And the Wussification of the JBlogosphere Continues
First, people start declaring that Jewish bloggers aren't allowed to have fun like everyone else on the blogosphere (apparently because of some transliterated Hebrew... honestly, we kind of lost track pretty early in the post). Then we make fun of those people and click "upload" - an action almost immediately greeted by an email dinging us because our post was kind of wildly unfair (a defensible characterization, but one that is totally beside the point). So we upload an acknowledgment about our imputed over enthusiasm, and hop on this afternoon's One Jerusalem conference call with Dick Morris.
Which was awesome. And somewhere around the middle of said awesomeness, Boker Tov Boulder's Anne Lieberman pretty much started a feeding frenzy about a former Clinton official who may or may not have violated several federal laws by destroying documents with handwritten margin notes attesting to Clinton-era anti-terrorism negligence. Total feeding frenzy - follow-up questions from different bloggers, leading to electoral considerations, Dick Morris handing out his email address, general pandemonium (we might be exaggerating a little - but the general description is apt). Anne did what she did because (a) Rick Richman asked her to and (b) she's a badass. Except now we - and you - have to live with the knowledge that Anne's a badass who nonetheless couldn't resist joining the rising chorus of people who are trying to use Yom Kippur to ruin our week. Or as we like to call it: people catching the anti-blogger, anti-fun train to "and in other news, the NYT is still biased"-bloggingville. If you don't believe us, click on the link and see for yourself. It goes to a video... a video that literally spins out of the screen and forms a vortex of slow-talking, illustrated, patronizing sanctimony that physically pulls your will to live out of your body. Luckily, we had just finished reading this morning's LA Times Max Boot article, where he criticizes groups who don't oppose violent jihadists (this would be Max Boot of the Council of Foreign Relations... yes, that Council of Foreign Relations). So we really didn't have much that the vortex could take. But if you're thinking about puppies or something, be careful.
Listen, obviously yes - Yom Kippur. Obviously and definitionally of impossible-to-exaggerate importance. And we're not even denying that reconciliation with the Other is a necessary prerequisite for reconciliation with the divine. But none of that changes a very basic fact: if Juan Cole was slightly less confused by his own confused claims to intellectual grandeur, he would be no more than your very basic, garden variety, cheap fraud. And that's as true this week as it is any other week.
Which was awesome. And somewhere around the middle of said awesomeness, Boker Tov Boulder's Anne Lieberman pretty much started a feeding frenzy about a former Clinton official who may or may not have violated several federal laws by destroying documents with handwritten margin notes attesting to Clinton-era anti-terrorism negligence. Total feeding frenzy - follow-up questions from different bloggers, leading to electoral considerations, Dick Morris handing out his email address, general pandemonium (we might be exaggerating a little - but the general description is apt). Anne did what she did because (a) Rick Richman asked her to and (b) she's a badass. Except now we - and you - have to live with the knowledge that Anne's a badass who nonetheless couldn't resist joining the rising chorus of people who are trying to use Yom Kippur to ruin our week. Or as we like to call it: people catching the anti-blogger, anti-fun train to "and in other news, the NYT is still biased"-bloggingville. If you don't believe us, click on the link and see for yourself. It goes to a video... a video that literally spins out of the screen and forms a vortex of slow-talking, illustrated, patronizing sanctimony that physically pulls your will to live out of your body. Luckily, we had just finished reading this morning's LA Times Max Boot article, where he criticizes groups who don't oppose violent jihadists (this would be Max Boot of the Council of Foreign Relations... yes, that Council of Foreign Relations). So we really didn't have much that the vortex could take. But if you're thinking about puppies or something, be careful.
Listen, obviously yes - Yom Kippur. Obviously and definitionally of impossible-to-exaggerate importance. And we're not even denying that reconciliation with the Other is a necessary prerequisite for reconciliation with the divine. But none of that changes a very basic fact: if Juan Cole was slightly less confused by his own confused claims to intellectual grandeur, he would be no more than your very basic, garden variety, cheap fraud. And that's as true this week as it is any other week.
