When I was a kid our next-door neighbors had a dog named Sparky that was really mean and really stupid. They kept him locked up in this sort of muddy pen between their shed and our fence, and whenever we went out into our yard to play, Sparky would go berserk, snarling and barking his dumbass vicious head off. What he really wanted to do was kill and eat us, so he'd coil up and try to jump the fence -- and he'd always fall smack right back on his doggy ass. The best part was that he was a klutz, so half the time he'd land on his side, or better, his skull. Once he did a complete backflip and startled the hell out of himself, utterly confused, and he scurried right into his noisome little kennel and whimpered and sniveled. Funny, funny shit. I don't remember what ultimately happened to him, whether he licked a poison slug and died, or he finally escaped to terrorize the streets and got promptly smeared by a bus, but I seem to recall he came to a bad end. Or else he got a column at Townhall. Whatever.

I think of Sparky whenever I wander over to the Wingnut-o-Sphere in order to gawk at the fabulous exhibits they have on display over there. At EschaCon I was talking to Atrios about our mutual friends on the right side of the Internet, and he said something about how he was struck by just how flat-out stupid they usually are. Like, say, Jonah Goldberg -- the boy is just not very bright. I agreed, but then I disagreed -- citing for instance someone like Victor David Hanson, who clearly possesses some form of intelligence, in that he knows how to cite Thucidydes even when he's babbling absolute shit.

We were both really high at the time, and there was a lot of Islamophilic gay sex going, on, so the end of the conversation remains a bit hazy. But I stand by my contention that "stupid" does not completely explain the Right Blogosphere. It is of course a crucial factor in explaining their otherwise inexplicable behavior and pronouncements. But there is something else at work, an "X Factor," only not even remotely cool in any sense. Rather there is a "Sparky factor," which I'll name after this shithead of a dog I grew up with. See, it doesn't matter in the end if you are stupid by birth, or stupid because some sort of venomous savage ideological wankery makes you say and do and support stupid things. I don't even now know whether Sparky was born stupid or if his mean streak made him go ass over teacup all the damn time. But the results were the same.

So in the heel of the hunt, does it matter why Michelle Malkin wants to prove how she's against racist slander by saying Barack Obama is full of "jive talk," and (I swear, I shit you not) by informing the Illinois Senator, "You be trippin’, Barry"? Shall we be outraged by the desire of Red State to say that Nancy Pelosi is exactly the same thing as the Ayatollah Khomeni? Ought we to be shocked by amusing, if nauseating and depraved, and not amusing, vignettes about black rappers raping a white actress in order to make a sub-moron level "satirical" point?

Nah. That's just the barking dogs, baby. The dumb, vicious barking dogs. It's what they do.

(Video: Tribe Called Quest, "Check the Rime." It is The Shit.)