In Defense of Ann Althouse

Believe it or not. The "left-wing" blogosphere is taking Althouse to task for this post:

A key question -- with an unknowable answer -- is: How many Americans would have died in post-9/11 attacks if we had not chosen the path of fighting back?

So far, I agree with the bloggers who are eating her alive on this one. It's not only a stupid question, it's pointless -- it strikes me as Althouse reaching desperately for profundity of a sort that only an academic would recognize as such; anyone else would call it pretention. (The question itself is also incredibly sloppy -- see below.)

Then she follows up with this statement:

So many people -- in the comments and on other blogs -- are attributing things to me that I did not write here. Reading with comprehension has, apparently, become optional. Amusingly, the blundering blowhards out there keep calling me and idiot. Mirrors are in short supply these days.

Temper, temper, Ann! If you're going to make deliberately ambiguous statements on a public forum, you have to be prepared for the fallout. They're attributing things that you did not write here because what you wrote was designed that way. Come on -- this is a law professor, and are you telling me that she can't formulate a question more precisely and accurately than that?

The whole stance is -- how shall I say it? -- more than a little disingenuous.

Pure speculation, since I don't know Althouse personally, but it fits the pattern I've seen on her blog: she's fishing for exactly the reaction she's getting from the progressives as a means of generating some kind of discussion because, as I've also seen from prior posts, she has absolutely nothing of her own to contribute to such a discussion.

My defense of Althouse? Simple:

If you run through the comments on this post, you will see that it doesn't take long for her readers to challenge her on exactly the grounds I've cited: she's deliberately posing an ambiguous question and then trying to weasel out of it by saying she never said that (which she does regularly), with the added fillip of now having an opportunity to get bitchy with cause. (As if anyone ever needed an excuse for a little bitchery. Really.)

So I have to hand it to Ann Althouse: unlike many (most?) of those online of her political persuasian (and I'm sorry, but while she's to the left of Attila the Hun, she's way to the right of me on most issues -- when you can actually get her to commit to a position), she actually allows challenges and disagreements in her comments. (Please don't take that as a blanket statement about anything. I don't read enough conservative blogs to be able to make an accurate determination, but of those I have had occasion to read, more often than not the commenters seem to be in lockstep with the posters; I've been called a "troll" for posing what I felt was a legitimate question, had comments "lost" to spam filters, and like experiences. I can't say that the left is any better -- although they've been considerate enough to ask to me censor myself, rather than taking care of it for me.)

(Footnote, apropos of nothing: Reading Citizen Crain yesterday and ran across his laudatory comments on GayPatriot having reached their millionth hit. Well, congratulations to them, but if I want someplace to visit a conservative viewpoint, I'll stick with Andrew Sullivan. I don't always agree with Sullivan, by any means, but at least I can believe that he has some contact with objective reality. [As I may have mentioned, it was the post on the "Democrats' Culture of Corruption" at GayPatriot that did it. That, and the presumption that non-conservative gays are not patriotic.] Apparently, Crain has decided that reality is no longer marketable. The more I think on it, the more Crain's description of GayPatriot as someplace for gay conservatives explains a lot of things -- like the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that I stopped understanding along about 1994.)