Definitely Better Than Them

Though I try to mostly read thoughtful (which, unfortunately, usually means centrist) blogs rather than wade around in the muck of the partisan blogosphere, I do admit every once in awhile I wander over to the harder stuff. And, since I lean left, my partisan indulgences tend to also represent the left edge of the spectrum as opposed to the right. Because of this skew, I'll occassionally stumble across some really nasty stuff from these folks, which I dutifully condemn as an insult to the progressive name. These are just front page posts--if I wandered into the comments section, I'm sure I'd find more.

Since I don't tend to read the hard-right conservative sites, I don't usually have parallel stories to tell, to show that this is a sin both sides engage in. So when someone comes out and says "this is all the liberals faults," I usually can't cite to a hard source to prove otherwise. And admittedly, in my darkest moments of self-doubt, I wonder: "Do they do it too?"

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. And the bile on the right makes even the worst offenders I've seen on major leftwing blogs look like the Care Bears. Sadly, No gives us this smattering from a LittleGreenFootballs post on immigration (H/T: Michael Froomkin):

It is past time for the US citizens to put an end, a complete end, to foreigners, many here illegally, coming into the US and then "demanding" that the US change to support their concepts of how the US should function.
[...]
These IDIOTS leave their country because they do not like it but now want the US to change. We need a new law. If foreigners protest a US law or policy, they are DEPORTED IMMEDIATELY.
[...]
If they are found to be illegals, they are branded.
[...]
If they are found in the US a second time, put them aboard a leaky WWII vessel and tow it into the middle of the Pacific and leave it there.
[...]
Create a bombing and straffing range along the US/spixico border. No warnings as to when it will be used and DO make use of it. Dropping a few thousand bombs and a few hundred thousand shells fired into the area will have a significant impact on these illegal spixicans crossing into the US.

Casual calls for slaughter, racial epithets, grouping both legal and illegal immigrants under the moniker "foreigner" and urging them all to be deported if they criticize any US policy (including, presumably, the one in which they get branded then towed out to drown). Makes me pine for the days where the worst bigotry I blogged on concerned Michelle Malkin's tits.

See also Neil Boortz calling US representative Cynthia McKinney a "ghetto slut". I should add that I detest Rep. McKinney. But my intense dislike for her politics doesn't rationalize vicious slurs such as this.

So when I plead for liberal bloggers to be better than "this" (referring to some racial or sexual attack), it should be clear that they remain better than this.