The puny monster’s idiotic game edifies no one

The staggeringly untalented and adolescent Ted Rall has issued a challenge to the right-wing part of the blogosphere.

Several Bushist blogger types have written to assert that there are as many violent and threatening remarks and insults coming from liberals online as there are from conservatives against liberals. I’ve spent many sadly-lost hours online, and I say: no way.

So here’s my challenge: Please email your worst, most vicious examples of liberal/leftie blogger vitriol (with links, natch), and I’ll post ‘em right here. If they exist, obviously.

If not, let’s take as a given what we already know: that Republicans’ first impulse is to punch people whose arguments they can’t defeat with logic and to bomb countries whose people know something we don’t.

Come on, righties: my server is standing by at: rightwingchallenge@rall.com.

Ugh. I think I remember him. From the school yard. 5th grade. He wasn’t worth my energy, then, either.

Anyway, I’m sad to see that the right has taken the bait and jumped to find the literally thousands of examples Rall is asking to see. Tee shirts saying “Kill Republicans.” Any one of a number of DU threads. Air America dj’s suggesting that President Bush should be taken out on a boat and killed like Fredo Corleone. You’ve read it all before.

All of this, of course, will give Rall and his idiot readers cause to go to various conservative forums and look for intolerant posts there. And for every 10,000 examples the conservatives offer to him as evidence, they will find 100 and say, “see? SEE? We’re only responding to YOUR aggression.”

That is, if they even think the examples the conservatives come up with are even objectionable. I’m betting that Rall – who is possibly even more extreme and full of hate than Michael Moore – will look at 95% of what is sent to him and scratch his head, wondering, “C*nti Rice and Fredo Corleone Bush, what’s insulting about that?”

I don’t know. I’m not sure any of this does the blogosphere any good (I for one would rather not see msm reports that the blogs are wasting all their energy and bandwidth on a pissing contest, “and just look at how the bloggers are so easy to manipulate”) and I’m sure it will not inspire edifying behavior on either ‘side.’ It seems to be acting as a giant release valve for the right at this time. “Look, Look! SEE what they said? SEE why we’re angry?” And I understand that we conservatives, frustrated by what the left does get away with saying, might appreciate the chance to blow off steam…still, this particular contest cannot end well, and I wish the conservatives would not add to Rall’s already over-inflated sense of importance by entertaining his silliness and giving him credibility. This exercise in one-upsmanship which could get exceedingly ugly.

I say ignore this little dweeb, or laugh at him. The worst thing you can do is feed his ego or allow him to believe he’s being taken seriously. If you don’t want a puny monster to grow in size or power, you don’t feed it.