Swift Reactions 2

This is the second edition of a weekly series I began last week to highlight what my readers are saying (and as Kelly pointed out last week as a way to post something that involves as little writing from me as possible).

I spent this week hosting the blog round-up at Crooks & Liars. MW predicted that letting a conservative like myself post at such a liberal blog would result in fireworks. And while I did upset some people ("Do you not see the irony?" wrote my most persistent critic, Anonymous. "You are invited to guest post at a liberal blog and proceed to just reinforce everything they think of you."), it did not go exactly as predicted.

Perhaps that is because, instead of going in with guns blazing and calling liberals names, I began right off the bat by pointing out where we had areas in common: "One thing I have in common with many liberals is I just don't know what to say about this whole complicated Jena 6 situation so I would prefer to say nothing at all," I wrote in my first post. As the week went on I found more common ground with liberals on the issue of Burma: "I agree with the vast majority of liberal blogs (present company excepted), who have given this story a collective yawn and not bothered to cover it at all even though the rest of the world thinks it's pretty important. Burma Schmurma, I say."

I first mentioned Burma on Monday ("Something seems to be happening in Burma or Myanmar or whatever but it must not be very important because hardly anyone is blogging about it.") and posted my own piece here a couple days later, in which a applauded the liberal blogosphere for largely avoiding this boring story. Perhaps hobnobbing with liberals at Crooks & Liars was rubbing off on me.

I was delighted to see that liberals, who fancy themselves as caring so much about human rights and social justice, had finally realized that people who are so different from them aren't really worth worrying about, but I was also baffled that people I respect like Captain Ed, Michelle Malkin and Gateway Pundit seemed to have grown bleeding hearts. The world had gone topsy-turvy.

As a few of the smaller liberal blogs began to weigh in on the protests in Burma, the "A-List" liberal bloggers, as they like to call themselves, remained steadfast in their refusal to mention it. On Thursday I sent an email to some of them congratulating them on their resolve, titled, "Thank You for Not Mentioning Burma" with a link to my piece. But I was startled to discover that email seemed to have the opposite effect from the one I intended. Some of these liberal bloggers seemed almost embarrassed to have me as an ally. I can't tell you how hurtful that was.

Shortly after I sent my email, Atrios (who I am sure didn't actually read it since he doesn't believe my blog exists) wrote one of his typically brief passive-aggressive defensive posts that didn't actually mention Burma but seemed to allude to it: "Right this very moment there's bad stuff happening all over the world. I don't always get around to mentioning it all. Weird." The next day the word Burma appeared on his site for the first time. Already the resolve to be silent seemed to be breaking.

Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake wrote me back with what sounded like an excuse that completely misconstrued the intent of my reaching out to her: "Considering my child is home with a huge fever and barfing, and I'm happy to have been able to post at all today, I'll take that as an aborted attempt at snark and leave it at that..." I patiently explained to her that as a conservative I'm opposed to abortion and wished her child a speedy recovery. If, indeed, the entire staff of Firedoglake, or even the entire liberal blogosphere, was too busy taking care of her child to write about Burma, she didn't need to explain that to me. The next day she also capitulated, appending a brief P.S. to a post that mentioned Burma in passing. Augusten at Pandagon wrote me an email that seemed just a little snide, "Eventually all blog posts will be about what other bloggers aren't blogging about," and later that evening Amanda Marcotte broke radio silence and posted a piece on Pandagon about Burma. I took it as a personal slight.

But while the really important liberal bloggers didn't seem to want to belong to a club that had me as a member, the readers of Crooks & Liars, for the most part, were quite hospitable. There were a few naysayers, however, who resented my being allowed in. "You're a complete idiot and a liar," said James M. Martin. "Whoever let you guest blog must have been drugged," proclaimed EJH. "His claim to be 'right wing blogger', seems on the face of things to be validated by his use of language, and by his divisive, self important attitude," commented Voice from the Wilderness. But I also had plenty of defenders, like 2X, who said "I don't remember which was the first article of his I read. I do remember having my jaw on the floor thinking 'this guy can't be for real!'. He is for real -- and he's fantastic." Thank you, 2X, and everyone who stuck by me, people like skippy, Kevin Hayden, MW and the overworked site monitors at Crooks & Liars. And thanks to Mike Finnigan, Nicole Belle and Blue Gal for all their help and to John Amato for being such a gracious host.

It's hard being a blogger sometimes. Sure, you don't get shot like the monks in Burma, but verbal stings can hurt almost as much.