The Most Disturbing Thing (Perhaps) About Ann Althouse . . .

and I used to describe it as her pathological lack of self awareness. But on and after deeper thought, I must now conclude it's her lack of general awareness. Generally. Let me try to explain with out getting too long, here.

Following her latest bloggingheads.tv performance, she took asymmetrical offense to her opposite's blogging about the experience, calling it,"Weird." Granted, Althouse employed one of my least favorite sleazy lawyer tricks, what I call a buzz saw citation, and to a great extent misrepresented, blatantly, some of the things the other, Ms. Rebecca Watson, said in her own blog post post. Go here if you need to see for yourself.

The most telling thing about Althouse's blind spot occurs when she looks at one of the discrete (and it is a mild) complaints Watson makes about the experience, basically complaining about Althouse's (my words) sometimes manic conversational style. It's like dealing with some child on a sugar buzz, or some adult who had too many double espressos. Again, my words. What Watson said was reportedly this (and I did read the full post on her own blog. I am quoting from Althouse's post, here):

"She kept saying things that required me to unpack a lot of stuff before moving on."

Mild, like I said. No where near how I would and did say it. And while I am at it, ya know how Sarah Palin does that neurologically disturbed and distressing to experience, word salad shit? Althouse does not do word salad. But she does this thing where instead of coming at you with one coherent question, or point, she can blitz a person with a bunch of nonsense just muddying and mucking things up. It's not the clearest of thinking, communicating styles/tactics. Never mind the straw man and red herrings that seem to be legion with her.

Anyway here's the pay off. After saying that, Althouse says:

"Wow! That sounds like good conversation to me. I would love it if someone would talk to me in a way that invited me to go places where I hadn't planned."

STOP THE PRESSES! Ann Althouse likes her own odd, strange, sometimes hard to follow style of communication. Doesn't seem to get it that others might not like that, and would prefer a more "Strunk and White" style.

And before she gets to the end of her post, she's basically gone all passive aggressive troll on Watson. And the follow up post highlights the trolling. But back to that statement. There's this net/blogger convention where people do a shorter version of what some other writer says. My not so much shorter on Althouse's unaware statement would be:

"Wow! Someone thinks different than me. Heathen/heretic/monster."

Ya. Above I described it as non awareness. Althouse actually is aware there are people with different thoughts than her. She just has trouble processing that reality. At first I took that quote for being pathologically not self aware, but that's only part of the story. She has a shallow, bare minimum awareness that people are different than her. And it seems to bother her. A lot. So much so, that by giving the signal to her commentariat that she felt offended by Ms. Watson, she (knowingly) unleashed the hate mob to spew all sorts of disproportionate poison on the poor girl. I guess it's good to be the Queen Bee? (Gag me.)

Oh. And the follow up. To explain, one of the incidents covered in the bloggingheads episode was Watson's telling of a story about being hit on (mildly) in an elevator at this conference she attended. By the end of the original post, Althouse is sympathizing with the pick up artist.

Now during the "follow up," as posted today, Althouse posts some vid of some other guy in some elevator. More passive aggressive snark aimed at Watson. Petty vicious trolling, there. Not very mature, that. After giving a passive "By My Leave," license to her minions to savage the poor girl (one of the topics of that bloggingheads session, disturbingly ironically was sexism,) she could not leave it at that one shot for that one incident. Sorta sickening, I think.

My god (figure of speech.) What must it be like to work with her?

Sunday Quickies. (Well I started out with that intention. Got on a tear.)

Carry over from my fb page:

If I have to hear another GOP pol, pundit, or hack speak that lie about how taxes kill jobs, I'm gonna plotz! I want an emergency Federal Law passed. Repeating the lie that taxes kill jobs is a felony punishable by being forced to live in a particularly bad trailer park, for no less than 2 and no more than 5 years.


Likewise, in a similar vein I am really so deeply sickened by the GOP's conduct during this, as I call it, hostage crisis that even as badly I disparage them, usually? They have really exceeded my low opinion of them. And ya damn right skippy. Part of why they are pushing this shit so hard is because their hatred of P. Obama is so extreme they are willing to fuck the national economy just to fuck with him. But the truth is they are not holding Obama hostage. They are holding The American People hostage. And for that I want them arrested, or at minimum disgraced and chased out of society, like they would chase a scumbag out of town, back in the old days.

Changing gears, Ann Althouse is once again hosting vicious hate speech on her website. In a thread about the Allen West scandal (and her own post was an extreme example of her passive aggressive catttiness,) one of her commenters posted something rather odious. Now to explain, the death of Amy Winehouse had led to another post on the blog about the (dead at) 27 club. And the Allen West post used an article written by Amanda Marcotte as the point of departure.

The odious comment? "Is Mandy 27?"

Go Here to See the Hateful Shit Yourself.

I personally find that sort of shit worse than the blatant "I wish you would drop dead," sort of remark, because I have a thing about passive aggressive trollish cowardly fucks. I hate them on sight. But more's the point, they are trying to be cute in pulling their punches. It's like going for plausible deniability, but failing at it miserably. Everyone gets the message. And in trying to clean up what is a blatantly hateful message, it, to my mind, just comes across all the more uglier. But hey. That's my take on it.

Oh and before I finish here, Althouse's own comments in the post? (Lemme read that shit again, so I can trash it with precision.) I'll just quote her directly:

"I'd like to say that Marcotte and Goldberg are hacks using a boring old rhetorical device, but I think these angry/crazy characterizations do leave an impression.

People are trying very hard to ruin Allen West right now, before he gets anywhere, and they are trying to ensure that Sarah Palin stays down where they think they crushed her."


Remember kids. Allen West was chased out of the Army, narrowly avoiding Court Martial, but was fined $5,000.00 and allowed to retire with benes. The thing that gave rise to his ignoble separation from the Army was that incident where he fired off a gun next to somebody's head, to coerce them to "talk." Basically, it was an act of torture. Basically, he lost his commission because his mental instability became too obvious for the Army to let him remain in the service. And let's be honest here. His behaviour in this, and as well the previous conflicts with Wasserman-Schultz is really good evidence he's fucking nuts, in addition to being a fucking pig. So I look at Althouse's cult of right wing victimhood remarks, there, as evidence she's missing the forest for the partisan, invisible trees.

There's no crying in baseball. And there are no victims in politics. (Of the Media, that is.) When will the fucking wing nuts stop acting like a bunch of whinny babies? Tiresome, that!

Oh. Lastly, Althouse quotes that other wing nut, from Instapundit:


"Yeah, first Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, now Amanda Marcotte: What is it with the Democrats sending white women to attack a black man, anyway? Are they trying to play on gendered racial fears among white voters? It’s some kind of dog-whistle, isn’t it?"

I find it passive aggressively intellectually dishonest, how she will quote shit like that, and not affirmatively endorse, or otherwise comment. So I can not, or at least will not here criticize her for specifically believing in and endorsing such an odious and cynical employment of both the sexist card and the race card, that is contained in a vicious and unfounded group libel of the Democratic Party, and the women specifically mentioned.

But I do get to, and will criticize her for giving that hate speech voice on her page, without condemning it.

Remember What I Said About Un-Gaslighting Beck? Same Plan for Caribou Barbie.

Apparently Mrs. Palin and Mr. Delusional himself, Rick Santorum got into a name calling match. Well, Mrs. Palin was the one calling names, in a classless, nasty, passive aggressive manner.


Passive Aggressive Sow. Hey. Sow is the proper term for a female bear.

If one did not know better, one might wonder why the wing nuts are nutz for Mrs. Palin. But those sick puppies get off on that shit. Passive Aggressive shit has to be one of the most annoying character traits, on the list of repellent behaviour. And I can see the argument that what she did there was only superficially passive, as she pulled her punch. Either way, she's a repellent creature.

But here's the part I mean to say. Perhaps if we can keep the pressure on her, she will continue to say even more obviously nasty things (pulling her punches or not.) Hopefully, before long the real sow bear that is Mrs. Palin (notoriously, even if not yet caught on tap) will reveal itself, in all its nasty excess.

What do you expect from a woman who deliberately takes a sow bear as her preferred image?