Skippy!!!!!!

i’ve got nothing against ana marie, she tells great dick jokes, but i really think that for insightful writing you want to go read david niewert, and if gender is a real issue, go read jeanne d’arc.

i would much rather seen jeanne on blogging panels than ana marie. wonkette is closer to derek and clive than jon stewart, if you want to start with the premise that she’s doing comedy as a basis for truth-telling.

pesonally i prefer dcmedia girl.

and of course, firedoglake, whom i have just added to my blogroll!

Oh, M. I think you handled that kerfuffle quite gracefully when all was said and done.

Is it the right wing Y chromosome: Beer, babes, and blogs? If rabid male leftist bloggers were as insightful as Wonkette they’ld be the ones getting the ‘miseries, and birthing into a more human world.We’ve had our test recently by an intelligent, libertarian, Neichaen, absolutest. We were tempted to call him a Jesuit–the ultimate put down rationalist. We did call him a cold war dip shit and the battle was on. Why anyone with such views would visit our site continues to astonish, but we agree with above that its the issues that matter and that must be the golden objective.Playground skirmishes don’t build coalitions–just enemies. On that level we have found common ground on many occasions even though we remain very partisan, leftist and determined to articulate our shrinking world with the hope that we will survive the paradigm shift in this country and rebuild our communities with likeminded souls. Right on Firedog Lake, Fallen Monk, The Chemist, Wonkette, and other Darth-Be-gone warriors. M of MandT

It’s not so much the reading of right-wing pundits I question — it’s the desire to engage in verbal fisticuffs. The back-and-forth vollies and personality wars. Although I have to admit it was amusing to see Juan Cole get into it with Jonah Goldberg for about a minute. But on the whole I’d rather read TBogg’s Jonah Goldberg fan fiction any time:

He was about 5′ 7″, scruffy brown hair, little piggy eyes, garbed in Dockers and a black Billy Joel River of Dreams tour t-shirt that was bunched up around his man-boobs….

Quality like that makes blogging worthwhile.

I often find the same thing with Libertarians–we share some common ground about limiting government secrecy and intrusions into private life–but then they get all cold-hearted and Ayn Randish and the similarities end.

As for moving middle? The Democrats are paying for that strategy now. The Republicans didn’t come to dominate DC by moving left–they went hard right!

I confess, I read righties AND lefties all the time. I even watch FAUX News channel and CNN/MSNBC. As for why, well there is the the idea that one should keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer. Then as The Chemist, put it so well, I know it will be bad, but I never know just how bad it will be until I check it out. Mostly though I do it for sheer entertainment. It gets me fired up like nothing else can (stictly politically speaking that is).
Seriously though, I have made some good blogging friends through my forays on the right. Delftsman3, being one of them. I find we often have similiar opinions. Which I suppose could make me more of a middle-of-the-road (independent) than a lefty. Maybe people like me are the people that both the left and the right should be trying to reach.
Both sides would better serve their cause by seeking out those in the middle and trying to draw them in, rather than by attempting to see who can out piss whom.
Of course that’s just my opinion.

I just did a post on this the other day…lots of people ask me why I read Powerline (because of this post) or listen to Michael Savage. Basically, it’s the same reason that people slow down to look at car crashes on the freeway. You know it’ll be bad, but you never know how bad…and you just can’t look away!

Touche, Geoff. Now if we could only just agree on who the Righties were….

At least when the lefties are fighting the righties, they’re not fighting each other.

And I can appreciate that, the “wanting to know” of it. It’s the preoccupation with the back-and-forth smackdown aspect of it that I find puzzling.

When want to know what the “other team” is thinking, I just show up at a family reunion.

I think bloggers who spend a lot of time reading their ideological opponents would defend the practice as oppo research, learning what the enemy thinks, certainly as keeping tabs on what the opponent is injecting into the public thought stream. For some few of them, it might be a genuine act of open-mindedness. You can make a case for all of that, and find value in it.

As for me: I’ll leave reading LGF and its like to other people.

I get my ideas from the same place, fallenmonk — I have almost no interest in defining my opinions in reaction to people I don’t agree with. I care that Tom DeLay is a corrosive political influence in this country, I don’t care what Instapundit has to say about it. But I know there is a whole cadre of bloggers who exist just to debunk their counterparts on the right, and I’m always a bit surprised by it.

My sentiment exactly. I can already predict what they are going to say on any particular subject. It is not going to agree with my thinking. It will not change my mind or philosophy which I have spent 55 years refining. How do I get new ideas? I get them from reading the thoughts of others who look for solutions and understanding in the same ways I do. I read and communicate with people who have demonstrated an ability to think with reason and compassion. I read people who demonstrate faith in progressive ideas and how they can be applied to the problems of the world.

I never understood why so many leftie bloggers read rightie blogs – it’s all I can do to keep up with the blogs that interest me, let alone even bother looking at the ones that don’t!