In response to Michelle Malkin's stress-induced excesses and basic lack of decency, Paul Cella of Redstate begins with a stilted pile of obfuscation aimed at the "angry virtual mob:"
Even as blogs are growing in popularity, they risk losing their credibility on account of the servile mentality they engender in some: a rancorous servility that is given strength by its illusory numbers. The bitter servility of the mob. But even a mob must rely on some measure of human vitality, some measure of tangible camraderie. The virtual mobs we have seen of late are little more than the rotten and superficial ritual of deracinated men and women for whom politics is religion; for whom the cursing and traducement of one's opponents is a kind of worship.
Very haughty, indeed! How about this for high-browed camaraderie? Deracinate Michelle Malkin. Quit blaming the mob, and uproot her from your intellectual soil.
After more of this kind of rarefied windbagging against the heathen mob, he finally asks a pertinent question regarding Michelle Malkin:
Will it matter if I say Mrs. Malkin should have shown restraint and withheld the personal information of those who attached said information to their press release? Unlikely. Will it matter if I say that the Right is hardly innocent of the same dehumanized tendencies? Unlikely. Will it matter if I remind the reader that the press release in question concerned a very real mob which lent itself to the dishonor of driving military recruiters from a college campus? Even less likely.
First, the question of the students' behavior is a legal question. It is not appropriate for Michelle Malkin to unleash her virtual/real mob on them to rectify what she perceives as a sleight against American militarism. Paul Cella fails to admit as much. However elliptically he approaches an admission, it's just circling in his own toilet without flushing.
Moreover, Will it matter if Paul Cella simply openly condemns Malkin and others pulling the same stunts? Try it, Paul. See what kind of response you get from the major bloggers. Try acquiescing to your own vaunted community standards.
Therefore no bond of fellowship or scruple of civility will restrain the attacks against her.
And quit sniffling. This is straightforward tit-for-tat game theory, and don't be fooled by the word "theory." It's a very pragmatic form of fellowship. Don't punch me first, and I won't punch you first. Is that too bourgeois? You want to go high-brow? Condemn the low-brow! Just come out and say it. Call it policy. It's that simple. Failure to do so invites tit-for-tat, due to the lack of restraint by the community. Cella's condemnation, if you can call it that, barely has the strength to die.
It is a tedious and discouraging spectacle. We had something good here in this emerging world of online pamphleteering. The mob will destroy it.
boo-frickin' hoo. Just come out and say it.