Years ago, when I worked for the Rev. Barry Lynn at Americans United, I was frequently amazed when he seemed pleased by the right’s personal attacks against him. It seemed to me that scurrilous, baseless attacks from far-right activists, which were fairly common, should be offensive and frustrating. I expected Barry to mind, but invariably, he’d respond with a smile.
At the time, I couldn’t imagine why. Now, I’m beginning to understand.
Last night, I posted an item at Washington Monthly about the NYT’s apparent decision to add Bill Kristol to its roster of columnists. This morning, “Newsbusters,” a fairly prominent far-right blog created by Brent Bozell’s always-amusing “Media Research Center,” took me to task for excessive “name calling.” In fact, “Newsbusters'” Warner Todd Huston was so troubled by my “potty mouth,” that he proceeded to write one of my all-time favorite criticisms of my work.
[Political Animal] is written by Kevin Drum, but recently has been guest penned by a former Clinton intern and Internet gadfly named Steve Benen who makes no bones about the fact that he is an extreme leftist. Looking over his Wash. Monthly blog posts shows that he also makes no bones about the fact that his chief mode of political analysis is to name call his opponents.
I haven’t been called an “extreme leftist” in quite a while (and I don’t think I’ve ever been called an “Internet gadfly”) so this was a real treat. I’m usually criticized for being too even-tempered and striking too moderate a tone, so Huston is inadvertently helping boost my netroots cred considerably.
It looks like someone forgot to administer Stevie’s distemper shots or something, but it does go to show that the left is pretty comfortable with wild-eyed name calling in place of real political discourse.
Ah, the subtle conservative wit; is there anything more droll? Condemning me for intemperance, Huston calls me “Stevie” and an “extreme leftist” in need of a “distemper shot” (later in his piece, I’m described as an “infant tyro”) while questioning my commitment to substantive discourse. One wonders if Huston was aiming for irony, or if he just ended up there inadvertently.
The amusing thing is that Benen was an intern in the Clinton White House speech writing office! Looks like young Stevie wasn’t a very attentive intern, eh? Unless, he learned his potty mouth from Hillary who, form [sic] all accounts, was a screaming, lunatic while co-president in the 1990s.
At this point, Huston appears to going out of his way to appear foolish. He’s troubled by my flippant, unserious tone, which necessarily leads him to refer to Sen. Clinton as a “lunatic.” What does Hillary Clinton have to do with my criticism of Kristol? Not much, but Huston is one of those conservatives who doesn’t need an excuse to take cheap and unnecessary shots at people he doesn’t like. Stay classy, Warner.
Also, I’m fascinated by the notion that I have a “potty mouth,” given that neither my post nor my work in general uses profanities or obscenities. Huston didn’t cite any examples of my offensive language, though the critique appears to have spurred by the word “damned.” (If use of “damned” now qualifies someone as a “potty mouth,” I shudder to think how Huston makes it through a day on the blogosphere without becoming traumatized.)
Since Benen’s blog post is little else than a screed penned by an infant tyro, I’ll only bother with this one quote, one of the more egregious ones in the piece: “True, except now, one of the world’s most prestigious news outlets has apparently given this thug space on the most valuable media real estate in existence.”
In this case, Huston removes the context a bit. I quoted Jonathan Chait using the word “thug” in relation to Kristol. Huston apparently thought this context would undermine his criticism of me personally, so he omitted it in order to say use of the word “thug” represents a “childish, low-brow style of writing.”
Of course, Chait can defend himself from such nonsense, though I’m curious if, by the standards of the unhinged right, The New Republic has earned the “childish, low-brow” label.
In the broader sense, if Huston wants to defend Kristol and the New York Times, that would at least make some sense. Instead, he wrote an odd piece accusing me of “name-calling,” which he responded to with incessant, impertinent name-calling. The irony is rich.
And yet, somehow, all of this insulting, transparent twaddle made my day. I finally understand how ol’ Barry feels.