On Blogging

Blogging about bloggers is more than a little pointless, but sometimes it’s hard to resist. I recently came across the mention of my name in a comment by one pseudonymous Reactionary Blogger on the blog of another. The comment was in response to a comment left by someone called “Generic Dem” and basically called Generic Dem a “cheese eating monkey” and directed him to visit my blog (where, I assume the Reactionary meant Generic Dem would be welcome, since he wasn’t welcome there). I left a comment thanking the Pseudonymous Reactionary for the referral and asking when “cheese eating” had become an epithet (monkey I get--they learned that from the George Allen "macaca" slur), to which the owner of the blog demanded that I come to the defense of France for some proposed French law that he’d been moaning and groaning about as proof of the decrepitude of Europe, or some such thing. I wanted to know why he cared and he responded it was because the Democrats always look to the economic policies of the French Socialists as shining examples. I pointed out that (a) that wasn’t true and (b) the President of France, Chirac, isn’t a Socialist, he’s a Right-leaning Center-rightist, and who cares anyway? That's them and we're us. We went back and forth on that for a while, the Reactionary blog owner getting more and more ridiculous. I said I was tired of his fascist lies (okay, I got a little carried away there, I admit, but I would think those folks would consider “fascist” a badge of honor, since it certainly and efficiently describes the policies they advocate, and his blog is riddled with twisted truths and misleading untruths, which might as well be called “lies”, so did I really say anything wrong?) which ticked him off and he pointed out that I was the one who had begun attacking SWAC Girl (another of our local Reactionary bloggers) in my very first post on my blog, and, he went on, why should anyone listen to someone who’d only been blogging for “like two months.”

See, there he goes again with the lies. This blog (Democracy in Virginia) began in October 2006 (less than one year before his blog, if his archives are to be believed) and in fact was the political spinoff of my original blog (Perpetual Folly) which began in January 2005, so who’s the newcomer to blogging? And furthermore, my second post on this blog (not my first post) was actually a response to SWAC Girl, who had attacked me by name on her anonymous blog but refused to allow my rejoinder to appear when I tried to comment. My response to her might be considered an “attack” since I probably called her a fascist (she is), but I don’t see what the problem there is.

So. Ain’t blogging fun?

But here’s a question: why is it that our local Reactionary bloggers all blog anonymously? (There are some moderate and liberal bloggers who also are anonymous, but I wish they would reconsider.) What are they afraid of? And becuase they've been outed so many times it’s easy enough to find out who SWAC Girl and RightsideVa are, and John Maxfield’s identity was apparently revealed a few months ago. But what of the others? Would they be so willing to spread their lies if the lies had their names attached to them? Who are they? Any clues?