Martin "Red Tory" Rayner has some thoughts on the Blogging Tories. I'll add my own ponderings in a bit.
FURTHER PONDERINGS: There is soooooo much that can be added to Martin's philosophizing, but here's the perfect example of why Stephen Taylor's Blogging Tory aggregator is, quite simply, utterly valueless.
Ignore, if you will, those members of the BTs that are nothing more than shrieking, illiterate dingbats, racists, homophobes and retards -- you know, Dr. Roy, Paul at Celestial Junk, Kate McMillan, Neo Conservative, the "late" Frank Hilliard at Mesopotamia West, the annoying children at The Politic, and so on. Really, let's just put the idiots aside and give Taylor and his collection of right-wing howler monkeys the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps the funniest example of the utter dysfunction of the Blogging Tories is (as we've described before) the bizarre behaviour of BT member Sandy Crux, described by fellow BTer Raphael Alexander here:
Conservative, but non-partisan blogger Sandy Crux, has issued a challenge to expose bias which is openly positive liberal, or anti-conservative in tone.
Um ... hold it right there. As we've pointed out before, it's tough to tout yourself as "non-partisan", only to publicly take up the challenge of ferreting out only a certain flavour of media bias. But it doesn't end there.
Again, as we've described earlier, Sandy has also taken on the job of touting the stellar accomplishments of the Stephen Harper Party of Canada, promising to let us know about them on a weekly basis, while carefully ignoring any indication of Conservative failures or broken promises, and while pumping up that list with "accomplishments" of dubious legitimacy as we plan on documenting here starting soon. So what's the lesson here?
Simple -- the lesson here is just how functionally broken are the Blogging Tories when they've lost any idea of what the phrase "non-partisan" even means. Sandy doesn't appear to be a drooling moron, but even she has lost any contact with reality when she thinks that non-partisanship involves presenting a relentless and unwavering ideological point of view, even when she has to make shit up to do it. And if Sandy is one of the saner folks over at Stephen Taylor's Hillbilly Hoedown, that just shows how weirdly twisted their worldview really is when none of them even know what being non-partisan means any more.
As Ti-Guy once suggested, the best way to describe the current crop of BTs is that they provide no useful information of any kind. Quite simply, it's just mindless, lockstep Stephen Harper worship, 24/7. And what's the value in that?
9 comments:
It's an interesting discussion to follow, but since the mere presence of the indefatigable troll Aaron Unruh (who seems to have a very bad case of unrequited love for Scott Tribe) brings on migraines, I couldn't spend much time there, as I knew he'd show up eventually.
There seems to be this overblown expectation that political adversaries should be engaging in dialogue all the time; that all of us are supposed to find common ground. That's really only true for a limited number of issues, and frankly, finding common ground on those will not necessarily translate into sensible action by the people in charge.
Some of the more cunning Blogging Tories understand that; KKKate, Shaidle, Taylor are never interested in dialogue, because it exposes the propaganda they traffic in. I myself only find it worthwhile to talk to political adversaries to correct factual errors, or to challenge their grotesque slander or, once in a while, to tell them to fuck right off (in a variety of colourful ways). But on most issues, I don't see how dialoguing with conservatives and Conservatives (most of whom really do represent the left-most end of the Bell curve, or are at best idiot-savants) is going to be worthwhile when....and a very HUGE "when"...there can be no expectation of good faith, which is THE most significant aspect of Conservative discourse and is evident up and down the Conservative food chain.
Actually Ti-Guy, Aaron Unruh hasn't shown up as of this AM. The other Aaron has however (Aaron-Lee Wudrick)
I stand corrected: He did show up sometime last night.. so I have both Aaron's commenting at the site.
Yeah...I moused over the "Aaron" I saw there to make sure I was referring to the correct one.
Thanks for the plug, man.
There's another part to this, with a grand finale to follow... whenever Scott feels like posting it.
I'm taking a leisurely journey to get to my eventual point.
I see the other Aaron showed up to waste time proposing that all political bloggers are all the same while providing no actual evidence to support that assertion.
I think I dealt with that and it's also expanded on at some length in the final bit that Scott's going to post this afternoon.
Anyway, I have to get back to work. This has taken up waaaay too much time!
I get the impression the BT definition of non-partisan (at least when it comes to judging the MSM) comes to this... "Take this down and publish it word for word and don't ask any uncomfortable questions of our God-King."
So what about blogs like thwaps? Is thwap the be all and end all of progressive thought? I hope not.
It took awhile but I understand how CC and crew try and highlight the extreme postions of some of the BT.
RT was correct in saying that BT don't represent the average conservative voter. Some of the things they post do, just not the extreme stuff.
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