Shhh! They'll Hear You

The Washington Post profiles, or should I say embarrasses a Lefty blogger today, though I doubt the blogger will mind, having been given her Sheehan-esque fifteen minutes of infamy. And while it's certainly enlightening to dissect the profile, highlighting the reasons why Lefty blogs and bloggers are some of the Right's more potent weapons against liberalism, do we really want them figuring it out?

"One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs ...

"Powerlessness" is O'Connor's explanation. "This is born of powerlessness."

Powerlessness? But what powerlessness, since the blogger has one voice and one vote, just as the rest of us?

She signed petitions. She boycotted veal. She canvassed for Greenpeace. She donated to Planned Parenthood. She read the Nation, the New Yorker, the Utne Reader and Mother Jones. She agonized over low wages for overseas workers every time she bought a $40 leather purse. emphasis mine

"I'm insane with rage and grief. ... "But I also feel more connected than I ever have."

The cigarettes are because of a personality that she describes as compulsive.

The nonalcoholic beer is because for several years she drank to excess.

And the photo album is because of a 25-year-old Marine who died fighting in Vietnam three months before she was born, which she thinks helps explain the note, the alcohol, the cigarettes and the very first piece of writing she ever published online, a rant against the war in Iraq that began, "Every single millisecond of my life was directly affected by the nightmare that was Vietnam."

Sadly, all the profile discloses is an individual powerless over herself, muttering about in abject denial of it and finding succor through the delusion that she's connected to some number of other genuinely powerless, un-insightful, overly angry individuals through a telephone wire, or cable device. That isn't political discourse, it's Comedy Central with too much caffeine mixed with Days Of Our Lives.

Entertaining? Perhaps. But effective? Not as regards anything positive. It's far too self-destructive, personally and politically, to ever amount to that. Betsy has a thoughtful response on the political implications of the state of the Lefty blogs.

Comments

[chez Diva]

Dan,

After I read the article all I could feel for her and her family was a great sadness. She has successfully come unglued in front of her family and millions of readers across the world. She like Cindy Sheehan say that they are angry when what they are is hate-filled - there's a difference. Anger can be harnessed to drive a cause to victory while hate in the end destroys the hater and the cause they espouse.

[Stella]

I love what Ann Althouse has to say "But I quite love the fact that the effect is far beyond the control of the individuals who take up blogging because they want to make something specific happen." I learned long ago that people like Maryscott O'Connor are victims only of themselves; hatred is an addiction, much like alcohol. Just as an alcoholic needs to destroy his life with alcohol, all the while blaming others for it; the person who seethes hate seeks out anything to anger him, consumes it voraciously, and spews the poison that results. They, like any addict, are their own victims; and as such, have total control over whether the addiction continues. Maryscott O'Connor will destroy herself.

[Lilo]

Is there anyway to get child protective services in to help that woman's poor child? There's no excuse for making a child grow up surrounded by so much anger...

How does anyone reason that they have the right to blame every single BAD choice they have ever made on the fact that they grew up without a father? Take some d*** responsibility for your own personal actions. There are thousands of people who have suffered the lose of a parent... and yet they go on to grow into rational, normal, non freakishly angry people.

I'd have to say that most of her readers are there solely to keep a watchful eye on whether or not she's completely lost it and went on a shooting rampage yet.

[PlainJane]

The pompous self-serving comments on this blog are what drives women like O'Connor to distraction. She is a patriot, striving to communicate why she feels alienated in a country that practices torture and belligerent warfare. The majority of Americans and the majority of the residents on this planet think our government is just plain nuts to engage in these activities.

If you choose to belittle a patriot in her self-appointed role of freedomfighter, you belittle patriotism itself. Freedom isn't free, you know. They also serve who blog for freedom as does O'Connor.

[kl]

Yeah, why does warfare have to be so belligerent anyway?