Last Thursday, I wrote two pieces that both mocked “Cousin Oliver,” a blogger of some renown (Lord knows why). One of them generated the most responses to any piece I’ve ever written here, and quite possibly a contender for most comments here on Wizbang.
Then, Friday morning, I was stuck. I had several ideas for pieces, but just couldn’t bring myself to write them. Instead, I wanted to go over to Cousin Oliver’s site and get into a few more fights there.
That’s when I realized something: guys like Cousin Oliver are like crack cocaine. Yeah, bashing him around was easy and fun and a quick rush, but after it left me “spoiled” for the more satisfying, more healthy thrill of writing my own, original pieces.
So, instead of discussing the latest development in gay marriage (still support it, but think the California court decision is a bad one all around), or the Catholic Church Cardinal who thinks people shouldn’t read The Da Vinci Code (might not publish that one here — guaranteed to alienate (all right, royally piss off) a huge chunk of Wizbang’s readership), instead I was tearing through Cousin Oliver’s site, trying to find yet more and more outrageously wrong pieces to fight over. And while doing that, I was neglecting my obligations to this site.
Neglecting, hell. I was utterly blowing them off.
My mother used to tell me, “never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” And trying to engage in constructive dialogue with Cousin Oliver and the Oliverettes is even more useless.
So I’m listening to my mother. I’m tired of struggling with those pigs. Let them wallow in the muck of their own delusionment and continue to foul their own nests.
But maybe I’m a bit too harsh. Calling Cousin Oliver “crack” is a bit strong. He’s more like junk food — filling and good for a quick fix, but ultimately unhealthy for you and it ruins your taste for more healthy food. Oliver is the Twinkie of the blogosphere, and I’ve had enough of them for a lifetime.
Now, if I ever find a whacko leftist blogger who’s the online equivalent of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, I’m in deep trouble…
J.
(Update: I left a few items unresolved with those two Cousin Oliver postings. Nobody won the Oliver Willis Resignation Watch contest, because nobody picked Joe Lieberman. And I don’t have the willpower to wade through all the entries in the Rename the Whackos contest (mustn’t backslide), so everyone can consider themselves winners of that one.)
(OK, OK, maybe a quick perusal…)
(Damn, some good ones. Wildly Hateful and Indignant about Nearly Everything; the Green Cheese Belfry; Spring-Loaded Anti-Americans; Festering Boils of Indignation; Knights of the Ku Klux Klueless; Mooreons; The “Saint Pancake” Wing: Blind on ideology, flat on message, dead on relevance; the American Nutzi Party (complete with pretzel symbol), amd so on, and on, and on…)
But I am sorely tempted by “Gollums. Because “The presidency is ours, preciouss, yess it is, and we wants it, yess we does. Nasty little republicanses can’t stop us, and we’ll get back the House and the Senate, too, yes we will, precious…”)
(And comments on those threads are now closed.)
There’s crack and then there’s crack, depending on how you mean it you may be justified in referring to Olliver as “the crack of the leftist blogosphere”.
Your mother was right, your just wasting your time trying to teach a pig to sing.
For awhile I was going over to Ollies site to try and get a differant point of view. Just kept finding barnyard pig stench. Finally I just quit, the guy is a waste of time.
St. Pancake?
o/ St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Breakfast
Where I stole the Margereeene! \o
Do the DaVinci post…come on…don’t be a whimp.
My Mom’s version was slightly different:
“When you wrestle with a pig, you get filthy and the pig has fun”.
I visit Oliver’s site for the same reason, actually. Lately, though, the guy has just degenerated. He was always a grammatically-challenged hateful little man. But he used to have at least a sense of humor.
Now he’s a grammatically-challenged hateful little man who doesn’t bring the funny, except unintentionally. His site is simply an endless primal scream of rage and bile – mostly against Republicans, but lately also against those Democrats who dare to think for themselves instead of walking in lockstep with Oliver.
I think the worst thing, though, is that he’s hardened himself against any criticism of his writing or his ideology. Oliver has become as narrow-minded as any of the so-called religious right nuts he loves to mock. When this site or others point out something he’s said, he shoots off a lazy missive about “hate” and “nazis” and then chuckles at the attention he’s getting – under the false impression that attention equals worth.
The left side of the blogosphere needs more sites like Talking Points Memo, where policy is at least discussed and fewer defenders of the Sacred Faith of Liberalism. I mean, if you have too many people like Willis in your party, throwing out apostates, eventually you’re just left with an angry echo chamber of self-righteous hatred for ‘the other.’
Or maybe that’s already happened.
Peter (above) said some things that are right on target. I wondered in my blog a few days ago if Goofy Willis was beginning to go off the deep end – he seems to think that Republicans are entirely motivated by greed, religious extremism, etc, that the MSM is really controlled by the rightwing, and so on – but Willis serves a useful purpose: he’s like the kid who can’t resist blabbing about what’s going to happen next. Willis lets you know what the slightly moderate fringe of the loony left is now getting interested in, and he does it without a lot of verbiage.
Today cousin Ollie is on a diatribe because a liberal thinktank has not invited any liberal bloggers to their panel. The moderator is liberal hack E.J. Dionne. Anyone know if Dionne is Jewish, cause attacking him will fit perfectly with Oliver’s schtick.
Expect more posts about the “filthy” Dionne, right up there in among his posts about those “filthy” Jews Wolfewitz and Lieberman and some ugly posts mocking Michelle Malkin’s heritage.
Me, I think guys like cousin Oliver need to be encouraged. The liberal left in this country tries to clean up their act so the proles don’t notice just how anti-democratic and extreme they are. It adds clarity to the debate when one of them is willing to “tell it like it is”.
Its sort of like Ward Churchill. Academia is full of liberal nut-balls, but lots of people didn’t notice until he came along.
So here’s to Oliver. If I had my way his blog would be required reading for all undecided voters.
I have a weird habit of looking up old sites on the Wayback Machine and checked out what Oliver had to say back in 2001 and found an interesting link in his side column to his AIM sn, which he still uses: OliverWill.
I took a chance and IMed him, he was on and chatted amiably with me while I pretended to be a sane but deluded liberal, but finally caught on when I kept inserting little absurdities into our convo. I suggest everyone give him a shoutout and it will probably be fun for you both.
link:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.oliverwillis.com/
you can also enjoy the moronic taglines he’s had over the years plus his big goofy forehead in the header image
I can’t do Oliver, it’s like a collection of Paul’s most one-sided comments ever (only on the left).
However, Paul isn’t as one-sided as Oliver is, he’ll actually bring forth the debate more, instead of ranting….mostly.
CODE has been in the top 10 for two years because it is a great book. Read it two years ago and will reread it soon. Great history, good science and good math. Grail is still hidden in the home of the Celts never to be found by nonbelievers.
Jay, I don’t think you should keep Oliver’s AIM sn up in that post. He stopped using it for privacy. No matter how stupid we may think he is, he deserves his privacy apart from his public blog.
I followed a link given in the “snow rage” comment thread and I think it’s an excellent description of Ollie:
“People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.”
‘Nuff said.
About.
Damn.
Time.
Good to see that you’re going to stop wasting it on the unimportant. Look at the election results…..no one cares what that ilk thinks.