Groupthink And the Atrios Groupies

WHEW! I don't know why I do this to myself, but every now and then I'll leave a comment over on Eschaton. No matter how mildly critical of the orthodoxy over thattaway, the comments almost invariably invite massively irrational retaliation (MIR). If you want to see something funny (by which I mean sad and pathetic), go check out the comments on this post.

Perhaps you didn't realize that I was a brainwashed wingnut lackey of the Bush administration? Well, fortunately this was revealed by some of the insightful inquirers over on Eschaton. How'd they blow my cover? Well, I asserted that it was not absurd to worry about a breach of journalistic ethics in the recent Rumsfeld dust-up. I even noted that I thought that what Pitts (the Times Free Press reporter) did seemed o.k. to me...I just don't think it's crazy to think that legitimate questions are raised.

What's worse--and this'll be the subject of a later post--the most common defense of Pitts over there was of the "there's no such thing as objectivity anyway, so I don't know what all the fuss is about" variety.

Nice.

Dropping the irrationalism bomb always helps. I asked 'em how they had any grounds for complaining about W's distortion of WMD evidence if they don't believe in objectivity, hence can't believe that there's any such thing as distortion...but didn't, oddly enough, receive an answer.

Sheesh, I was afraid they were going to chip a nail trying to scratch my eyes out...

Anyway, you wanna know why liberals get a bad name? Wanna know why the right thinks the left is shrill and irrational? Go check out those comments, dude.

Not that this bothers me personally... I figure that if I can keep the charges of left-wing kookiness and the charges of right-wing kookiness balanced out, I'm probably about where I ought to be...