Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The Kosniki remind me of didactically nerdly, emotionally crippled sports fans. They can tell you all the stats and gripe with feeling about the lousy, tremendously expensive stadium food, but they get all sheepish and aw shucks about the stadium scams. They get a little hot when a fight erupts and the boys get diffident little... but this is a family blog. That water boy in the locker room sensibility is one reason why women increasingly can't stand the place. Every so often, a Big Dem drops by -- more often sends a staffer -- to give them a friendly noogie. It's very, very sad.

You write a lot about Daily Kos; I'd be curious to hear your opinion on Bartcop.com; I used to be a fan of his, but I think he's lost his mind and refuse to read him anymore. Have you ever read him? Could you do a post summarizing your reading of Bartcop? Pay a visit and let 'er rip. (let us know what you think). He's an odd bird, isn't he? Enjoy your blog, keep up the good work.

The sports fan analogy seems quite precise to me. Kosniks and such invariably refer to the Democratic Party as "we" -- just the way Yankess fans refer to Mr Steinbrenner's team as "we".

Then of course there's the structural similarity -- players on competing teams have much more in common with each other than with their fans. And the game is not about anything -- except selling stuff.

JR -- I haven't read Bartcop; I'll have a look.

That water boy in the locker room sensibility is one reason why women increasingly can't stand the place.

Yeah, that part's been going on for quite a while. I still have to tread carefully on liberal feminist blogs, however. Ampersand at Alas,A Blog will tolerate my more frothing moments because I've been friends with him IRL for eons--but I try not to trade on that too often.

Also, as satisfying as a good flamewar can be, I wouldn't want the dubious honor of thinking even less of other feminists than a lot of male bloggers do.

The vibe I get off most liberal feminist blogs is distinctly chilly. Even though some excellent ranting has emerged from there in the wake of all the Alito bullshit. It's like the kiddin'-on-the-square joke that while the Vietnam War was wrong, the people who were "right about it too soon" remain to this day more suspect than the fuckers who lied us into it in the first place. (I urged a lot of liberal feminists to check out Brandy Baker and Sharon Smith in '04, but I guess being next to/under the dreaded Socialist banner made that too uncool. I would have loved some genuine debate but in general got nothing but stony silence or the same old platitudes about Roe, "circular firing squads," "the art of the possible," blah blah blah...)

There is one way in which the sports analogy breaks down: Most fans who endure this many losing seasons will shout for the leadership's head on a platter. I haven't seen any DLC heads rolling lately and don't expect to. Still, as the Brain once said, anything is statistically possible...

I thought this paragraph in particular:

A few years back, the corporate buzzword-du-jour was "think outside the box." The Kosnik culture prides itself on thinking inside the box, and the smaller the box, the better. Kosniks believe fervently in the immutability of the status quo and the rightness of received wisdom, and this belief they call "realism."

was particularly insightful in that it describes a lot of the thinking (or lack thereof) that I've seen among defenders of the Democratic party as it exists right now.

What is apparently completely lost on them is that their utter adherence to the status quo, in its own way, is just as unrealistic as the "we create our own reality" delusions of the neoconservatives.

By the way, you should check out SmirkingChimp also; not the front board which is relatively open, but the message boards.