There goes any lingering respect I had for Glenn Greenwald and Salon.com 
Oh for fuck’s sake. This is beyond ridiculous. I’m so appalled that I’m not even sure what to say about it. What does one say when a prominent blogger and author likens a not-so-prominent blogger to a Nazi propagandist simply for daring to show support for President Obama and to provide a place for the so-called “Obots” to discuss positive news and images of our President?
Prior to the election, my frustration with the likes of Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald reached critical mass. Every time I see Jane Hamsher’s face on MSNBC, I want to shoot my television.*** Where the hell did she come from? And why the hell won’t she go away?
Eventually, it became clear to me that her band of “Dump Obama” FireDogIdiots are a small ineffectual percentage of the progressive population; so I stopped allowing myself to get angry at the brain dead morons who are following this self-aggrandizing, “thinks blackface is hilarious,” crocodile tear-weeping idjit right off the Cliffs of Insanity. I resigned myself to never being included in white liberal proclamations about “the base.” I chalked her up to just another middle class/upper middle class white lady who has managed to weasel her way into the political discourse.
But Glenn? Glenn I used to respect. He was calling out the Bushies on their bullshit when others in the media still had their heads up their asses. I agreed with his politics and appreciated the manner in which he was able to condense complicated constitutional principles into language that non-lawyers could understand (something I’ve always struggled with.) Even when he started to descend into Obama-bashing territory, I still agreed with some of his points, albeit not the way he phrased them.
But this? This is going too far:
Really? Comparing Blackwaterdog — a Jewish pro-Obama supporter/blogger, whose only crime, as far as I can tell, is blogging positive news and pictures about Obama — to Leni Riefenstahl, a fucking Nazi propagandist?
Blackwaterdog is a blogger who got ran out of DailyKos for daring to express support for Obama, and now, in the dickiest of dick moves, you’ve used your much larger platform to pick on her.
What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a paid columnist for a major online publication and you’re picking on a blogger using inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric — do you not see anything wrong with that?
No, apparently, he doesn’t. His defense? “No one complained when I said the same thing about Bush.“ Seriously:
Whether or not you slammed the right during the Bush years is irrelevant. Did you ever single out a blogger — one who is using a wordpress.com account, for crying out loud! — and then liken that individual to a Nazi propagandist? I doubt it.
And, by the way, you *did* compare Obama to Hitler. Insulting those of us who read your dumb fucking tweet as you surely intended it, only makes you look like more of an asshole. The right thing to do is to apologize and admit your mistake and then try to make your point without resorting to schoolyard taunts, but I guess that’s not what assholes do, is it?1
By the way, if you check out her blog, it’s more than just a photo collage of blingy “I heart Obama” pictures, so just shut the fuck right up.
You’re disgusting.
1 I’ll cop to being an asshole; sometimes I am.
[via WEESeeYou and The Only Adult in the Room]
[partially cross-posted here at Balloon Juice]
***Deleted unnecessary jab about Botox after having been told and agreeing that making a crack about botox and a cancer survivor is crass.
Every time Greenwald does his “The Leader” shtick he’s comparing Obama to Hitler.
He needs to STFU about this if he’s not going to apologize. It was just a complete dick move.
OT Funny thing, I was just wondering about you today. Hadn’t seen you in a very long time.
Agreed. Dick move.
Hi! I don’t go to the ‘flats any more. I’m all Palin-ed out. I comment over at BJ (less so these days) and Ta-nehisi Coates’ blogs mostly. I’m burnt out on politics as it is. I hope you’re doing well.
/OT
Very well said. You just became one of my new favorite bloggers with “white liberal proclamations about the base”!
ha. thanks! i’m just so fucking sick and tired of hearing people talk about how Obama is disappointing his base or hippie punching.
I AM NOT DISAPPOINTED.
but i guess i don’t matter so i’ll just move the back of the liberal bus with the rest of the colored folk.
I am appalled by Greenwald’s words and actions. I am also a bit stunned as, like you, I have had great respect for his work.
Perhaps Hamsher’s cosmic (as in, obviously not from this planet) beauty has stirred something in his loins, causing his obectivity to drop as his little penis rises.
i read him religiously during the bush years. i even would wade through the hundreds of comments his posts generated. but he’s gone off the reservation and i’m done with him. (i know he’s crying about it. ha.)
Greenwald comes off as a kind of a jerk drunk with power. I stopped reading him a while back, not because I thought he was a terrible person or had terrible ideas , but he just seemed like someone who likes to hear himself talk a little bit too much, and I didn’t get anything from him I couldn’t get somewhere else from someone who was less of a dick.
Good on you for calling him out.
Absolutely correct. Nothing to add.
It’s just thrilling to read strong points so crisply made.
Jane Hamsher just tweeted a link to this post, saying that her having botox would be “suicidal” with her cancer. So that’s how they’re attacking you – picking up a throwaway line and twisting into something awful.
“Throwaway line” – no it was a sexist way of attacking Hamsher’s credibility by making her appear to be a shallow appearance obsessed person. It was low and completely pointless to bring Hamsher into this post at all, as she and Glenn are seperate people, running seperate blogs, and Hamsher had nothing to do with Glenn’s tweet.
No, it wasn’t sexist. It was Hollywoodist. Plenty of guys get botox, and Jane’s a former producer. And, yes, it was a throwaway line. As someone who’s delivered throwaway lines thousands of times, I damn well know what one is.
and, in fact, i have mentioned on this blog that joe biden needs to lay off the botox.
it’s deflection because she and her followers cannot answer for her bullshit, which, i’m going to repeat, INCLUDED A POST ACCOMPANIED BY A PICTURE OF JOE LIEBERMAN IN BLACKFACE.
firebaggers are a hoot.
it’s too bad that i have a tumor card AND a race card to play. she can’t win this hand.
idiots.
oh cry me a fucking river. she knows goddamn well i wasn’t saying anything about her cancer. i have a goddamn tumor in my brain. there. we’re even.
it was a throwaway line and if you or she read any of my other posts, you and she would know that.
and considering she has yet to answer for her post which was accompanied by JOE LIEBERMAN IN BLACKFACE, she can kiss my ass.
Best,
ABL/STM
It’s separate, not seperate.
I agree with your every damn word, ABL. And now I see Hamsher and Greenwald, unaccustomed themselves to anything except adulation from their followers, are predictably trying to make themselves into “the victims” in this.
I’m one more uppity Negro and I’m not letting this shit slide. I’ve been hit with all the derailing goodies over at BJ. “You’re too sensitive. You’re being hostile. Why are you so angry.”
::eyeroll::
Whoever wrote this post is an asshole. And I want to offer a special thanks for being an asshole, because it helps normal people understand the intellectual squalor where Obama’s robot followers reside. And it helps them gradually move further and further away. Keep up the outstanding work.
Go back to FDL. You’ll feel much warmer there.
So, if you are a Democrat who supports a Democratic president, you’re an “asshole,” but if you’re a professional journalist/blogger who has a hate-on for Democrats who support a Democratic president, you’re a “normal person” (whatever that is).
Why is it always that those who dish it out (like Hamsher, Greenwald and their loyal readers – those who say the most vile things about everyone else every hour of the day — cannot themselves take any criticism, even as they incessantly bemoan the “fact” that their relentless criticism (never ANYTHING progressively positive) is somehow “oppressed.”
i already claim that i’m an asshole in the post.
LEARN TO READ, FIREBAGGER.
Kisses,
ABL/STM
Greenwald hates everybody and everything unless it is 100% in line with his worldview – and a narrow one it is.
His BFF, the firebagger Jane Hamsher needs to stop assuming she and her ilk somehow or another own the Democratic party and STFU.
Classy Hamquist thinks the entire world should know that botox is fatal to cancer patients–HOW DARE YOU NOT KNOW THAT!!!
She doesn’t seem to realize that other people in the world besides Hamquist might also have cancer, in which case who gets the point, or do we jump for it?
Uhm, regarding BWD being “ran out” of Daily Kos, her last post got more recommends than my browser window is capable of showing on one screen, a common thing for BWD. I’m not aware of any of Kos’ actual staff asking her to leave, banning her or anything such. She left for her own reasons which I’m not aware she has spelled out anywhere so let’s not try and make a martyr out of her ok?
I’m also unsure what her blogging from a wordpress account has to do with anything. Digby and Atrios write from blogspot accounts and it doesn’t seem to impede them from being able to respond to criticism. The implication is somehow that Greenwald is being a bully or something, but I’m having a hard time seeing how. BWD has been topping the rec list at the top progressive blog every post for 2 years, I’m pretty sure she is able to reply to Greenwald and be heard if she wants to.
I had never heard of BWD before today. Greenwald is on television, has written several books, and is a paid blogger for Salon. Are you seriously trying to make a comparison, here?
Best,
ABL/STM
Point taken about Digby. I thought Atrios had moved to a dedicated domain.
The point was to highlight the difference between having a platform on salon.com, and having a blog that is not as well-known.
Moreover, it’s one thing to write a blog post and say “I have problems with the propagandistic nature of X blog” and quite another to fire off a tweet to a blog hidden behind a bit.ly URL shortener and to add a “creepyreverence” hashtag. It was a dick move, and I suspect he knows it. Just apologize. That’s what grown-ups do.
Glenn often goes back and forth with bloggers with whom he disagrees. This wasn’t that.
Best,
ABL/STM
I have some grudging respect for Jane Hamsher who was around the blogging world for some time paying her dues, toiling in obscurity, but nobody listened to Jane or invited her on any national media shows until she slept with ‘the right guy’.
Following in the well-worn career path of the likes of Hillary Clinton and Candy Crowley, Hamsher made her bones the sadly old-fashioned way, like so many women before her. I sympathize with the ladies who can’t be heard until they have the right man standing next to them, but it does not legitimize their value or the value of their viewpoints for me. It’s just another way to sell yourself, like a slave, in this society, and I don’t like seeing women rewarded for such behavior, it sets a bad example for all women and girls.
Women will never get the respect they deserve until they can truly make it on their own without needing the anointment and validation of the right penis inserted into their vagina.
I think Jane’s problem with Obama is the same one that so many women who identified with Hillary Clinton have. They feel that what they’ve paid to get where they are is a higher price than that of, say black folks, or black men in particular. They resent Obama because he never had to bend over and take it up the ass the way they did. An assumption to be sure, but one they seem, unconsciously perhaps, all too comfortable with. How dare he and all those like him put their sacrifice ahead of ours. And perhaps in some twisted way they have a point, dysfunctional though it may be. But it’s not a point of view I can identify with, and it’s not one I want my daughter to identify with either.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? “How dare this uppity negro come in here thinking he can run the country. And now he’s not even listening to us! We’re his base! He’s punching hippies!”
Hamsher gets to go on TV and bash bash bash and then whine about how we need leadership. I bet it burns her up that, like Sarah Palin, she never crosses his mind. So she keeps on bashing and bashing. If he succeeds, it’s despite his tendencies to cave. if he doesn’t succeed, it’s “toldja so.” I bet she rarely, if ever, speaks to people of color about these issues because they’d laugh in her face. She’s full of crap. She’s the Michelle Malkin of the left.
As for Hillary, she was undone by her own hubris.
And for the record, I thought Jane was a cancer survivor, I wasn’t aware she’d had a relapse, I hope not. If that’s the case I wish her all the best and a full and speedy recovery.
If not, if she’s playing ‘the cancer card, using it as a device for rhetorical effect on twitter, well then shame on her.
As do I. Given my health condition, I would never wish poor health on anyone.
Best,
ABL/STM
This post has spawned quite the hissy fit over at Cole’s place. Quite the hissy fit indeed. BJ has lost some of it’s humor, as every other thread is one long, Terrance and Phillip-esque “You’re a dick! No, you’re a dick!” ad infinitum commentariat circle jerk. That place isn’t nearly as fun as it used to be. Which is a damn shame.
Oh, and Greenwald is a total douchenozzle. Which makes me some kind of Nazi, evidentially.
in some way, aren’t we all nazis? deep down inside?
I resigned myself to never being included in white liberal proclamations about “the base.”
Wait, what? You mean, every time I’ve opened my fool mouth and ejected a horse turd of pseudo-insight, I’m not speaking on the total behalf of everyone to the left of Center-Right America?
FUCK THAT! URBANE GODWIN VIOLATION BLARGLE! HAVE AT THEE!
I don’t recall Jane being upset about sexist language and implications of female shallowness when she was bashing Caroline Kennedy for taking time out of her mani-pedi schedule to think about running for the Senate in New York. That would be the Caroline Kennedy who has done more to raise money for the arts and education in New York than Jane Hamsher has done to — well, accomplish anything of note other than getting her face on Faux News. And giving the world “Natural Born Killers,” of course.
Actually, this does not surprise me about Greenwald. He has a disturbing inclination (as does Hamsher) to demonize those with whom he disagrees, even when they’re on the “same team”. To this pragmatic (and newly activist) voter, they sound unhinged. If their goal is to move closer to their desired results, this seems fucking crazy. However, if their goal is self-glorification (“see how PURE I am?”), it makes perfect sense. So fuck both of them.
This will sound arrogant, but I think Obama’s target constituency includes a large number of people like me (newly active pragmatists). I am results-oriented and have a pretty good understanding of what can be accomplished in this political environment, all things considered. I have been disappointed — certainly! — but not as much by Obama as by almost every-fucking-body else who exerts influence on our politics. I recognize who’s responsible for what’s fucked up, and I recognize who is (and isn’t) on my side.
Digby compared the site to TeenBeat.
http://twitter.com/#!/digby56/statuses/11534962603855872
You lie down with asshats, you wake up with a hat on your ass.
(Or something that makes sense.)
I have to wonder why if these “critics” are so put off, why dont they run for office, or at least put their money to causes they believe in?
Seems like a lot of money is to be made being a avid critic and hater of the President