« Yet Another Blogger Is Like: Why Didn't Anyone Ever Tell Me That The UN Pays Someone To Demonize Israel From a Specifically Palestinian Point of View? | Main | Treating Genocidal Fanatics Like Statesmen Is A Bad Idea (When Did This Become Controversial?) »

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.

Follow Mere Rhetoric

About

  • Omri Ceren is a PhD candidate studying Rhetoric at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He lives in downtown Los Angeles.

    Email: omri@mererhetoric.com

    AIM: mererhetoricblog
    ICQ: 342854935
    gTalk: mererhetoricblog@gmail.com
    Y!: mererhetoricblog
    MSN: mererhetoricblog@hotmail.com

Our Sponsors

  • Advertise On Mere Rhetoric
    Go To Blogads


  • Please Visit Our Sponsor @ ZaraMart
    Shop At ZaraMart


News Informer

Search




Approbation

  • JIB 2007 Finalist

    Large Blog | Pro Israel Blog | News Blog | Right Wing Blog | News Post | Right Wing Post | Overall Post | Series of Posts | Specialty Contribution


    • The best blog going -- Larry Greenfield, VP & Fellow at The Claremont Institute

    • One of the best blogs in the known universe -- Robert Avrech, Seraphic Secret

    • A must read... the new shining star of the Blogosphere -- Alexandra von Maltzan, All Things Beautiful

    • I read Omri and... you should too -- Meryl Yourish, Yourish.com

    • So damned good, it makes me want to pack up and leave the 'sphere -- Elder of Ziyon

    • Only Omri... could write a sentence like this -- Lynn B, In Context

    • Gets the gold star -- Anne Lieberman, Boker Tov, Boulder!

    • Stellar analysis -- Rick Richman, Jewish Current Issues

      Premio Apache Badge

    Disapprobation

    • [IsraPundit's] token fascist -- anonymous Democratic official
    • A clearly radical blogger based in Southern California -- Brown Daily Herald

    Powered By

    Hosting Matters
    Movable Type
    Google Analytics Tracker