The utter waste of time that is the Blogging Tories.

Grab some coffee, pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable, 'cuz this is going to take a while. This post has been brewing for quite some time, but the events of the last few days and this pompous bit of fluff from Blogging Tory Joseph Lavoie finally drove me to it:

Who’s better at using Internet: liberals or conservatives?

This week, Jonah Goldberg of the LA Times, wrote an interesting column on the common perception that liberals/progressives are better at the Web because the it is increasingly powered by social media - a hard medium for Republicans work with. Republicans, the story goes, specialize in “command and control” techniques, while Democrats embrace the bottom-up, user-generated atmosphere of the Internet.

Yeah, yeah, whatever ... Mr. Doughy Pantload takes time from not writing his precious book to wank off another meaningless piece for his adoring groupies. But here's where the fun starts, as Mr. Lavoie's trip along Reality Road veers wildly into the ditch:

That’s why Conservatives in Canada tend to be ahead of the game, and have a strong presence. Blogging Tories.ca, the brain child of Stephen Taylor who’s done some great work pointing out flaws in CBC’s reporting, has played an important role in promoting the CP in the blogosphere.

Stop. Right. There. Let's talk about that "strong presence" for a minute, shall we?

If one pops over to the BT site and spends a few minutes poking around, there's no question that there's some fancy stuff going down over there. Some seriously geeky, whiz-bang, high-tech gee-gaws and doo-dads and hee-haws and neat-o stuff like that there. You got your frames, and your forums, and your tools, and your Blogging Tories Television, and more cool stuff than you can shake Ann Coulter's dick at. But in the midst of all that space-age wizardry, Mr. Lavoie, there is, sadly, one thing missing -- what you don't have is content that is worth shit.

Quite simply, Joseph, my boy, what you have is the ultimate layer of high-tech lipstick slathered all over the ugliest pig in existence, because all the nifty bells and whistles just can't hide the fact that the output of that entire blogging collective is, in a nutshell, utter fucking crap. Oh, I'm sorry, you want me to back that up? My pleasure.

Anyone who's spent any time getting their fill of the wretched production of the BTs has undoubtedly come to realize that most of them are worthless hacks but, amusingly, they're worthless hacks in fairly predictable ways, because they conveniently fit into some painfully obvious categories, which I will now proceed to explain.

First, and most harmlessly, there are the mindless stenographers. These are the people who have apparently never had an original thought in their lives. Examples such as Wayne and Jonathan Strong leap immediately to mind. These are the people for whom no right-wing talking point is too minor, inane or implausible to link to adoringly. It's not that wanks like Wayne and Jonathan are necessarily stupid or dishonest. Rather, it's that they are utterly without value, given that their entire output could easily be replaced with a generic blog named "Stuff you should read that I agree with." In short, they contribute absolutely nothing to the discourse. (There are, of course, other BTs who fall into this category, but Wayne and Jonathan were the two who came to mind first. In any event, onward.)

Once we get past the stenographers, we find ourselves in the land of the "voices in my head" clinically deranged, and by deranged, I hold up as the setter of all standards deranged-related one Dr. Roy and his intellectual colleagues.

Dr. Roy is no simple stenographer. Instead, Dr. Roy's modus operandi is to take normal news, and add his own layer of demented, right-wing propaganda to everything he touches, to the point where one wonders just how the good doctor functions in normal society, and who helps him dress himself in the morning. (There are, of course, other BTs who are similarly afflicted but, really, not one of them can compete with the doctor in terms of pure, unadulterated batshit craziness.)

Moving on, we might find ourselves in the land of the pompous, pretentious blowhards and self-absorbed, sycophantic lapdogs, and if the name "Adam Daifallah" didn't come screaming into your consciousness, then you just haven't been paying attention. Really, there's only so much nausea-inducing hero worship of Mark Steyn or Conrad Black you can take before you have to step outside for some fresh air and let your gorge settle again. And you might want to do that to brace yourself for what comes next.

Because what comes next are the hatemongers and bigots, led by the bile-spewing racist Kathy Shaidle. Of course, Kathy doesn't hold a monopoly on BT bigotry -- one has to give some props to relative newcomer MaryT, whose recent hompohobic ugliness drove even her co-blogger Brian Lemon to delete her post outright.

And who could possibly overlook The Politic's Aaron (Spanky) Unruh, whose perky, contemptuous (and subsequently edited to be less embarrassing) dismissal of female genital mutilation will be seen as a standard for years to come?

(Honourable mention should also go to one A. Carleton Sallet over at Upper Canada Catholic, who can always be counted on to say something appropriately prejudiced or misogynistic. He's still a second-tier player, but keep an eye on him, folks -- I think he's going places.)

And finally, the category you've all been waiting for -- the flat-out, sleazy, dishonest douchebags for integrity, those people who will lie about anything and everything, a category led by (like you didn't see this coming) Canada's Lowest Common Denominatrix™, Kate McMillan. And, seriously, you can't possibly need evidence from me on this point, can you? Just set aside an hour or eight and search the archives of this blog, if you have the stomach for it. But Kate isn't alone, of course.

Bloggy dishonesty doesn't just involve lying about stuff in real time, oh no. It also includes printing irresponsible crap, having it exposed as irresponsible crap, then refusing to ever go back to correct the record -- sort of like what the hacktacular Brian Lemon did here. And, trust me, I simply don't have enough disk space to document all of the BTs who published crap, got called on it, yet quietly shuffled on with nary a backward glance of regret or apology. Well, OK, just this one. But that's all you get.

[ADDENDUM, Mon, Aug 27: I would be remiss in not pointing out how the inimitable Mr. Lemon couldn't even keep track of his own lies here. No, no, don't thank me -- think of it as a public service. You're welcome.]

And there is one more category I'll throw in here for good measure, and that's the members of the BT collective who are just plain -- what's the word I'm looking for here -- oh, right ... "creepy." What other word can you use to describe Boy Detective Steve Janke, whose obsession with detail extends to digging into someone's gynecological records in excruciating detail? Or the fetus-obsessed SUZANNE, whose raging dementia extends to encouraging all her colleagues to freep an online poll, then treat the results as if they meant something, but is of course better known for being hideously obsessed over abortion every waking moment of the day. (I'm not sure the word "creepy" is even sufficient here, but it will have to do.)

But perhaps the most compelling evidence of the utter dumbass wankitude of the entire BT collective is the last few days, during which, while the progressive blogosphere both in Canada and (to a lesser extent) in the U.S. went ballistic over the underhanded tactics of police officers at Montebello, hundreds of BTs were utterly and unforgivably missing in action. One of the biggest stories to hit the media this year, and virtually every Blogging Tory couldn't be bothered to get off his or her ass to raise even a minor protest.

And to add insult to injury, after having mocked, derided and dismissed as moonbats and conspiracy theorists all those bloggers, only to have those same moonbats ultimately proven correct, the general reaction from the BTs was not to sheepishly and graciously apologize, but to move the goalposts and whine how, "Well, of course, there should be undercover officers, what's wrong with that?" Or, even worse, to now completely misrepresent the issue, as previously-referenced BT and total airhead Dave Hodson did here:

Why shouldn’t police plant undercover operatives at events that have a potential to turn violent? It provides another opportunity to observe behaviour to control violent developments before they arise and perhaps offers a better chance to apprehend the offenders. If the officers are only there to blend in and take action when events go beyond being a peaceful protest, then how are any rights to peaceful protest being curtailed? Nobody has a right to conduct illegal violent protests, which are the ones that undercover police are trying to prevent.

Dave Hodson: Unbelievably stupid or hideously dishonest? The lines are open.

A "strong presence," you say, Mr. Lavoie? Surely you jest. One can't begin to count the number of major stories from which the BTs couldn't avert their eyes fast enough. The selective reporting and hypocrisy is almost beyond description.

And, finally, in closing, Mr. Lavoie, I'm thoroughly amused by this particular claim of yours:

Blogging Tories.ca, the brain child of Stephen Taylor who’s done some great work pointing out flaws in CBC’s reporting,

Yes, Joseph, it's incredibly important for Taylor and his BT buddies to sit next to their TiVOs, recording every CBC newscast and replaying them slower and slooooower until, Holy Liberal Media, Batman ... left-wing bias!! That's pretty rich coming from a group of bloggers who, if you believe their blogrolls, subsist on a steady diet of Fox News, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Free Republic. The mote in one's eye and all that, Joseph, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, I think I'm done for now, but I reserve the right to come back to this piece and revise it, not to edit out any embarrassing errors, but just to extend it with more material, whenever the hell I feel like it. It's hard to hold back from adding example after example of BT worthlessness and dumbassery but, when there's an infinite supply, well, it's like with good single-malt scotch -- you really do need to know when to say "When."