So it's the daily A Small Victory Freaky Rant Round-Up.
From one of Michele's recent posts:
Root causes, my ass. You know what the root cause of all this? For 2,000 years, radical Islamists have believed that they own the right to chop off the heads of infidels. Last I checked, George W. Bush was not around 2,000 years ago.
Okay, so this is a woman who has written, I shit you not, hundreds of entries about "radical Islam" and "Islamofascists" and on and on like that. She gets somewhere between five and ten thousand hits a day.
But she evidently doesn't know that Islam has only been around for about 1,350 years. How many of those years have been "radical" is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation.
But also, there's the issue of the core content of her post:
Mike Berg is an opportunist who is seizing the moment of his son's death as a way to spread his leftist propaganda.
So when Mike Berg, Nick Berg's dad, expresses his opinion that George Bush is responsible for his son's death, that's disgusting leftist propaganda. But when Michele writes:
Nick Berg's murder should bring us together. It should have the exact opposite effect that the murderer's intended. It should make us feel that, as Americans, our lives are at stake. It should make us feel the way we did on September 11, 2001 when we stared out our windows or at our televisions and said holy shit, we are at war. Our enemy has not changed since that day; we are still fighting the same core group of fundamentalists that have the common goal of wanting the infidels dead. And who are the infidels? Americans and Jews.
that's heartfelt sorrow and true blue American patriotism?
Let me repeat that: when the guy's father talks about how he feels about his son's murder, Michele can tell, through her powers of telepathy, that Mike Berg is cold bloodedly, calculatingly and cynically, using the death of his son as a way to spread his "leftist propaganda."
But when Michele uses it as a basis for declaring that we should all get behind George W. Bush and kill us some terrorists, she's not using Nick Berg's death to leverage her own agenda.
What is that? Selective memory? Hypocrisy? Stupidity— can she just not see the contradiction? Or is she so dogmatic that she just chooses not to?
I don't know, but it freaks me out. Michele has plenty of working brain cells. That she has, since September, 2001, become that rabid and incapable of analyzing her own rhetoric —that egocentric and hateful— is profoundly disturbing.
What is that? Selective memory? Hypocrisy? Stupidity— can she just not see the contradiction? Or is she so dogmatic that she just chooses not to?
I say all of the above. And a large amount of fear. Fear is what is driving this administration and it's a powerful tool. I really think she has PTSD and is lashing out constantly because of that.
Posted by: Melanie at May 21, 2004 02:13 PMbarak-
If you mean it in the sense of, "Joshua, is Michele aware presence on the planet?" then the answer is "yes". Her and I have traded some e-mails and comments on her blog and were actually on sort of good terms for a little while before I just couldn't take it anymore and started writing what I actually thought about her politics.
If you mean it in the sense of, "Joshua, do you honestly think Michele reads, much less cares about, what you're writing in this blog?" then the answer is "No."
But that's not really the point, is it?
You know, it's a funny thing. Michele is an unqualified non-expert who posts her totally subjective rants about world events on the internet. But she also spends an inordinate amount of time talking smack about very specific people. She thinks that's fine, her readers think that's fine, everyone thinks that's fine.
I do the same thing here, and take aim at Michele in particular, and Michele's attitude-- and the attitude of a few of her readers --seems to be that I'm some kind of little wannabe taking shots at Michele, the illustrious professional.
Can I just reiterate this point? Michele Catalano is an unqualified hack, who doesn't even know when Islam started. She gets ten thousand hits a day, but she's still just a hack, ranting on the internet about shit she doesn't know the first fucking thing about.
So what this blog is really about is, one unqualified hack talking shit about another unqualified hack. Which, let's be honest, is mostly what the internet is for (besides, of course, promulgating pornography).
My question was meant in the former sense. But thank you for your elucidation on both senses.
BTW, I think it's perfectly reasonable to occasionally take down the straw man (or in this case, the straw woman) as long as you are aware that it is only a straw man you are taking down, which you are. Please carry on.
Posted by: barak at May 30, 2004 11:59 AM