If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become Jeff Jarvis. Not that I want to keep flogging this horse, but really—it's amazing to me that someone so apparently ineducable can manage to put together a passable English sentence (passable being about the highest mark Jarvis's prose can aim at), let alone acquire a reputation as some sort of thinker.

Jarvis follows up yesterday's Lefty-playa-hatin' with more of the same today. It's a sight to behold, the wounded Jarvisian ego in full shoring-up mode. There's been "a lot of interesting followup discussion" to his post, Jeff tells us: and proceeds to gloss "interesting," Limbaugh-style, as "I heart being dittoed." What follows, after Jeff manages to preen himself in an aside for having found a soulmate in new pal Bill Keller (that's a nice little reacharound club those two have got going), is a stringing-together of quotes from the BuzzMachine attaboy chorus, and it's a sorry lot: the first (a "card-carrying liberal," no less) informs us that the war in Iraq "is over as a political issue," that "the left lost that one," and in terms both of rhetoric and of attachment to reality it's all downhill from there. Passing through borderline illiteracy along the way (the commenter who talks about the "death nell" of the Democratic party, and "recinds" his offer of Republican membership to Jeff, hoping that Jarvis will stay and cure the Democracy of its manifold ills), we end up here, which Jeff introduces with a flourish, telling us he's "saved the best for last":

There's a lyric by an old hardline band that says "There's only two sides and a line that divides, if you stand in the middle you're not on my side." And that's pretty much the way the fringe on both sides of this political rock fight sees things. If you don't agree with them 100% then you are the enemy. Agreeing with them 90% is the same as disagreeing with them 100%. It's completely retarded, especially since most people, the ones who probably have the numbers and pull to make a change fall somewhere in the middle. Yet all we ever heard from is the fringe. It's almost as if taking about the things you agree with isn't interesting and not worth the coverage - the only thing work talking about is who you don't agree with. As if your enemies define you more than your friends. I think that's completely stupid. [Everything in here, by the way, sic.]

This level of intellectual and rhetorical sophistication being endorsed, indeed celebrated, by Jarvis as a follow-on to his own post of a day earlier excoriating Oliver Willis for "calling anyone with whom he disagrees, 'stupid.'" Way to hold the line on intellectual consistency there, Jeff.

Go read the whole thing, and realize that these are the supporters that Jarvis is crowing about. Imagine what affronts to reason and English usage await in the ones he can't bring himself to quote. I want to warn him, but I don't think it'll do any good: Jeff, when the Friends of Hugh start praising you for your reasonableness and insight, it's a sure bet they're just looking forward to indulging a bit of what Grover Norquist likes to call "bipartisanship."

posted by michael  5:47:08 PM  
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