This is not a happy-making post to write because, having for some time sincerely believed that Blogging Tory Raphael Alexander was at least a cut above the ignorant, mouth-breathing, illiterate, dishonest cesspool that is the BTs, it is my sad duty to inform you that he is, in fact, just another worthless hack. How depressing.
To make a long story short, it started here, whereupon I slapped Raphael upside the head here, then Dave piled onto what was left of the corpse here, whereupon Raph tried to extricate himself here, at which point I wasn't having any of that crap here, which brings us to Raphael's latest attempt to tap dance, evade and obfuscate without taking any responsibility for his utter hackularity here:
I think it's simply a matter of perspective. It absolutely has not been talked about that much inside the circles in which I read and browse, and to assume I'm going to wade into the leftosphere to distinguish every nugget of truth from the shrieking hysteria of every time Stephen Harper so much as sneezes, is what is dishonest here.
Your patronizing tone [and guttural language] lends itself to no attempt at harmonizing bipartizan issues, but shows a transparent to the total disregard of your ideological adversaries regardless of the issue at hand. And then you rather dishonestly ignore my comment on your own reproachable website in which I said I certainly had heard of some bloggers [like stageleft] writing about it. But is it inaccurate to say that "not too many" bloggers have written about it? Not really. After all, "not too many" is an indefinable number which could mean two or two million [which in proportion to the blogger community could be as small potatoes as your point here].
It's enough, in my opinion, that I tried to share this sentiment with the BT community. To flog me for it screams of partisan dishonesty.
OK, then, let's get started, shall we? "A matter of perspective," is it, Raph? Fact versus hideous fiction is your idea of just a difference in perspective? How enlightening. I'll remember that the next time I read your blog. If that ever happens again. But get a load of this howler:
It absolutely has not been talked about that much inside the circles in which I read and browse, ...
I'm sorry ... the fact that you choose to exist in an insular, hermetically-sealed, troop-hating, Blogging Tory-flavoured universe is our fault? Not only is that an amazingly feeble defense, but it doesn't even address the original issue. You didn't just claim that this was news to you -- you explicitly suggested that it should be news to everyone, remember?
Not too many bloggers have picked up on this story, ...
Which is, as numerous educated people have pointed out to you, Raph, pure bullshit. So let's not use this "Hey, I didn't know about it" weaselness, all right? You weren't just (two years too late) passing on the news; you were also, quite clearly, claiming that those of us who have been all over this story like Patsy Ross on Weiner Pratfall's Underoos have been missing in action. Which is pretty fucking galling, if I say so myself.
No one suggested you had to "wade into the leftosphere" to figure all this out (although I can certainly understand your reluctance to wander in where logic and reason rule, and you either bring your "A" game or you piss right off). A simple "Google" would have done nicely -- you know, sort of like this. Gosh, that was easy -- you should give it a shot someday.
But then Raphael gets truly sleazy with:
Your patronizing tone [and guttural language] lends itself to no attempt at harmonizing bipartizan issues, ...
With all due respect, Raphael -- fuck off, you whiny-ass titty baby. I am so fed up with wankers who seem to think that someone giving them a caustic, verbal (and thoroughly deserved) upbraiding somehow absolves them from having to address the fact that they've been caught with their nutsack hanging out in public, publishing absolute crap.
Is that your excuse for not accepting responsibility for the rubbish you published, Raph? That I'm being mean to poor little you? Lord, but you conservatives are whiners, aren't you? Yes, you're all studly, square-jawed he-men who will protect the rest of us from the evils of Islamojihaditeddybearianism, except for that, "He's being all mean to me, make him stop using those bad words. *Sniff*." Either suck it up and address the issues, Raph, or collect your panties and hit the road. Your choice.
I'm not even going to disembowel the rest of Raphael's nonsense, but I am going to make one final point. Remember that this is what started it all. Examine it carefully. Notice how, after three straight days of getting paddled for his hackery, there's still something missing, isn't there? Why, yes, there is -- any acknowledgement of the utter bogosity of that post.
No clarification, no correction, no update, no "Whoops, it seems I didn't do my homework," not so much as a "Apparently, there's more to this than I originally thought." And that's because, in Raphael's Blogging Tory bubble, being a right-wing hack means never having to say you're sorry. For anything. Publish crap, and move on.
But that's OK, Raphael. Because this gives you the opportunity to become a much more efficient blogger. Rather than try to write posts yourself, why don't you just link over here when the going gets tough? I'll do the heavy lifting, you'll have more spare time, and your readers will get actual, you know, facts. A win-win for everyone, I'd say. No, no, don't thank me -- it's what I live for.
Well, that and scotch. But that's not really relevant here, so forget I mentioned it.
POOR RAPHAEL ... apparently, he's not going to make anybody happy:
Finn said...
You caved? To CanCy and his crew of irony-challenged pet flying monkeys? This is a man(?) who is incapable of reasoned debate, whose method of argument is to use words as blunt instruments, whose response when clearly bested in a battle of logic is to either delete the opponents words or to feign boredom with the issue from that point on. You caved to him? You caved to a guy who thinks what he does on his blog is "breaking the real news"? You caved to a hypocrite who practises all the behaviours he castigates in conservatives?
Spoken like a true armchair warrior there, Finn. Feel free to drop by next time you think you have something to contribute. But leave the 'tude at home. You don't get bonus points for it around here, know what I'm sayin'?
18 comments:
You didn't just claim that this was news to you -- you explicitly suggested that it should be news to everyone, remember?
No, it isn't explicitly suggested since the inference of "not too many bloggers" doesn't state at all categorically which sort of bloggers I may be speaking about [perhaps I meant "not too many bloggers of whom I read"], nor the numbers. Even if it were to encompass the entirety of the blogosphere, it's still a pitifully small number.
With all due respect, Raphael -- fuck off, you whiny-ass titty baby. I am so fed up with wankers who seem to think that someone giving them a caustic, verbal upbraiding somehow absolves them from having to address the fact that they've been caught with their nutsack hanging out in public, publishing absolute crap.
You choose to wallow in linguistic mediocrity utilizing pejoratives and inflammatory language. That's your "shtick". Well, that and... incoherent shriekfests. Well, that and... telling Wanda Watkins to fuck her grief.
Why, yes, there is -- any acknowledgement of the utter bogosity of that post.
You know what else is missing? Comments. Which tells me something else. Nobody cares what Raphael Alexander thinks of this issue. So why are you dredging it any further?
And besides, I already clarified i your comments that I had read of "stageleft" writing about it before. But in your patent dishonesty you chose not to include this reference.
I know you enjoy messing with the rightwing bloggers, but really... aren't I a little too small potatoes for you? Wouldn't you rather hit up more worthy adversaries like Kate or Steve, who will garner you the coveted attention you desire?
First Rule of Holes, Raph...
DD:
Agreed! I just reminded him of that over at Dave's when he came at me with this: "Scotian, as I said before, it's difficult to sift through the refuse of progressive incoherency to find some startling points of truth. Ridiculing me is not only uncalled for, it's pretty much a waste of everyone's time."
I mean really, no one put a gun to his head and told him to make stuff up instead of fact checking first before smearing, not to mention placing his partisan comfort level above being factually honest and caring about being factually honest. I mean really, he makes the assertion, gets his head handed to him because of its outrageous disconnect from reality/truth, and then whines about how it is such hard work to fact check first especially if it involves having to read partisans that he does not agree with and then feels it is a watse of everyone elses time to point this out and properly "ridicule" it for the dreck that it is?!? The intellectual dishonesty cup he has runneth over, and then some.
Not that he will grasp this of course, for if he could he would have understood this from the outset, but I guess living in that mythological based world so many Conservatives live in including we now know RA is more important than honesty,fairness, and most especially one's own honour.
RA:
You made the assertion, you were wrong, and instead of simply accepting you were wrong you have made a big deal out of claiming it was entirely understandable as to why you were wrong because it is too hard for you to read through blogs that do not share your political biases. I mean really, that is admitting you are a partisan hack in so many words, and yet you think this is a good rebuttal? Then to add the icing onto the cake you come up with the above quoted nonsense stating it is not worth ridiculing you because you cannot be bothered to check your facts because you are too lazy/arrogant to think you needed to? Because you don't like the political biases of those you would have to read? Man RA, you are admitting you prefer to live in a bubble with all of this and you repeatedly undermined your credibility and any reason to treat you seriously, and you do not think that is worthy of "ridiculing" you for? Especially when you try to pass yourself as a moderate center right kind of person?
Puhhhhhhhleeeeeeze! Your conduct screams that you are a fair target for exactly such ridiculing. Either learn to take the heat or get out of the kitchen. To quote Gaz from Invader Zim......whiner.
What a pathetic display of dissembling on the part of RA. Never mind that lib/dems and other “progressive” bloggers have been pointing out the hypocrisy of the “support the troops” Republican chickenhawks and the repeated failings of the Bush administration with respect to its shoddy treatment of veterans for years, one need only look to the widespread explosion of outrage over the disastrous mismanagement at the Walter Reed facility that was exposed by the Washington Post this past February and also broadcast on “60 Minutes” to demonstrate that this issue is hardly “news” at this point in time, but has actually been prominently featured in the mainstream media for the better part of a year.
In fact, according to the Pew Research Center that blockbuster story was “picked up by everyone from cable hosts to network anchors,” and stories such as this (described by the PEJ as the “war on the homefront”) actually “received its highest level of coverage of the year” for the week in February when it appeared. So forget about having “to wade into the leftosphere to distinguish every nugget of truth,” all one had to do was be relatively sentient to be aware of serious problems at the Veterans Administration and the incompetence of BushCo on this file.
These days, every report of systemic abuse or neglect that comes down the pike (such as the one in question that sparked the original post), simply reinforces what many/most people already knew to be the case and bolsters an argument that has long been made by all sorts of pundits (not exclusively from the Left by any means, it should also be noted) about the disconnect between rhetoric and reality when it comes to “supporting the troops.” Here’s the ever-wonderful Jon Swift’s sarcastic take on vets being “exploited” by the WP:
Veterans know that their service to their country doesn't end when they come home, and they are perfectly willing to save the government a little money, just as they were proud to serve without body armor or armored vehicles that would have been much too expensive to provide. Most veterans don't want to be coddled and they don't think they need the kind of care that only rich people can afford just for doing their duty. To imply otherwise is the journalistic equivalent of spitting on our brave soldiers.
The whole article is an absolute hoot, but of course the serious points aren't missed in any way.
It’s disappointing that RA seems unwilling or unable to simply admit that he misspoke when claiming that “Not too many bloggers have picked up on this story…” but has elected instead to get on his high horse about not “taking into account that for every incoherent shriekfest which emanates from the echo chambers of the leftocracy, that some nuggets of truth go undetected.” Aside from being unmitigated bullshit, it demonstrates pretty clearly that for the all the pretense of being a moderate centrist, RA is really just another disingenuous, ethically-challenged Blogging Tory hack. Very sad.
Such anger... anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Can't we all just get along?
No, really, stop laughing. This is fun as shit to read. Carry on!
All this acrimony is giving me ulcers. With my delicate sensibilities, I just can't take this...
..*sob*...
Have some pepto! :)
You choose to wallow in linguistic mediocrity utilizing pejoratives and inflammatory language. That's your "shtick". Well, that and... incoherent shriekfests. Well, that and... telling Wanda Watkins to fuck her grief.
Wow. I mean really ... just wow.
The entire substance of your argument is predicated on the fact that CC swears and that you and your cronies don't, so therefore your opinion is reasoned and weighty and well-thought out. And CC's ... well he's just rude so nobody listen to him. Never mind that he (and RT and Dave and Scotian for that matter) have essentially handed you your ass on a platter ... ZOMG they swears!11!!1!1!
Holy tap-dancing Jesus, are you kidding me? Why don't you go clutch your pearls somewhere else while the grown-ups talk, dear. Oh and btw, nice one throwing in the whole overblown Wanda Watkins reference - taking that one to the grave, are we?
And one last thing ...
CC, does your foot ever get tired from all the outstanding ass-kicking you do, you magnificent bastard?
RA has corrected his post, by the way.
Let's at least give him credit for that. It's more than most BTs do.
Nice thought, RT, but after you've spent the last three days having your ass handed to you, simply posting:
"Correction and Update
In my original article I implied that this news is recent and that there haven't been many bloggers who have reported on this. This was a factual error, and I regret the oversight."
just doesn't cut it anymore. Too little, too late and way too feeble.
There are times when someone deserves the benefit of the doubt, and this isn't one of them.
'Nuff said.
It wasn't corrected for your benefit. It was corrected because the message is more important than two absolutely insignificant microbes arguing over whether enough bloggers have also weighed in on the issue before. In short, CC, you're just not that important. I changed the article because it felt like the right thing to do. Because it's not about me. It's about the troops. And some feces-throwing contest is really an arena in which you and your "friends" have an unfair advantage in. What irks me most, I suppose, is your total disregard for the actual importance of the message. All you care about is arguing with some BT, using the pretext of caring about soldiers as some form of excuse to stand on the same moral ground with me. I think we both know you're not fit to lick the bottom of the soles of anybody, and your anony-trolling cowardice proves it.
Wow. Where do you even begin with a pile of sanctimonious tripe like that?
RA quite evidently fails to appreciate that for years now, right-wing bloggers have accused anyone who opposes the war in Iraq (or Bush terrorism policies) of being a coward, of committing treason, and being a traitor to their country. Indeed, since 2002, Bush followers have been regularly accusing their political opponents who oppose that war of subversion, sedition and treason. For instance, who can forget (well RA, apparently) when Michael Reagan said “Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!” after the DNC Chairman had stated in 2005 that the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." That’s but one of the more memorable examples that comes immediately to mind. There are countless others.
Even here in Canada we’ve seen disturbing aspects of this in respect to the war in Afghanistan with jingoistic right-wing bloggers and pundits accusing those opposed to that mission of “stabbing the soldiers in the back” or invoking other such modern variants of the reprehensible Dolchstoßlegende myth, including I’m sad to say, Andrew Coyne several months ago. As a matter of fact, I seem to recall (although the text has been scrubbed now, so I can’t be entirely sure) that RA himself suggested as much in the first, considerably more petulant pass at making a “correction” where he claimed to have overlooked a “nugget of truth” amidst the hysterical shrieking of the “leftosphere” where malicious suggestions were trotted out about leftists caring more about the Taliban than Canadian soldiers.
In general, right-wing bloggers such as the BTs have claimed some exclusive franchise on “patriotism” and “supporting the troops” and have adamantly insisted that if one doesn’t wholeheartedly support the mission, then one logically cannot support the troops. It seems like an absurd notion to many, but in their minds, these things are inextricably linked to one another.
It’s in this environment of overheated bickering and haranguing back and forth over the issue that the seemingly innocuous statement about “not too many bloggers” having picked up on the story about the mistreatment of veterans caused such an indignant reaction in the first place. It cuts right to the heart of matter about what constitutes “support” and quite flagrantly (ignorantly?) overlooked the fact that many lib/dems and “progressives” do support the troops, are concerned about their welfare, and have been utterly disappointed and appalled that when it comes to putting rhetoric into action, the Bush administration has been woefully lacking and tragically incompetent in this regard. From attempting to fight the war “on the cheap” from the outset and shortshrifting the troops in vitally critical areas such as providing adequate body armour and appropriate vehicles, to ensuring that sufficient care was delivered to those maimed and wounded, this administration has consistently dropped the ball.
Aside from being more than a tad disingenuous, for RA to now rather glibly state that “it's not about me. It's about the troops,” seems like a somewhat dishonest way to conveniently dismiss the entire context of the discourse with respect to this subject that’s existed for years now. It also strikes me as more than a little sneaky in that by doing so, it impugns the motives of anyone with the temerity to take issue with his “non-partisan” and Minerva-like epiphany that dastardly things may be afoot in the Veterans Administration because it’s alleged that in doing so, they’re merely exploiting the troops as a “pretext” to claim some presumed moral superiority.
I don’t think that Dave, Scotian and I (your contemptible “friends”) have engaged in “feces throwing” in attempting to get these points across to RA, but I guess in the whiny, thin-skinned world of BT blogging it seems there’s a pretty low bar when it comes to accepting criticism and reasonably fair comment.
No. RT, you're wrong. I impugned the motives of CC, a rank hack in the blogosphere [and by proxy those who agree with his weasel logic].
And you know what's amusing about that story I did? I wrote it at home in between 12 hour shifts this week at work. So while all the IT-working anti-productivity dead weight who use their corporate computers to blog while their boss pays the bill for it, I'm actually at work making a living. So when the faux outrage and progressive hate-on hit the fan, I hadn't read it until late on Friday night. The so-called three days of inaction was me getting home from work at 9:30pm and going straight to bed.
Talk about your impugning motives. Same as when you wrote that article about the troops in Canada at your workplace and then tried to pass off the lack of response in the BT community as a lack of caring. It's called "work", RT. Not everyone gets to idle on their computers at work and read about Canadian politics.
Are you new, RA? Seriously? And I don’t mean new at blogging because you’ve already whined about that … I mean new to reading about current events. Or have you just been hiding under a rock with the rest of the 101st Chairborne up to now? Let me see if I have this straight, mmmmmkay?
You expressed shock and concern that it appears just recently that someone in the Bush Administration might be kind of, maybe, sort of ripping off the troops. CC, Dave and several others on Teh Left (oh horrors) rightly hand you your ass – in which your head is obviously buried.
You take offence because, after all, “It absolutely has not been talked about that much inside the circles in which I read and browse” and “Not too many bloggers have picked up on this story …” so you know, why would you have heard about it? Never mind the fact that the majority of the Left side of the American blogosphere has been on this like a fat kid on a smarty - Crooks and Liars, Daily Kos, Kung Fu Monkey, Firedoglake, Lawyers, Guns and Money just to name a few. Christ, John Cole at Balloon Juice, who used to considered right-of-centre, has been blogging about it for months. Crooks and Liars alone has 216 posts under the tag “Supporting Our Troops” – the majority of which deal with the fact that the Bush Administration does anything but support their troops.
Does the quote “As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want” ring a bell? Parents buying their kids adequate body armour? Wounded soldiers being billeted in rat-infested quarters at Walter Reed? Grievously wounded soldiers being informed that they have to return their signing bonuses because they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain by getting, you know, wounded? The fact that 1 in 4 homeless Americans are veterans? Anything? Bueller? Bueller?
And now, for those of you playing at home, RA claims he didn't correct his story for 3 days because he's overworked. Seriously, that's enough. Actually, that is the outside of enough. Grow a spine and accept the fact that you fucked up and got called on it. And then take your fridge magnet and your red shirt and shove it up your ass. Yes, I know, you'll have to manoeuvre it around your head but I'm sure you'll manage. Lip service counts for shit, RA, but that's pretty much all the Right has at this point, isn't it?
So RA claims it took him three days to make a correction because he was overworked, yet during those same three days he was not so overworked as to leave many lengthy (far more lengthy than his correction) comments here and at Galloping Beaver? Seriously, how stupid does he think everyone else is with such an absurdity as this? He hasn't the time for a short correction because of work but during the same period of time he has more than enough time to "defend" himself at different blogs in detail. To advance this rational at this point as a defence is either demonstrating incredible stupidity/ignorance/incompetence in basic reasoning/logic skills and/or blatant deception/lying because to admit the truth is too hard for his clearly fragile ego (I say clearly because he wouldn't have dug this hole in the first place if he had simply the maturity and comfort with himself to admit error) to handle. Either way it undercuts any credibility he had left, which from what I can see wasn't much.
RA needs to stop digging this hole before he tunnels through the planet; he has clearly breeched the mantle by now as it is with this latest idiocy. Not to mention his willingness to assume that everyone else are such complete and utter morons that would not have noticed that during the same 3 day period he was suppposedly too busy to add a short update (for the troops as the claimed reason because he considers them so important) while spending much more time on various blogs during that 3 day period defending his indefensible position and claiming he was being persecuted and maligned unfairly. One would have to be about as brain dead as Terri Schiavo to buy into that excuse given he disproved that lack of time with his other online activities. It also shows that he places defending his reputation ahead of his so called support for the troops.
If there ever was a better example of opening one's mouth to change feet than this business with RA it does not come immediately to mind.
RA — What an incredible load of bullocks. You’ve pulled this “Unlike you leftie deadbeats, I’ve got a real job” crap before and its just as spurious now as it was then. In the case of the piece I wrote about the stony silence of BT bloggers when news came out the other week that the DoD was cutting the bonuses paid to troops living in the most expensive cities, you claimed that I was demanding that every right-wing blogger should have been on the case within 20 minutes ventilating their outrage, but of course you, instead of loafing about and fulminating at your computer, had been at work.
Well, I wasn’t expecting any such thing, but after the good part of the day (from first thing in the morning until late afternoon or early evening in your neck of the woods) during which time various BTs had all sorts of time evidently to post about any manner of things that were of seeming importance to them, such as the French unions being suppressed, and there was still not a peep out of the lot of them, that seemed to signal that the issue either wasn’t important to them, or they simply didn’t want to address it. Had Dion committed some hilarious gaffe, you can bet numerous BTs would have been on it, to use Lulu’s expression, “like a fat kid on a Smartie.”
You chose to overlook that rather awkward fact, tried to make me sound absurdly unreasonable and instead personalized it to your own situation. Of course I realize that people have other commitments (work, family, or whatever) and that affects the frequency of their blogging activities. However, when many BTs post scores of new articles about this and that during a given period of time and all of them studiously avoid a topic, then it’s not unfair to suggest it’s an issue they just don’t want to tackle for whatever reason. Even though you spoke out on the matter when you had the chance, the fact remains that you were one of less than a handful to do so — I would guess because it would have involved being critical of the Harper government.
Your “real job” defense in this case has an incredibly high bullshit factor as well. Need I point out that in the last two months you’ve made 226 posts which translates to more than three per day on average? Clearly, your employment doesn’t appear to be that much of an impediment to your prolific blogging. Regarding the “so-called three days of inaction,” as Scotian has pointed out, it seems you certainly had the time to, as CC put it “tap dance, obfuscate and evade responsibility” in the comments sections of different blogs that had taken you task over the matter. So again, to claim that you simply didn’t have time to post a correction or revise the post because of your work commitments seems like a pretty feeble, rather dishonest excuse. I have to agree with my old friend Scotian that torturing credulity in such a way is fairly insulting and doesn’t speak very highly for your integrity or character.
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