Just Sayin'

One of Kevin Hayden's better posts, and he's generally pretty good.

From the post by Lee Siegel that Hayden dissects:

It's a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy's dream of full participation but practices democracy's nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction.

The "nightmare" part as being an aspect unique to the blogosphere surprised me a little. I thought it was called "politics, Republican style." (At least lately -- I daresay the Democrats have done it, too, but I'm hard put to think of an instance as vitriolic and dishonest as the Republicans are these days as a matter of course. There's a reason Newt Gingrich became the most unpopular politician in America.)

At any rate, it seems Lee Siegel's nose is out of joint because he doesn't understand something, or he finds it offensive, or it might be a threat to his privileged position as one of the resident dipshits at TNR -- or something.

It's a truism -- or should be -- that living in a democracy takes a thick skin. I fault the left for the oversensitivity of just about everyone these days, to anything that might be "offensive" (and there's another word so overused and misused that it no longer has meaning). I fault the right for their cynical exploitation of that tendency.

I still think I would much prefer listening to a debate in Parliament than just about anything that goes on in the U. S. House.

The comments at the original post on TNR are heartwarming. It's nice to know TNR readers are willing to call a jerk a jerk.