Blogofacist Nicknames
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James Joyner | Saturday, June 24, 2006 |
Lee Siegel, in an otherwise unremarkable but unpersuasive piece explaining why he thinks bloggers are fascists, has this aside:
let’s cut the puerile nicknames of “DailyKos, “Atrios,” “Instapundit” et al., which are one part fantasy of nom de guerres, one part babytalk, and a third thuggish anonymity
Huh?
DailyKos and InstaPundit are site names, not personal nicknames. The former is based on a nickname, “Kos,” that derives rather obviously from “Markos,” the man’s real first name. The second is mostly self-parody by a fellow who, so far as I’m aware, has always signed his blog posts “Glenn Reynolds” and hardly hidden his identity. Only “Atrios” (aka, “Duncan Black”) has ever sought anonynimity, which he long ago abandoned along with his academic career once he became a professional Democratic operative.
While I’m not a fan of the styles of either Moulitsas or Black, sharing Siegel’s general sense of the raucous nature of discourse on their sites, I would hardly characterize either of them as “thuggish.” So far as I know, their assaults have been limited exclusively to the verbal variety. Reynolds, meanwhile, is a mild mannered law prof who seldom writes anything more hurtful than “Heh.”
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Well, yeh, but it's an angry “Heh”.
James, are you sure Markos is a man, he looks like some dead unborn but still not really a baby sex change experiment gone horribly wrong, if that's even possible. Can they do stuff like that? You know I think you better do a little more research before you start to label such a creature as a man, you might get sued for hurting its feelings.
...the raucous nature of discourse on their sites, I would hardly characterize either of them as �thuggish.�
Bear in mind, James, that words like "thuggish" and ... well, fascist ... along with "threaten" and "censorship," have long been defined down by the sort of people who would regard blogdom as fascism.
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