wave to you from the front seat and say, “Mornin’ shug! Get ready; we gonna burn us some ‘a them Christ Hatin’ Abortionists today.” Or Fags. Or Negroes. Or Liberals. Or Ay-rabs. Or Jews. Or, really, anybody.

And all of the slack-jawed yokels who were so eagerly helpful while you were passing you’re Lovely Tax Cuts are sitting around you giggling…and armed to their snaggled teeth.

And then you hear, “Bring Out The Gimp.” (Which, for my money, should be the Democrats’ Lead Media Message for the next four months.)

Oh. God. You mean these crazy fucks were serious? Like, really, really serious?!

No shit they’re serious, Suburban Weekend Bad-Ass -- and it's not exactly like you weren't given Ample Warning: Now they have your shriveled nuts in a razor-lined C-clamp, they want the very high interest vig on the Electoral Loan they made you to pay for your Optional War and Drunken Safety Net Shredding Good Times.

And now here we are, 2,000 2,500 essays later. And taking a very rough, back-of-the-envelope stab at guesstimating the length of a typical post while factoring out tags and code and clips from other sources, I figure that means I have stitched together somewhere between one and two two and two-and-one-half million words (to be fair, they were mostly typos and variation on “fuck”) on this site since the day I hung out my shingle.

Which means, in terms of quantity, I have finally beaten that fucker (see, I told you) Shakespeare (The definitive concordance puts Shakespeare’s complete works at 884,647 words).

So, y’know, bite me :-)

However, in term of quality, given how far into the stratosphere the bard set the bar on every subject from seduction:

"That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman."

-- The Two Gentlemen of Verona

To troll-shredding

"All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him
By inch-meal a disease!"

-- The Tempest

To a certain breed of automated, outsourced “Rock On”/”New Thread” roboblogging

Moth: They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol'n the scraps.
Costard: O, they have liv'd long on the alms-basket of words.

-- Love's Labor's Lost

I daresay we will all be standing safely in the Great Man’s magnificent shadow until the end of time.