An Epidemic in the Blackwell Camp

One of my all-time favorite baseball quotes was this managerial assessment of erratic reliever Mitch Williams: “Mitch doesn’t get ulcers, but he is a carrier.” Similarly bloggers supporting J.Ken Blackwell don’t get irony, but their blogs increasingly carry it.

First example is J. Ken’s blog. In his defense of Blackwell’s Godless Democrats blast, Blackwell blogger Matt Naugle lets loose with this:

Democrat leaders, on every level of government, believe that big government and bureaucratic programs can solve all problems. Congressional Democrats, with far-left minority leaders from Las Vegas and San Francisco, promote government as the solution to every answer.

Mind you, “Las Vegas” and “San Francisco” are embedded with links to sites for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Whatever could he be saying? Las Vegas and San Francisco? Whatever could he mean?

The very next paragraph he says:

And Ted Strickland, via his platform, frequently uses Ohio Democrat Party Chair Chris Redfern's coded-language, where "investments" really mean "higher taxes." This is simply an effort by Democrat leaders to play with semantics to find gentler ways to promote big government programs that spend more of your money.

So using “Las Vegas” and “San Francisco” as code for “degenerate gamblers” and “homosexuals” is high-minded discourse, but talking about investing in education is playing with semantics. Next time we want to discuss investing in the public infrastructure, apparently we need to drop a link to Portland, Oregon to meet Matt’s approval.

Meanwhile, Scott Pullins found my post about him and predictably is not amused. Check out his headline: “Liberal Bloggers Can't Discuss Issues Without Resorting To Namecalling” You got me there, Scott. I didn’t engage in a civil discussion about the "issue" of you spreading smarmy rumors about T-d S--------d. I resorted to namecalling instead of calmly responding to the "issue" of you calling my candidate a fag. My bad.

Here’s the meat of his argument against me:

this liberal blog from Akron who's main point seems to be to call any person that writes about these rumors a douchebag, along with a bunch of anonymous false personal attacks against, me, my wife and my 2 year old child. No civil discussion here.

Actually, the point was that I won’t call anyone a douchebag unless they step way over a line, which you clearly did. You have no evidence, you are repeating rumors and elevating them to news by saying the rumors are newsworthy.

Isn’t that – what’s the word – ironic?