Salon.com used to be one of my favorite websites. I would even promote it to my friends and family – back a few years ago. I was always a little annoyed by the ads I had to watch to get a day pass, but I tolerated it. I watched as the site gradually morphed from being anti-Bush to anti-Obama, in many ways they seem to have just replaced the names. I stopped reading them very soon after noticing this shift.
Well it has come full circle now and the main writers for the site are openly antagonizing Democrats and supporters of President Obama. Last night on Twitter, Joan Walsh and Glenn Greenwald both lobbed loaded tweets into the mix, apparently trying to goad some of us into a Twitter brawl. The funny thing is, the circle of folks I travel with on Twitter, for the most part, ignored them. We surmised that they were trying to increase attention and thus traffic for their failing site. Here is a tweet that clearly shows Ms. Walsh’s dislike for all of us who support our president…(emphasis mine)
@joanwalsh Funny to watch Obamalovers savage Frank Rich. He was one of his most ardent, earliest MSM defenders in 2008.
Personally, I think the “Obamalovers” word is a play on the “n” word version that I was called throughout my early life. My best friend and first “girlfriend” in grade school were black, I heard that slur many times in my young life. But others didn’t necessarily see her use of that word that way. Glenn Greenwald has also used “Obamalover” in referring to us Democrats who support the President.
The “defenders” comment leveled at Frank Rich, who has written a twisted piece of late on President Obama, is almost as bad. It contains that subtle implication that there is something that needs to be defended. A very presumptive framing that basically labels and dismisses the person in one fell swoop. I’m surprised it didn’t include “dear leader”, another favorite of the people on the left who suffer from Obama Derangement Syndrome.
The following is a snippet from a great piece that I will probably revisit in future posts, it’s really good. It’s based on a post called “14 Propaganda Techniques that Fox ‘News’ Uses to Brainwash Americans”, except Marion at Addicting Info points the spotlight on the “professional critics” as I’ve been calling them lately. From Marion…(emphasis mine)
Meanwhile, we’ve seen Hamsher and her cronies on the FDL site refer to the President as “the Affirmative Action President,” “Bugaloo Bush,” and even “the house nigger.”
It’s not just the President for whom they’re aiming. Olbermann and Joan Walsh, inveterate Twitterers, regularly engage in punching down at followers from the Left who disagree with their opinions. Olbermann’s favourite tack is to address these people as “morons.” Joan tells people to “get help” or she opines that their lives must suck (to be so stupid as to dare disagree with someone so far elevated by appearances on television that they must know the subject about which they discourse).
In fact, quite recently, Joan reckoned that anyone who vigorously defended the President was actually a GOP troll, most likely paid by Andrew Breitbart, and that these people would do more damage to Barack Obama than anyone else.
The other day I Tweeted a snarky comment to Joan Walsh, more as an observation than anything, but I saw a title of a post that Joan Walsh had up at Salon about the death of Clarence Clemons. The title was “How big was the Big Man? ‘Too F-ing big to die.’ Bruce Springsteen remembers the great Clarence Clemons and their early interracial bromance”
Here is my Twitter exchange with the one and only Joan Walsh on the above title…
Me: So @joanwalsh just called Clarence Clemons and Springstein’s relationship an “interracial bromance”…WTF, why did she have to add race?
Joan Walsh: @ExtremeLiberal Because Springsteen (that’s 2 E’s) added race in his incredible eulogy, which you clearly haven’t read. Sad.
Me: @joanwalsh I see, so that makes it OK to call it an interracial bromance? He was talking about the racism that the Big Man suffered.
Me: @joanwalsh What is sad is your lack of self-awareness. At least you didn’t say you were punching down, I’ll give you that.
Me: @joanwalsh I just read your post, is there more? I could see using bromance, but why add the interracial part, isn’t that kind of obvious.
Joan Walsh: @ExtremeLiberal I see you still haven’t read the eulogy.
Me: @joanwalsh I just read the whole thing, still don’t see why you had to characterize their friendship that way? Why?
I really didn’t see it as that egregious, but was just pointing out that for some reason she had to portray it as an “interracial” bromance. I liken it to when people talk about someone and feel compelled to refer to them as black, whereas if they were talking about a white person, they wouldn’t feel the need to say they were white. It’s a subtle thing that annoys me and I make a concerted effort to never do it. Joan justified her use of it by implying that Bruce Springsteen had used it, when all he talked about in his eulogy was the racism “The Big Man” had suffered in the early days of the band. So apparently because Bruce talked about race, then Joan has permission to call it an “interracial bromance”.
I used to work for a video rental chain that I learned was quite racist. I was just out of college, working as an assistant manager and was asked to interview some part-time employees. A guy applied who was African American and I sent his resume and application to the home office in Illinois. They liked it and told me to interview him, which I did. I hired him. I never mentioned his race, why would I? Well I remember the first time my boss, the District Manager walked in and saw him. He was clearly irritated and asked me to walk outside with him. I didn’t play his game of innuendo and basically insulted him in a round about way.
It baffles me why these people at Salon, Firedoglake and others, who like to drape themselves with the “progressive” label, are fighting so hard against the most liberal president we’ve had since FDR. Joan Walsh’s out of the blue tweet disparaging us with “Obamalover” and “defenders” was clearly an attempt to goad us into a Twitter brawl or to create some controversy so that people will go to her website. Greenwald does the same thing with the titles of his posts, he’s trying to get traffic by insulting or riling up people who support President Obama. How pathetic is it that they have to rely on negative traffic to keep their advertisers happy.
Don’t give Salon.com or Firedoglake.com the clicks they so crave. Resist the urge to click when they try to lure you in to their lair. They are using you for your clicks and want you to link to their bullshit posts for even more clicks. Stop it!
Cross-posted at Extreme Liberal’s Blog
So great to see you here. Others on Twitter pointed out the loaded usage of the verb “savage” in Ms. Walsh’s intentionally provocative tweet. Went over my head on first reading, but in review… ish.
I don’t recall any split in the conservatives with GWB in office. Wanting more and being critical is one thing, but they way they call BHO a warmongering, oligarchic, homophobic Bush lite… Yeah, I’m done with them. I’m not missing Olbermann as much as I thought I would either. Sad. Their tirades against the rightwing extremists during the Bush years led me to the false assumption that they were seeking reason and rational dialogue. Good luck to us all.
Joan Walsh is pretty much Harriet Christian at this point.
“Bugaloo Bush,” … seems extreme.
I’ve searched online and found no such references.
Could you supply original links please! And/or specify the date or event where this took place.
Salon has become a dumping ground for a curious mix of leftist purity-testers and Libertarians like Greenwald.
They also have two of the very worst writers (in terms of their ability to make a point) out there in Sirota and Lind. I can’t remember when either of them was last cogent or even readable.
And while Greenwald bans people who question him, they let (often paid) right wing trolls run wild in the comment section, often under multiple aliases.
Walsh pointed them in this direction, then set it on autopilot and stepped back to write her intermittent screeds without any of the responsibility of the helm. It’s on her, whether she will face that fact or not.
Let me give you some Salon background on the Breitbart trolls. It was almost one year ago, while I was studying the huge number of trolls that inhabit Salon, that most of them seemed to be attached to two right wing websites, newsbusters and the Breitbart cluster of websites.
I’d done quite a bit of research and some digging and I shared that with Joan, that my suspicion was that Breitbart had hired some folks to disrupt salon, he has a long standing hatred of Max Blumenthal. I did this without hacking and told Joan to have her security guys to track certain IP’s. They may have i am not sure, but I am still convinced that Breitbart has targeted Salon as an e-zine.
Fast forward to today… Joan uses that Breitbart slam against the wingers that inhabit her blog, and there are several who do. Her lumping them in with folks who support the President is disappointing, but I am not surprised. It does get people to repeatedly click on Salon’s articles, but the reason Salon is going down, is because their zine has dropped significantly in a variety of IP visits.
Take Greenwald, he has a group that inhabits his blog, and they seem to be unemployed since the post on and on all day long. But those IP’s come from the same places all the time.
Sirota, like the Guy with the Ponytail wrote, jeebus he can’t write, it’s like a stream of consciousness, but he literally cannot write with a bit of coherence, and Lind… meh, he is okay, but not great.
I truly miss the Salon that outed Henry Hyde, but those days are gone and Salon has found their new niche, which is the angry niche. Too bad too, cause Salon used to be my favorite place to go to.
teresa
thanks for sharing that teresa. i used to have a subscription to salon. back in, like, 06-08. then it went off the deep-end during the Obama/Hillary Wars, so i stopped subscribing.
that blog has gone downhill. pareen is its only saving grace.
That is good stuff, Teresa. Crooks and Liars seems to be infested as well as The Raw Story. I’ve been banned from C & L for calling out John Amato on a post a while back. I kept it civil, but I think I struck a nerve somewhere with him.
I’ve stopped reading comment sections for the most part, I’m sick of the paid trolls dominating and jumping on everything with Obamabot or whatever. The new vast wasteland, comment sections.
I only go there to piss off the Glennifers – sort of a palate cleanser between long ass courses of “Oh Gosh, Glenn! You are right!” “Oh, Glen, when are you going to run for King of the World?” “Glenn, you must be decendant of Jesus because you are so brilliant!”
@Observer: http://tps-report.org/2009/05/21/bush-2-electric-boogaloo/
Fucking Google — how does it work?
If you’re going to be a jerk-off then you should at least answer the question properly.
When did “Jane Hamsher or her FDL cronies” use the phrase “bugaloo bush”? That’s the effin’ question.
Not some lame link to some anonymous blog with no apparent connection to Hamsher. It’s a question of integrity. You make an accusation, you should be able to back it up.
I’m not with ABL or you folks on the Hamsher bashing – I disagree with the interpretation of things – BUT this would actually probably change my mind. On the other hand, prominently posting incendiary unsourced accusations about someone you don’t like only makes me less on your side and questions your motives. Being an snarky jerk in response already says a lot.
So, again, links OR DETAILS please … or you should retract your unsourced accusation.
Hello! You seem confused. Perhaps you’re new here and the conventions of this comments section are unfamiliar to you.
If you feel the need to direct spittle-flecked rage at someone, you might try the author of the blog post who actually wrote the words with which you take issue. Extreme Liberal used quotation marks and provided a hyperlink to his source for the aforementioned words. You might consider taking your demands for links there.
The other reason I suspect you’re new here is that no ABLC veteran would make the mistake of picking a fight with Kerry Reid.
Toodles!
I don’t recall picking a fight with Kerry Reid…I recall responding in kind to an snarkish reply comment that contained mild but unnecessary profanity.
With regards to Extreme Liberal, if you quote someone else’s incendiary remarks about a third person in a post then you have the responsibility to ascertain the truthfulness of that.
Can’t push it off to “I was just quoting someone else so go check with them” b.s. No one forced Extreme Liberal to include the extended quote. I believe ABL herself has said the very same sort of thing in reference to Hamsher having to own the words of commenters on the FDL site. You folks know the links to those posts; I shouldn’t need to link to it.
For the substance, I’ve searched and for the life of me have no idea where this “bugaloo bush” accusation comes from with regards to FDL.
It’s very incendiary. The oldest reference I can track it down to is a Daily Kos article from April that was also unsourced. Why it’s like people who don’t like Hamsher have decided to just make up incendiary racist statements about her and pass them around in a blizzard of circular references to make each new reference seem like it’s legitimate. You would think with the blackface nonsense she did that there’d be no need to make stuff up, but yet here we are.
If there’s some hidden story about Hamsher or FDL saying this, someone should speak up and detail it rather than incorporating unsourced incendiary allegations about a group of people you don’t seem to like too much.
Trust me, I’d really like to know if this is true. Snark from one person, patronizing nonsense from another and complete silence from the blog poster speak volumes.
Is there a time limit in which Extreme Liberal is required to respond to your “concerns”? I ask because the bloggers at this site do not derive their income from their writing, and rely on jobs rather than grifting donations from their readers. Thus we may not always answer as promptly as you might wish.
Also, there will be snark and profanity at ABLC. You should adjust your expectations accordingly.
ha! so true. kerry reid is not to be trifled with.
And our gracious hostess detailed the most egregious racism at FDL in a post here: http://www.angryblacklady.com/2011/01/19/firedoglake-go-fuck-yourself/
Observer, in order to be a “jerk off” for you, I would first need to locate your genitals, and I happen not to have a tweezers and microscope at hand. Meantime, the link I provided should give you plenty of proof of the knee-jerk racism that is tolerated and celebrated at FDL.
seewutimean?
the link (http://tps-report.org/2009/05/21/bush-2-electric-boogaloo/) is to an anonymous blog.
This means it’s FDL related? FDL isn’t even on the blogroll there.
Mental note, don’t fuck with Kerry. :)
I’m curious as to why Observer seems more concerned by Hamsher’s use of “Bugaloo Bush” than by her use of “house nigger”.
“Bugaloo Bush” is what pushes her over the top for you?
Good to know.
So to be clear — Observer thinks “bugaloo Bush” is “incendiary,” but he/she has nothing to say about FDL’s use of the n-word to describe Obama?
Observer has been doing yeoman’s work derailing this thread, which is about Joan Walsh and Salon.com, by focusing on an aside embedded in a quote from another author that Observer feels is unfair to Jane Hamsher.
Observer has been encouraged to go to that author’s site and take it up with her. And if Observer would like to talk more about the topic of this post, Observer is welcome to do so.
And unlike Observer, as a contributor to ABLC, I actually have the power to make and enforce rules here. Observer may kiss my and ABL’s asses, and Observer may like it.
Allan, it was just a quick question that only merited a quick reply and a link and/or story instead of the reply that was given, complete with profanity.
I don’t know what you folks are getting on here about. It should have been simple…someone just needds to fill me in on the backstory, if there is one.
Now it seems more like the accusation is probably false and some of you are pissed that I’m asking about it.
So which is it, then?
Are you dumb as a stump or deliberately obtuse?
It was old hash and I disagreed with ABL’s interpretation of it…in this rare instance, I agreed more with John Cole’s view than ABL’s.
Can we just stick to my original question? The link you gave is nonsensical unless you’re telling me you know the owner of the anonymous blog and somehow he/she is connected to FDL.
In general, I just want to know the level of integrity in a writer that I’m not familiar with. I am not familiar with Extreme Liberal’s writing.
It should have been a very easy question to answer; it’s not like my original comment was rude or impolite. It was a side-bar. It shouldn’t have devolved into *this*.
Why can’t anyone answer the question directly?
I already told you that the author of this post, Extreme Liberal, has a day job and will respond to you at his convenience.
If you want to familiarize yourself with the work of Extreme Liberal, you’ll note that there is a link to his blog at the end of this post.
Hey Observer,
Being new to this blog, I’m still trying to work in time to deal with comments. I do have a day job, like Allan said, and I run a couple of businesses, volunteer…blah, blah, blah. I’ve been kind of busy lately, sorry for the delay.
I posted a clip from Marion’s post with a link to it, but haven’t had the time to look into it myself. If you really want to go to the source, she may be able to give you the citation she is referring too. Unfortunately in the world of blogging, there is some trust that has to be placed in what other bloggers write. That’s why I give the link, so you can check it out yourself.
If I get a minute later this evening, I may look myself. But knock yourself out, you seem to have a lot of time to write comments.
Thanks for the reply. I’ll wait for word from you. I *don’t* have time as well, but I like to finish what I start.
I would add that many bloggers scrub stuff that they end up regretting. That may very well have been the case in this instance. I don’t think that they would want to own that one, at least not in public. I’m sure they say much worse when they are sipping lattes around their swimming pools paid for by Hambots who fall for their bullshit.
I may find time later, but please, get over it already. If the blackface photo that Janey put up didn’t offend you or any number of other things she’s done, than I’m not sure why a reference to “bugaloo(sic) bush” would finally do it for you. Move on!