Time Immortal

Jen wrote in last week (my apologies for the delay!) with a comment on this article, concerning blogger Canadian Cynic’s anti-Semitic slurs.

I’m curious as to why you think that Canadian Cynic is a racist, when even the blogs that you link to (in a
roundabout way…you linked to Five Feet of Fury, who linked to Blazing Cat Fur, who linked to Dust My Broom, who
linked to Dr. Dawg (the “In This Corner post, in the archives), who says that he doesn’t like how Canadian Cynic uses sarcasm… “All in a day’s work for the CC team. They have their own unique stylings — edgy, off-centred, cutting brutally to the heart of the matter, crude and sometimes funny as hell. Bigots cringe in their caves, holes and sewer-pipes when they hear the CC folks coming. And well they might, because it’s never long before the halogen beam finds their squirming, blind, white bodies and a copious dose of RAID is dispensed.” Maybe I’m just in the middle of a blog war that I missed the beginning of — I was just trying to show one of my kids how Canadian political blogs were better than the American ones that she’s seen at school. Bad mistake…bad mistake.

How does that possibly lead you to think that the Canadian_Cynic hates Jews? If anything, he’s the one using sarcasm about people who do.

I’m assuming that you do realize that with Eastern European politics left and right are reversed?

Sorry if this is formatted badly- for some reason backspacing seems to work very oddly on this comment form, but it may just be because I’m using chrome for the first time.

I hope that you have a good weekend

Jen

There’s a few points to address here.

First, I never said Cynic was a racist; I said he was anti-Semitic. “Anti-Jewish” might be an even more specific term, although I don’t think it’s necessary to be that categorical here.

Second, Cynic is anti-Semitic. I know that he and his apologists try and dismiss him as being “edgy,” but I quite frankly do not buy it. I think he’s a rather mean-spirited bigot who attempts to cloak his petty vindictiveness in an air of left-leaning prattle, with all the right keywords. And every so often, I think the mask slips.

He wrote a short article about how Stephen Harper had been “bought.” “An excellent investment, Jewily speaking,” was the title he gave to that. Is that edgy? Or is it just your run-of-the-mill, Protocols-driven “the Jews control everything anyhow” mentality finding voice in someone who has spent an awful lot of effort in attempting to paint freespeechers such as myself as racists and enemies of human rights? Is it cutting commentary, or rote hypocrisy on Cynic’s part?

Personally, I think it’s the latter.

Now, as to Canadian blogs being “better” than American blogs…I think that’s a matter of opinion, really. There are some excellent Canadian blogs, and there are some excellent American blogs. I read blogs from many different parts of the world (although the ones I check daily — or near-daily — seem mostly to be from Canada, the United States, or Britain). I’m not sure Jen could conclusively demonstrate to her children that Canadian blogs are better, however.

But I do note that in Jen’s example, there is ample opportunity to impart a lesson about the self-correcting nature of the blogosphere, and about the speed at which news propagates through it, and about the speed at which rapidly propagating stories expand with the addition of new details and commentaries made by each successive author. My favourite example of this is still the fake memos that Dan Rather tried to pass off as real, which were debunked by bloggers within hours.

As to Eastern European politics…I don’t see what that has to do with an article about a Canadian political blogger.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!