Thursday, February 02, 2006

Fisking Flak: Randoph, UT, Take 3

The Wonk got a bit of a fisking himself from a couple bloggers cited in Round 2 of our Steel Cage Match pitting one of the Washington Post's professional ironists, er, reporters, against the fine folks who inhabit Randolph, UT. Wonk dished a few comments back himself, and if you want to check out some of the fun, just click here to find the original post and access the comments section.

Actually, as I mentioned in my comments underneath the entry, blogger "mattwdc" seems like a decent sort, even as he whacks gently away at Wonker and the rest of the infidels inhabiting the flat-world right-wing fringe. But he sort of betrays his alleged objectivity in his short bio column where he lists what appear to be his beliefs as: communitarian / bioregionalist / cooperativist / socialist / instrumentalist / unitarian.

Well, okay, the last one, with a capitol U, is a religion, so we'll leave that alone. But the rest are pretty much a smorgasboard of the usual lefty stuff which, if you steep in it too long, kind of makes you, at best, so "tolerant" of everything that you tend to lose your moral compass except when a Republican comes into the room. At worst, you turn into a Kos Kid and accept funding from George Soros.

Matt displays an iteration of the "red-blue" maps that have been hitting the wires for the last few months purporting to show that red-state victories aren't really so clearcut, but this really proves nothing. Whoever invented the map is really trying to blur the obvious, namely that the US has gotten so politically polarized that it's hard to negotiate areas of agreement anymore and that the red states, at lest for now, are in control.

The purple map, however, provides something of a comfort zone for our friends on the left and gives them hope that things are not as bad for them as they might look. (And if the Repubs don't stop spending like drunken sailors, they may very well have some hope this November, but that's another topic.)

But let's face it. If the country really were more purple than red or blue, we probably wouldn't have either Rush or the Daily Kos for that matter. And to examine this, let's go to the next post.

1 comment:

Wonker said...

Hello, Matt,

Thanks for the reply. As one who's spent most of his recent life in print journalism and public policy writing, I'd say the observations you make in your third graf here are right on the money. As hard as it might be to believe sometimes, our ultimate objective in this blog is to restore accuracy in terminology and yank political argumentation back toward the center where it's far easier to work out problems. We'll check you out later today.

Once again, thanks for the exchange.