Bad Day in the Blogosphere

Tonight I was all set to write about my 30-year high school reunion, but I was distracted by a column in the Register called Blogosphere’s Best, the title of which might lead someone to believe that the excerpts therein represented some of the smartest and most insightful writing on the internet.

And maybe normally that’s the case. Maybe today the Blogosphere’s Best editor was up against a hellish deadline.

That’s the only explanation I can find for this blurb, which they found on a website called Rhymes With Right:

You know all that stuff that we’ve been hearing from the Obamabots [about the Iraq war]? Well, they become fair game on January 20, 2009, if Barack Obama wins the election. After all, it will then be President Obama’s war, and by their own logic, it will be his supporters who have a moral obligation to go fight while those who voted against him stay home and engage in a higher form of patriotism—“dissent” designed to undercut the lawfully elected president, demoralize the military, and provide aid and comfort to the enemies of America.

I’m already looking forward to Operation Yellow Donkey, calling out all the college Democrats for not dropping out and signing up in the first 30 days of the Obama administration.

No, I’m serious. That’s what it said.

This is what happens when people dig in their heels and refuse to acknowledge that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a rather colossal mistake by a rather poor president. It messes up their critical thinking skills. For starters, only the willfully ignorant will be calling the occupation of Iraq “President Obama’s war” after his inauguration. It might well be one of the many piles of poop the Poor Dope leaves for the next president to clean up, but on no account will it become the next president’s war. As the late great George Carlin once said, “Two guys on an elevator and one of them farts, everybody knows who did it.”

No amount of air freshener will ever clean the stench of Iraq away from George W. Bush. And by the way, pardon me for the scatological turn that last paragraph took.

Second, I’m pretty sure that someone has given the writer of Rhymes With Right a joke definition of “chicken hawk.” The word itself isn’t used in this passage, but he’s dancing all around it as if he wants to think he believes he knows what it means. When he says he expects college Democrats to drop out and enlist, he seems to be under the impression that that’s some sort of witty “turnabout is fair play” observation. (And he even attempts to back it up with the phrase “by their own logic,” which is utterly nonsensical.)

Let’s see if we can’t clear it up for this writer. First, it was college-age Republicans who were chided in liberal blogs over the past five years for loudly proclaiming their support for the invasion—as long as they weren’t asked to go take part in the fighting. Like their hero Dick Cheney, they all had better things to do. Second, college-age Democrats who have always supported getting the hell out of Iraq aren’t suddenly going to turn hawkish just because some right-wing blogger wants to call the occupation “President Obama’s war.”

I’m also trying to figure out which “lawfully elected president” this blogger is referring to. It’s been a while since we had one.