Don't get me wrong from the title of my diary. I am "angry" about a lot of things. I'm angry that my country is at war. I'm angry that George W. Bush is my president. I'm angry that my community might be building a Wal-Mart soon.
I'm also a member of the "left". -7.38, -4.41 on the on the political compass, thank you very much. I've worked for progressives like Jim Hightower. I give my money to progressive candidates and causes.
But this does not make me a member of the so-called "Angry Left", as profiled in today's Washington Post and personified by Maryscott O'Connor in that very article. As I read that article, I could only come to one conclusion: this is a dark day for the "reality based" community.
As we celebrate one of our own's portrait in the mainstream media this morning, we might want to look at the article closer. I got angry reading it, because frankly, it was portraying ME, and all of US, as some sort of braying horde of pitchfork and torch crowd that comes online merely to yell at each other about the bastards that run our government. Apparently, we all use profanity ALL the time, and the appearance of actual rational discourse doesn't exist here, or anywhere, in the so-called left blogosphere.
I don't come here for that. And I'm willing to bet that a great percentage of the Kossack community doesn't, either. My purpose, first and foremost, is to come here to read NEWS that the Post and guys like Finkel DON'T give us.
Unfortunately, people like me did NOT get reflected in that article. What did get reflected was an echo chamber of foaming at the mouth "liberals" whose only purpose, apparently, is to spew vitriol at each other about the current state of things.
Simply put, this piece is NOT going to win hearts and minds. Not like dKos or other blogs do every day.
And that's what I mean about it being a dark day for the reality based community. We don't come here merely to spew. We come here to SOLVE. We come here to ENGAGE. We come here to DISCUSS. And we come here, ultimately, to INFLUENCE.
Think this piece won't have a negative effect? Think again. Who reads the Washington Post? Decision makers at the highest levels of our government. Those so-called D.C. Democrats we always rail against. And that article really didn't give any reason to listen to us. Instead it gave them a reason to write us off as some sort of fringe group of obnoxious, vile filled lefties.
This is the kind of stuff I heard from some friends I spoke with last week at the bar. All of them are involved with the Democratic party. One of them is organizing in my state courtsey of WE helped raise for Howard Dean to organize under the 50 state strategy. These aren't high-priced political consultants. These are folks in their 20s and 30s who want to change things. They actually are talking with Democratic voters who DON'T go online. They find people who are the Hillary voters, retired factory workers in their 70s who wouldn't go near a computer if you paid them. Guys with names like "Spike".
Want to know how they see the blogs (and they've even lurked here a bit)? As flat out nutty. And, sad to say, when they pick up the Post this morning, nothing will change their view on that score.
We want to influence those decision makers in Washington, right? Like leader Nancy Pelosi? Well, how is she supposed to feel when she reads the Post and has Maryscott saying this about Pelosi's RELIGION?:
the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"
To prove this is NOT an echo chamber, I was offended by that quote, and I'm a Catholic who has left the church.Tell that to Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert. Say that about the chosen religion of MILLIONS of voters who will be going to Easter services this Sunday. And this quote was on the front page of the print edition, right before the jump. If I'm a Catholic, why would I want to go any further?
I feel defamed today, because that article made everyone whoever stepped onto a so-called liberal blog look like the equivalent of Anne Coulter or Sean Hannity on the left. Someone who just spews hate at conservatives. Anne Coulter probably loved this piece. Hell, she could have WRITTEN it. "Liberals are angry and full of hate."
Notice the author didn't mention FreeRepublic or RedState. Notice they got off scott-fucking-free. They should be gloating. After all, it appears that the conservative blogs must engage and civil discourse and the left's blogs are all out to lunch.
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe stop talking to the mainstream media.
But I'm saddened today. Because a place I love was mischarecterised, misrepresented, and dismissed as the fringe.
Maybe they're right. But I'm going to keep plugging away to prove they are wrong.