Not since the recent meta-polemics about the finer points of conspiracy theories have I been this unable to muster up some give-a-shit about an issue that is apparently exercising the community.
Perhaps someone can walk me through this, as apparently I'm missing something.
Because I was under the impression that we didn't give the time of day to wingers criticizing this site, MSNBC's anchors, congressional democrats, Obama, or any other leftish entity towards which we have an ambivalent relationship. I was under the impression that we developed our own opinions about these entities with blissful inattention to the hypocritical gotcha BS spewed forth in right blogistan. In other words, I was under the impression that we weren't dittoheads.
Was I somehow mistaken? Because the top rated diary at this site would seem to suggest as much.
But more than this, I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the passions circulating around the diary in question.
Can someone help me to understand why the fate of political progress in this country or the world is in any way tied up in the outcome of a public debate about whether a news anchor should have read, as part of his hour-long show, mildly salacious emails written by the disgraced governor of South-frakking-Carolina? Are people going to vote differently in 2010 because of the outcome of this debate? Does anyone care outside of our weird bubbly world -- wherein the relation of 'our community' to 'it's celebrity guests' is a hot topic?
We are talking here about Mark Sanford and Keith Olbermann. I'm pretty confident that my parents (moderately well informed democrats) had never heard of the former before this week, and know that they felt about the latter much as they did about SNL from the 70s: they often found Olbermann funny, sometimes thought he crossed lines, and half the time found him boring and juvenile. After this week, their view of Mark Sanford has surely dropped (though he did provide for some entertainment), and their view of Keith Olbermann -- notwithstanding the evils of 'circular firing squads' -- remains unchanged.
That is to say: meh.
Or, in other words: Can someone wake me up when this amateur, cover bluegrass band exits the stage so I can watch Del McCoury