I Can Predict the Future

Yes, you read that title right. I can predict the future. I do it all the time.

The last time I did it had to do with a post yesterday by Ann Althouse. She takes Glenn Greenwald (no, I will not link him for reasons to follow) to task for his terrible writing. She's right. Look at this sentence she highlights from Greenwalds post:

Yesteryday [sic], I wrote a post pointing out that the hordes of right-wing pundits condemning the Larry Craig outing have no standing to voice such complaints, since the very tactic that they were purporting to condemn (publicizing innuendo about private sexual behavior and exploiting sexual morality for political gain) is one which their political movement has used repeatedly, over and over, as one of its central weapons. I cited countless examples -- including some from this week, along with others throughout the last 15 years -- which demonstrate that the right-wing of the Republican Party centrally relies upon tactics indistinguishable from the Craig outing, and that unlike the Craig outing (engineered by a single, obscure individual), the entire right-wing political movement traffics continuously in those tactics.

Look what Althouse says next:

That's atrocious writing. Edit, you idiot. Absurdly, his next line begins "As was painfully clear to anyone who can read..." Well, Glenn, it is painful to read your prose, and anyone who can read and has any taste at all will turn away in disgust at writing like that.

Now THAT is good comedy. I think I laughed at those last three sentences for about five minutes. She it totally on point though. Greenwalds writing is brutal as the example she provides proves.

I have been reading Ann's blog for a few years now. It is one of my very few daily reads because she writes about a lot of things I am interested in. Her blog is written clearly and concisely. I don't have all day when perusing a blog to get the point. I don't sit down to read "War and Peace". I just want to be entertained and possibly educated for a few minutes. I dare you to try to read the whole column that Althouse is referencing and not tear out your hair.

Of course, Althouse is totally correct in her post about Greenwald's writing.

My opinion: Greenwald is a boob, his writing sucks and the people who hang out there (30k per day according to his sitemeter) are idiots.

I honestly think Althouse made a boo boo posting this the way she did.

She should have CLOSED THE COMMENTS.

Here is where my predictive powers come in. As I sat with my cup of fine Sumatran reading Althouse's post yesterday morning I predicted that the comments would turn into something like this:

And Voila! The prediction doth cometh to pass.

Yep, Ann's now got her own little "la Tomitina" festival on her hands in the comments. Her regular commenters are drowned out by the shouting hordes of idiots from Greenwalds site. She is approaching 200 comments already and that was a SUNDAY post. Just wait until all of the normal weekday crowd sees the fight in progress.

This is why it is a rare occasion indeed that I will wade into the cesspool that isn't the right or left but the IDIOT cesspool. What good would it do me to debate a dolt like Paul Krugman or Frank Rich or Pat Robertson? None! Zero! Waste of time!

If you read that comment thread over at Althouse you will see that as happens so often the original post is being totally and completely ignored at this point and that it is a commenter war, not a comment thread talking about the original post. I really hope Ann closes comment threads occasionally so she has more time to write her normally high quality items and spends less time sorting out the mess in her comments.

At times I am very happy that our traffic at this blog is fairly low. These types of problems (idiots) are ones I can use right now like a hole in the head.