Wednesday, December 10, 2008

With Bloggers Like Fred Dooley, Who Needs Comedians

It's all Mike Mathias' fault for alerting me to it. Well, no – it's Fred Dooley's fault for not listing The Other Side of My Mouth higher on his liberal hitlist of sites that had not jumped into the fray quickly enough over Illinois Gov. Rod's indictment. When Fred did get around to pointing me out on his list, it was to suggest that rather than heap all sorts of opprobrium Blagojevich's way, I had written a defense of Bill Ayers.

In typical Fred style, that's not true and it is dishonest. I did indeed write a post regarding Bill Ayers, but had done so two days before the news came out about the indictments. Hardly a case of ignoring one for the other. I pointed this out to Fred in an email (because I'm banned from commenting at his site), adding that if he had actually read the post he would have seen that I was not actually defending Ayers. Fred's reply was classic:

Yes Tim when you attack those who would dare to bring him up you are defending.
Interesting. The point of the post was to comment on Ayers' op-ed in the New York Times. I happened to agree with Ayers' assessment that the guilt by association tactics used by the right regarding some closer connection between Ayers and President-Elect Barck Obama were dishonest. That's not a defense of Ayers, it's agreement with a point he makes. I also wrote that I was troubled by his explanations for the illegal actions he took, including exploding bombs that did not take lives, but could have. But that was not enough for the not so nimble brain housed in the large body named Fred. I was a defender.

So, according to Fred's illogic, if I were to say it is dishonest for people to continue to blame Germans for the sins of Adolf Hitler, then I would actually be defending Adolf Hitler.

Similarly, if I were to say that Fred's support of the worst of George Bush's Iraq policies makes him nothing more than a whiny little sychophant, I'm supporting Saddam Hussein.

Fred really is a classic. Please blog long and hearty – the merriment he provides cannot be measured. As Michael said, “Fred Dooley is fucking valuable.”

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