alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

August 26, 2006

A Polite Defense of Instapundit

by AltHippo @ 5:22 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

Recently, someone who reads this blog told me in person that he liked the pithiness. And I thanked him profusely for that. But, I thought, in terms of marketing myself within the lefty blogosphere, pithiness isn’t going to make me stand out. So, I’m going to try a completely different tack.

I’m going to be polite.

When I first saw this bit of Professor Insty’s blogiwork, I thought let’s see if we can find something polite to say about it:

Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a “quagmire” were wrong — again! — how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong — again! — how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error — again — and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about “civilian casualties” now seem almost disappointed that there weren’t more — again — and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American “liberators” were proven wrong — again — as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn’t stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It’s probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.

Nah.

Now, let’s see if we can find something polite to say about that. Let’s see. First off, the spelling is excellent. Also, he uses the word “lugubriously”- one of Nabokov’s favorite words as I recall. Nota Bene the use of imagery: Liberals spoke of “civilian casualties” “lugubriously”. To me that evokes the twin image of a liberal pronouncing the syllables as if he had a laborous dipthong or was drunk, while at the same time suggesting that those that considered civilian casualties at all, where doing it out of laziness. That’s a two-fer. Well done!

But wait, there’s more.

It turns out that His Instiness had already responded to Glenn Greenwald concerning the afore-mentioned quote.

Well, I actually think that Glenn Greenwald wants to be me, though if so he’d be well advised to stop lifting his stuff from Tom Tomorrow.

Now, let’s be polite. The Insticator responded to Greenwald’s post. Well done. Taking time away from his teaching job, not to mention his love of family, digital photography, and Republican propaganda, to get back to a fellow blogger was the polite thing to do.

Now to the question of whether Glenn Greenwald wants to be Glenn Reynolds. That his first name is Glenn might be because he wants to be like the other Glenn. It’s possible. If he changes his last name, then, Instaplunder is surely on to something.

Yet, from the brief conversation I had with Glenn Greenwald at a recent social event, I’d say that what he values are things like… oh, I don’t know… truth telling. As far as I can tell from occasionally reading Instaprawn, I’d say that truth telling is not one of his objectives. Rather, and I say that with no offense to Dan, he values his role in sustaining an echo chamber friendly to the Bush administration.

With that I’ll politely submit that Mr. Greenwald does not want to be you, Mr. Instapwned. I hope you take this in the polite spirit in which it was offered, and I wish a hearty “Heh. Indeed.” to you and yours.

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5 Responses to “A Polite Defense of Instapundit”

  1. KCinDC Says:
    August 26th, 2006 at 6:24 pm

    If Greenwald wanted to be Reynolds, it seems the first thing he’d do is shut off his comments and cut his average post length by at least an order of magnitude.

  2. Nimrod Gently Says:
    August 26th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    And beat himself repeatedly over the heat with a cudgel until he’s lost all sense of proportion and grip on reality.

  3. Anonymous Says:
    August 26th, 2006 at 9:34 pm

    Greenwald’s blog would be better if it didn’t have comments and had shorter posts.

  4. Charles Giacometti Says:
    August 26th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

    Instapundit is a rube, nothing more and nothing less. The irony of a self-proclaimed libertarian teaching at a state-funded college is exceeded only by a self-proclaimed libertarian falling in lockstep with the current administration. Of course, Instarube is so wooden-headed that he doesn’t have a chance to even begin to grasp the irony.

    You are an awfully good sport to be polite to this dork.

  5. KathyF Says:
    September 4th, 2006 at 1:44 am

    You say “pithiness” as if you were drunk.

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