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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Separated at Birth: Ann Althouse and...?

A lot of similarities with these two... 

Ann Althouse and...

Charles Johnson

22 comments:

  1. AA is flipping us off. Subtle, Annie, subtle...

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  2. They're both about equally unhinged too. But at least Johnson has a few assets in his skillset, as a musician and as a coder. Althouse, meanwhile,... meh....(I'm thinking)..., ya know, not so much.

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  3. No, they don't look alike.

    They may be ending up alike, but Althouse looks pretty good there.

    PS Something of a stretch, Sixty. Nowhere near as obvious as Choom, but you want it, I'll give you your POV.

    PPS For the record, I bear the woman no ill will. What she's done is her doing, but, in the end, I think she'll be more worthy of pity than censure.

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  4. It is a flattering photograph of Ann. I do not bear her ill will over her blog decisions. I think ejecting commentators is dumb, just like it was dumb when Chunky Boo Boo Johnson did it (hence the Separated at Birth). I do not like how Meade has lied or been reckless with the facts and when called on it gets petulant (he is sort of like Kilgore Trout at LGF or even Shamutta, before CJ gave her the boot). I also do not care for how Ann has treated my friends.

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    1. I can understand that, you have to stick by your friends.

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    2. Good Lord...memories of Charles Johnson. Aaaaggghhhh! Regrettably when Althouse chose to wrestle pigs she got muddy, but only gave the pig a bath...so to speak. On the worst day, however, she never approached the insanity that was [and maybe is?] LGF and CJ with his banning stick and periodic surprise membership openings...even with all that he didn't sustain a clean place, unless you liked threats with knives, guns and karate by fanbois...or just sucking up. To my knowledge I wasn't banned, I just stopped visiting at all. Maybe shutting down comments prevented a devolution in to an LGF like dystopia. I miss the comments and opinions of the many smart people in Althouse comments, even those I disagreed with, because I figure I'm never done learning...and that is why I think her action is a mistake. Her blog was a forum, like other worthwhile locations, and her forum is gone.

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  5. I have mixed feelings about Althouse's recent weirdness. On the one hand, for some reason she has a ton of incredibly vicious and nasty trolls. Sometimes they articulate a reason for hating her or her family, sometimes they do not, but it doesn't really matter as the worst of these people are far over the line.

    It would be great if everyone was tough and unaffected by this kind of thing, but that's unrealistic. I think it pushed Althouse and her beau to a point where they were paranoid about their commenters. I empathize with that.

    On the other hand, Althouse's argumentation has always been shoddy and needlessly personal. She has openly insulted people who are expressing valid civil rights concerns, such as about the way men are treated in family law. Her discourse attempts with Instapundit over this have been weak.

    She also doesn't seem very even. Some of her commenters, such as Inga, seem fixated on driving other commenters away. Because some of these commenters are jerks (most aren't), I guess this is tolerated, but nipping that in the bud early would have allowed for a better comment section.

    Anyway, Althouse's blog was her comment section. The posts were mildly provocative enough to get a really good argument going every now and then. The problem is when you take crank up that provocative spirit too far, you're just trolling your own community, which conveys a sense of contempt for your own readers (which I think is genuine!).

    I saw Meade's treatment of the Fred4Pres guy and feel sorry for Meade. He got paranoid and lashed out stupidly. I think that kind of mistake is a lot easier to make than many realize, when your loved ones are under fire so much by some really vicious jerks... I really just find it regrettable he didn't own his mistake and apologize.

    Those who foam at the mouth because she voted for Obama or supported Gov Walker are idiots who are only torturing themselves to try to follow a blog that has no interest in a coherent political message.

    It's a shame a great blog sucks lately, but blogging is hard work and Althouse has had a great run and probably will get her act together again pretty shortly.

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    1. Dude where can we get some of what you're smoking?

      That must be some quality shit.

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    2. Not quite, he has a couple of good points there and are voiced elsewhere by some of the more outspoken people who used to go there - Aridog, f'rinstance .

      Even you have to concede the She Devil of the SS was more than you could deal with, no?

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    3. "Trooper YorkJuly 11, 2013 at 5:46 PM
      Dude where can we get some of what you're smoking?

      That must be some quality shit."

      That's a quintessentially Althousian comment.

      It wouldn't be cool to be invested enough in your contempt of someone's view to actually express why you disagree with it. The discussion doesn't need to move anywhere, so just keep it at 'lol'.

      The secret of cruel neutrality is it's easier to please the circus if you snipe all sides, superficially.

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    4. Dustin, it is pointless to continue to stick your tongue up Althouse's portal, she's not here. Plus, she has special ed to do that for her.

      There is nothing to understand about your "view". You love a commie cunt - so fucking what? I wouldn't be too proud of that fact.

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    5. Dustin did you have to go to school to learn to be that pompous or does it come naturally.

      The thing that gave that blog it's zing was the crazy back and forth in the comments. Now it is as boring as .....well.....you.

      All the best, your pal Trooper York.

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    6. Trooper, I know you have your own blog, but would you want to be a contributor to what I described below, at 11:25am?

      Maybe we could get people like DBQ, Synova, Palladian, Chip Ahoy, Scott M. Even garage mahal.

      Or am I just feeling the effects of my breakfast of bourbon and bourbon?

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    7. "Dustin did you have to go to school to learn to be that pompous or does it come naturally."

      I'm not being pompous, dude. What in the world are you talking about? You apparently are very invested in being upset, but you can't articulate what specifically you disagree with me about. So you just make some vague dig and get really pissy when I point that out.

      "The thing that gave that blog it's zing was the crazy back and forth in the comments. Now it is as boring as .....well.....you."

      I disagree. I never really enjoyed the people screaming at each other, promising to sue eachother for 'libel' every time someone was criticized or poorly paraphrased, or the trolling. I enjoyed the discussion. You know, when one person explains why he disagrees with someone else, and they go into a few comments pointing out the flaws or assumptions in the other side. That was not boring to me, but it obviously upset a lot of people who have continually upped the trolling to the point of infantile swearing. My guess is that a lot of these people are insecure and afraid to enter a discussion on the merits, but as I said above, I feel that Althouse's tone has evolved to where she actually encourages a lot of this attitude (unintentionally).

      "You love a commie cunt - so fucking what?"

      Actually, I criticized her repeatedly in my comment... just not with the kind of hate you're showing. You see, it's just the internet and I'm not going to get that emotional over it. Last time I got really irritated with her was over some kind of sneering at Gov Palin... but since then I've learned to not really let it bother me when someone says something that I think is stupid. I was not surprised that she voted for Obama... she's an academic... what's not to love about a big government authoritarian if you're part of the academic bubble these days? They come from the same world. Anyway, free country. I disagree with her vote, but don't think there's any reason to go nuts about someone not complying. If you want to learn more about the weird mindset of the well educated Obama supporter (since to me, this should be oxymoronic), Althouse is the perfect blog to get that. If you instead want constant reassurance that Obama is horrible (why would anyone need that at this point?) then I guess you need to go elsewhere.

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  6. Every now and then it weirds me out to realize that there are people who love professional wrestling who think it's for real and the problem for me is they're not always wrong about that.

    In his autobiography, William Shatner touched on the failure of his first marriage by claiming that an young actor cannot realistically expect to become a success unles he is "focused, narcissistic and competitive."

    Althouse has been on a diva kick for so long it's become second nature to her which was her long-term goal all along. Good for her, I suppose.

    For what it's worth, I'm not one of these people who thinks she's good-looking. Whatever. Different strokes and all that. Ordinarily I'd say looks are completely irrelevant when it comes to blogging but they sure matter to her and she wants everyone to know it and she loves the compliments. Nothing wrong with that either, I suppose, yet again.

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  7. I miss the old Althouse community.

    I wonder if we could rebuild it on a new blog.

    It would be difficult for any one person to match Althouse, both in the number of posts per day, and in their variety (on different topics, and from different directions). Most of us have jobs, after all; and we're cursed with internally consistent political philosophies.

    But what if several former commenters served as contributors, co-bloggers? We could even include some of the lefties, to spice up the mix. I'm not talking about 3 or 4 co-bloggers -- I'm talking 20 or 30 of us.

    Would anyone be interested in such a part-time purely amateur endeavor? If so, let me know at pastafarian69@yahoo.com.

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  8. Professional wrestling is a good metaphor for the Althouse comments section. A lot of it was for show. It was when people started taking it seriously that it got all screwed up.

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    1. There's some truth in that.

      On the other hand, some people really like the professional wrestling crap too much, the point where they have to make every normal person uncomfortable. They then sneer that those who would rather just have a discussion about matters, rather than the commenters themselves, are 'taking things too seriously', but the other POV is that the people insulting eachother because of their overinvestment in the internet are taking things too seriously.

      Is it taking the mall too seriously to want comfy chairs (a normal discussion), or is it taking the mall to seriously to flip them over out of a love for 'crazy professional wrestling'.

      Maybe the really normal people don't even know who Althouse is or care that she has or doesn't have a ridiculous level of comment moderation now.

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    2. That was a very astute and compelling comment Dustin.

      Boring as all shit.

      But very astute. You see some people like to sit in the chairs at the mall and quietly pee themselves.

      Keep up the good work.

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  9. You can't take this stuff that seriously, or you will turn into into a paranoid freak lke Chunky Boo Boo Johnson.

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    1. The 'only preapproved comments emailed to my husband and comments from my bestest friends' policy is totally pathetic. Ostentatiously pathetic. What liberated woman makes people pass noted through her husband before they are allowed to address her?

      It is really embarrassing. It would be much better to just have no comment section whatsoever. I only blogged for a short while, but within a week people were posting death threats (because the subject of one of my posts was a really nasty guy) and I closed them down.

      Society is crumbling and it's a pain in the ass to have a comment section. Even many so-called conservatives act like there's no such thing as a moral compass.

      Charles Johnson and Althouse do have a lot in common... they are both mistaken for conservatives by the left because they are not consistently liberal... they both used to reflect on how much more tolerant the right is than the left thanks to this perspective... and they both actually share a contempt for the left. I don't think Althouse is remotely as awful as LGF, and the main reason is I don't think she's as insecure. Like her or not, she is a pretty successful person offline. If anything, Althouse is *too* secure and sure of herself, especially about matters she clearly hasn't thought through.

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  10. I heard Rush give a plug to Dr. Helen today. Is that a subtle signal to anyone?

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