Threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue, Roger Simon throws an unusually revealing (albeit pathetic) temper tantrum over the looming probability of a Kerry win:
“As I said on Hugh Hewitt’s show the other day, “I’m no Nostradamus. Nostradamus was no Nostradamus.” But I do have this prediction:
If Kerry does win, the mainstream media will have gotten him elected with their biased coverage and they will pay for it more than they could imagine. And it will be the blogosphere and you, our own supporters, who will make them pay. Our strength will grow incrementally with a Kerry victory in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media. Yes, we too have ‘plans.'”
Oh, my. This is one angry dude. Usually the man in the funny hat has a little more grace, a little more charm, a little more je ne sais quoi. I mean, it sounds like he is vowing vengeance. He has “plans.” Quiver. Sounds like he’s ready to become a terrorist.
This post will go down in blog history, as it tells us so much about this ostensibly “moderate” blogger who, in revulsion to a wicked liberal media, was forced into the Little Green Footballs camp. Bull shit. Simon is a reactionary, a conscious and persistent falsifier of fact, a deceiver of his readers and, one suspects, of himself. His rants against the “MSM” are so tiresome and so far-fetched they just make me groan. He still insists we are winning the war in Iraq and that things are going well, but the mean liberal media keep distorting things and making it look bad. Boo-hoo.
I want to scream at Simon, “Look, there are all sorts of reporters in Iraq, some with the Wall Street Journal and NY Post and Fox News, and some with the NY Times and WaPo. Despite their differences in tone, they are all telling us essentially the same story from Iraq. The deaths of civilians, the beheadings, the bombings, the 1,040+ US soldiers killed — those are no product of media bias.
Via Pandagon.
Update: And another funny take on Simon’s losing his marbles can be found here. There will be many more to come — Simon just made himself the butt of blogger jokes for years to come.
Oh, and James Wolcott, likening Simon to Captain Queeg, remarks, “For some reason, I’m reminded of George Costanza’s great soliloquy that begins, “The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.”
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By Sam_S (ShenzhenRen)
Ooh. Careful, Richard. Are you sure you want to be referring readers over to Simon? Old liberals who feel the left has “left” them tend to be good persuaders, and his blog and comment section is chock full of articulate people who once felt just as you do. This is no time to be risking conversions, man!
DON’T READ ROGER L. SIMON!
October 28, 2004 @ 10:56 pm | Comment
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By vaara
“Our strength will grow incrementally [sic]”
One certainly hopes so. As opposed to, say, exponentially.
What a twit.
October 28, 2004 @ 11:51 pm | Comment
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By LANGEE
Sam, the left left him to what??? Roger Simon is still a pro gay marriage, and pro abortion liberal.
October 29, 2004 @ 12:36 am | Comment
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By richard
Everybody, go now and read Roger Simon. I read him everyday, and Little Green Cesspools and InstaPuppet as well. You have to know what these guys are saying — to them, the “MSM” is a monolithic group acting in a coordinated conspiracy to deceive us, and Iraq is a great triumph where we are winning and no good guys die, ever. Please, readers, follow Sam’s advice. You’ll see just how twisted the other side’s worldview has become.
October 29, 2004 @ 7:39 am | Comment
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By Sam_S(ShenzhenRen blog)
Langee, I support gay marriage and am neutral on abortion, and am still quite “liberal” in an older sense of the word.
But the left left us when they stopped opposing genocide and fascism. For me, the turn was long ago, when the “peace” movement turned into apologists for Vietnamese reeducation camps and Pol Pot. RLS and I both have credentials going back to the barricades in the late 60’s, but I think his turnabout was completed around 9/11. Basic values really haven’t changed for either of us.
October 29, 2004 @ 9:16 am | Comment
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By richard
I’ve always hated the far left — any extremists who see their position in black and white. If they were apologists for Pol Pot, I hate them even more, though I’ve never read of Americans endorsing his policies, certainly not in the aftermath of his atrocities, when we learned the scope of his genocide. But even if they did that’s no reason to switch to the right, which has become thoroughly corrupted and intellectually bankrupt. We gave them their chance with shrub, and look at what we have to show for it: a classic quagmire, a looted treasury, record loss of jobs and income, a spirit of such polarization and hatred you can cut it with a proverbial knife, a choreographed effort to prevent people from voting, the frightening rise of Evangelical Christianity as a political movement determined to teach Creationism and stop stem cell research and ban abortion and turn church-state separation on its head, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Halliburton, worldwide contempt for our government, tax cuts for the rich, John Ashtray, a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at discriminating against gays, a “president” so cocooned he can barely talk when confronted with real questions, a government that says it makes no mistakes, and the basic disintegration of faith in our government. The right has to do better than this, and under the circumstances I have choice but to run like hell to the other side.
October 29, 2004 @ 9:42 am | Comment
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By vaara
“But the left left us when they stopped opposing genocide and fascism.”
Bullshit.
I’m a leftist, and I oppose genocide and fascism, as all reasonable human beings do. Always have, always will.
October 29, 2004 @ 11:38 am | Comment
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By vaara
P.S.
Sam, if you’re at all afraid of being confronted with clear evidence of crypto-fascism among your fellow travelers in the right-wing élite…
DON’T READ ORCINUS!
October 29, 2004 @ 11:41 am | Comment
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By LANGEE
LGF needs to be translated to all languages so that the world knows just how dangerous and fascist these neo-cons are.
October 29, 2004 @ 1:02 pm | Comment
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By Sam_S(ShenzhenRen blog)
I’m a leftist, and I oppose genocide and fascism, as all reasonable human beings do. Always have, always will.
You go girl! That’s a very bold stand. However, it would be great if you opposed them half as loudly as you oppose, say, Bush, for example. I’ve heard no condemnation of the Taliban or the Baathists from you. Why? For fear of giving Bush a point?
if you’re at all afraid of being confronted with clear evidence of crypto-fascism among your fellow travelers in the right-wing élite
A) I suppose it should be flattering to be classed as an elite.
B) You keep confusing me with a rightist, which is a bit black and white. It would be much more accurate to call me a Kennedy liberal. I haven’t drunk the all-or-nothing kool-aid yet, which gets me branded as a traitor. I think I’m the liberal now, and the lefty “true believers” are the reactionaries today.
C)I’ll take a look at the site. If they start off with “Hitler (Saddam, binLaden, Pol Pot, etc.) was a real bad guy, true, but…….” I’ll start to believe you.
If they call for the beheading of the monkey and swine uni professors, I’ll start to believe you.
October 29, 2004 @ 11:10 pm | Comment
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By vaara
You won’t find anything resembling an apology for Nazism, Stalinism, etc. on Orcinus’ site.
And since when is silence equivalent to consent? When’s the last time you bashed, say, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan (a brutal dictator who happens to be one of Li’l George’s best “allies” in the “war” on “terror”)? Should we infer from your silence that you approve of his practice of boiling political dissidents alive?
I suppose I could try to give a complete list of dictators and butchers past and present whom I abhor, but I’d probably miss one or two and then you’d accuse me of being a Bokassa-ist or a SLORC supporter or whatever.
October 30, 2004 @ 1:24 am | Comment
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By BigMatt
My problem with Roger’s blog isn’t so much his conversion to neo-conservatism but it’s that he offers nothing but hackish comments and media conspiracy theories. If he wrote more thoughtfully then it might be easier to respect his opinions…and it shouldn’t be so hard considering his twin vocations.
Plus, his commenters don’t really deserve any praise- they’re just yes-men who amuse themselves with declarations that the left will fade into ignominy.
Roger’s pretty much just Instapundit without the side interests. Here’s what bothers me about these guys: they insist that their social moderation gives them immunity from any partisan association and so they feel licensed to be just shameless conservative hacks.
If you’re interested in a good hawkish blog, I’d skip Instapundit, Roger Simon, and Tom Maguire and go straight for Belgravia Dispatch. At least Greg will defend his convictions. I rarely agree with him but always come away respectful of his ideas.
October 30, 2004 @ 2:51 am | Comment
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By Disenchanted
I found this blog interesting until it descended into a selfrightiously leftist orgy of aspersions.
It took just a short while to see the inbred “group thinking” you have here. You are all slapping yourselves on your elitist “annointed” backs considering yourselves intelligent because you have driven away the people who might have wanted to stick around and discuss things.
LGF are embittered, but you have to consider what they are usually discussing, which is much more of a violent threat to humanity than anything a website that you can smear as fascist, without considering that fascism is essentially nationalistic leftism, which is closer to what you are propounding than what they are propounding. I get the impression that you’ve never considered this. By being antiamerican you feel virtuous, and you seldom pause to consider whether you aren’t just basically negative people who like criticizing rather than proposing realistic ways to deal with evil and violence in the world.
Simon’s a better person, less embittered, more thoughtful, and therefore more pleasant to read than the lot of you groupies! So long, I’ll not bother you again!
November 1, 2004 @ 3:22 am | Comment
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By richard
Where is the anti-Americanism? You are being ridiculous. We want to win America back; you’re the one who is anti-American.
November 1, 2004 @ 6:05 am | Comment
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By merl
I guess you’ll be receiving your check from the Bush Admin any day now. Don’t forget to check the mail.
January 31, 2005 @ 4:12 am | Comment
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By merl
previous comment was for Rogered Simon.
January 31, 2005 @ 4:12 am | Comment
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By joseph
there is only one solution, overthrow the government. The american government is rotten to its core, the constitution is hanging by a thread, its time to storm the white house and take back our country. America was borne in the fires of rebellion and so it will be reborn.
April 16, 2006 @ 9:23 pm | Comment