patty shirt
TRex: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  We have a matter of grave importance to discuss tonight.  Very respected and highly ethical Right-Wing Blogger Patterico has discovered that the gentlemen (and I use the term lightly) who run Sadly, No! have been making a fortune off of some t-shirts that advocate violence against Conservatives.  We take all allegations of violence and incitement very seriously here in our particular outpost of the Liberal Blogosphere.  We know that right wingers would never do that   Verily do I love thee Sadly, No!   You read the wingnuts so we don’t have to.  But this time you’ve gone too far! I think you need to account for yourselves and come clean as quickly as possible so that business in the blogosphere as we know it may continue.
 
So, let’s begin.
 
Now, who exactly is Patterico and what the heck has got him so upset?
 
 
Gav: By day, Patterico is an assistant prosecutor in Los Angeles County, while by night he dons a hood and cape and fights the many-tentacled octopus of the Liberal Conspiracy on his blog. The two roles interlap, if I can invent that word, in that he seems to think of liberals as perps who are always lying and trying to get away with stuff — and his discursive style is to make a hailstorm of silly accusations, demanding that people ‘explain’ and ‘prove’ things which he then pretends to misunderstand in twisty ways. This dovetails wonderfully with our style, which is to make fun of people like that until they jump up and down breaking their golf clubs over their knee. We suspect Patterico secretly appreciates us, as we do him.
 
Brad: Patterico devotes a stunning amount of time to "bwaah-haa-haa"-ing (i.e., digging up supposed dirt on his ideological foes and going "BWAAH-HAA-HAA!!1!") with his pals Jeff Goldstein and Ace of Spades. He’s upset because…well, I’m not sure what drives him. I think "bwaah-haa-haa"-ing must be the Internets equivalent of crack, because the guy can’t get enough of it. Goldstein, Ace, and Patterico do so much of this stuff that we’ve dubbed them the "Super Bwaah-haa-haario Brothers."
 
Trex: That’s very nice, boys, but can you explain to the class what this has to do with these rather rude t-shirts you made those huge piles of money off of?

Gav: Oh, that’s a good question, yes. This whole affair started when we jumped into the Deb Frisch, um, contretemps, in which Jeff Goldstein ran around crying that a liberal had threatened his kid in comments to his site. It was actually a tangly and unsavory thing, if not anything like a credible threat to anyone, but Goldstein routinely makes the same kind of remarks, while a lot of right-wing bloggers think it’s hilarious to joke about killing liberals, immigrants, dusky-hued foreign civilians, and government officials (and I’m sure I’m leaving out a category or two there) but…oh yeah, fags. But a lot of them are all about that sort of thing. And we waded into it with eyes not entirely open.

Brad Adds: (I cannot read Goldstein. It’s like watching a plane full of nuns crash into a kitten farm.)

Gav: Apropos the shirt, there was never any such shirt for sale. We did a prototype design of a parody of a right-wing shirt for our store (which isn’t open yet), and I used it as a mockup because it was the only shirt design that was finished. We’d voted not to use it because it was too nasty, and because the right-wing howling about the  NY Times had rendered it a lot less funny than it might previously had been.

So, enter Inspector Pattycakes, the Man From U.R.K.E.L. He found our store, which apparently some people could get to from the main page. Brad and I couldn’t, so we thought it was private — it might’ve been a browser issue; we’re still not sure. But Patterico was on the case, and the discussion immediately shifted away from the volcano of eliminationist hate propaganda from the right, and onto our dumb little parody design that we weren’t intending to to sell. It was a stunning maneuver: No matter how many times you see it, it’s still wonderful how something as bloated and treacly as the right wing can zip into action when there’s blame to be shifted.  

TRex: I sense that you two are out there smirking about this.  You can just wipe that look right off your faces.  These are very serious allegations.  All of Left Blogistan may be called upon to renounce you.  You’ll be kicked off the Townhouse mail list and Kos won’t give you a pony.

Brad: LOL. That’s cool with me. I’ll just pull a David Horowitz on your asses and become the Right’s darling apostate. Plus, once you get on that Heritage/AEI welfare system, you’re set for life. My first Townhall column would be about how left-wing bloggers are all intolerant people who made me cry by calling me a "wanker."  

Gav: I want a pony. 
 
TRex: How exactly does this relate to Glenn Greenwald, though?  And what, precisley did these shirts of yours say?  Gavin, please pay attention.
 
Gav: See, now you’re thinking like a right-wing blogger: "How does everything relate to Glenn Greenwald?" But essentially, after we posted an essay including a bunch of authentic right-wing hate propaganda, in reference to the Goldstein/Frisch affair, Glenn started jumping up and down on those guys with giant boots in a way that, unlike with us, serious people would have to notice and take account of. The response from the WingNet was immediate, hysterical, and quite characteristic: They set about trying to smear Glenn and pin petty charges on him. We were like a PT boat weaving in and out of all that, and we drew a lot of fire.  As for the shirt, here’s a link to our last — and hopefully final — post on the subject.
 
TRex: Well, that’s very brave of you, Gavin, I’m sure, but we all know about you liberals and your phony war records.  What exactly is a "sock puppet" and how is it germane to this discussion, gentlemen?
 
Brad: The point of "sock puppeting" is to make it look as though multiple people are agreeing with your point, when in reality it’s just you.  One such case of sock puppeting was the john lott-mary rosh debacle.
Patty & pals found that someone had been defending Greenwald on various blogs using Greenwald’s IP address. I personally don’t know what the deal is, but Greenwald doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy who needs to use sock puppets to defend himself — he’s not the kind of guy who backs away from a fight
 
TRex: But doesn’t Patterico have a sock puppet of his own?
 
Brad: I can’t comment on that. For all I know, that’s just speculation at this point. You’d have to ask someone else.
 
TRex: Gavin will go out on a limb, I bet.
 
Brad: But yeah, I don’t really know whether Pattycakes has a sock puppet or not. We have suspicions, but to my knowledge, nothing is nailed down. (So put me down as, "I can’t comment on that because i don’t have enough information" just so we’re clear.)
 
TRex:  You’d do it if you loved me.
 
Brad: We’ve only just met!
 
Gav: Um, when I bite into a peppermint patty, I get the sensation of a cool mountain breeze blowing over an icy-clear stream. That said, we’re the kind of chaps who stay up nights in torment if we’re wrong about something. And in any case, we’ve already flung a couple of banana peels under Patterico’s hooves, so it’s not as though we have any outstanding grudges with him, right at the moment.
 
Brad: Screw you guys, I’m going to bed .
 
TRex: Not even in light of this post?
 
Gav: We’re really following the posts like this one. Misha at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is a psychopath who gets to do his Silence of the Lambs penis dance every day, until now without a word from the mainstream press (who’ve somehow managed to publish numerous pieces about ‘angry’ or ‘disreputable’ left-bloggers). Inter alia, we hear that Misha is a nice guy in real life. But so are a lot of people who leave the world worse than when they found it.  As for the shirt, here’s a link to our last — and hopefully final — post on the subject.
 
TRex: Indeed.  And that, I think is why the right-wingers are so determined to shout Greenwald down.  He’s pointing out over and over that contrary to the MSM stereotype of left wing rabid lambs like ourselves, the right wing blogs have always been bloodthirsty, over the top, and truly the unhinged step-children of right-wing hate radio.

And that’s all we have time for tonight, kids!  Thank you Gavin and Brad and all you loyal Firedogs for your patience!
Good night! 

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