Mason Says:
This 2006 Senate race will have one sure victim at the end of the day: The VA Blogosphere. Instead of being, what it was until three months ago, a place for regular people to engage in the issues and the politics of the day, it has turned into a can-you-top-this of muckracking, race-baiting, near-libel, and blatant attacks. Its a disgrace. This. All Of This. This.
I'm sick of it all. I' sick of macaca, of Jew baiting, of everything. I'm sick of videos, YouTube, and ever single dirty trick played by everyone.
I can't even read half the blogs I used to anymore, so full of vitriol and hate are they. Webb promised to run a campaign on the issues -- who knew the issues were his videographer, the Jewishness of Allen's 83-year-old mother, and what Allen said in college in the 70s.
Meanwhile, republican bloggers are suggesting connections between the Webb campaign and a 30's era Nazi poster. As if just noting the exagerated features in a Webb campaign ad wasn't enough.
Paid Webb campaign staffers are shopping stories about Allen being a self-loathing Jew, and suggesting his grandfather was a Nazi Collaborator.
And the democrat bloggers are implying that Allen supporters Booed a Jew, and wore SS-style patches on their t-shirts.
And some guy from North Carolina says the important thing is Allen put a deer head in a mailbox, and by the way his nickname Wizard was an homage to the KKK.
Did I mention that a Webb campaign staffer said Allen named his kids after Confederate War heroes?
I decided to stop arguing on other blogs about this stuff, it's a silly and unproductive endeavor, and I don't need the personal attacks.
So I'm quitting. If James Webb ever wants to actually express a policy position, I'll discuss it. But I'm not wasting my time on personal attacks. For a while I thought the problem was not answering it, but now I realise the problem is acknowledging it at all.
The problem with a campaign of rumors and gossip isn't that every charge is patently false, it's that none of it has anything to do with what people are today, what they stand for now, or what they will do if elected. For all I know, Webb really was anti-women. Is he that way today? That's the only thing that matters. Maybe Allen loved the confederate flag. Is he trying to hang it from the flagpole today?
Everybody claims they just want to talk about issues. That's absurd. Senators Allen and James Webb have ideas and philosophies and competing proposals (we presume). But nobody is talking about it.
Mason Closes:
We want this medium to work and to be taken seriously. Now all we are are political hitmen who get to say what the candidates cant because we are unregulated and get to post whatever the hell we want. Sometimes we are right, sometimes not. Nowardays, that no longer matters. Its all about getting the other guy. This isn't election about a Senate in Virignia. This is about trying to DESTROY both men, and I'm done with that. This is ridiculous. Our medium is turning into a joke, because all we are doing now is trying to top each other is attempting to destroy the other person. Have I been involved? Sure. After reading this thing on NLS about Allen dropping the N-bomb in college--which I did and I gaurentee millions of people have--and all the posts below had just disgusted me beyond words. This is not about winning anymore. The filth at Raising Kaine has shown that for months now. We aren't debating issues like I wanted too. Maybe I was a naieve 25 year old, but this is not what I wanted to happen to this medium. We have the power to let every person into the polticial debate, and we are turning into a joke.
3 comments:
If you really cared about civility, the time to do it was not now, when your candidate is imploding. It was to do it consistently, in a non-partisan way. Doing it now just makes you look like a sore loser.
Don't forget about these two beauts:
1. the "real Virginia" is racist slang rather than meaning "welcome to the real world, the one that doesn't revolve around politics"
2. "Inside the beltway" is also now racist code language - it means poor minority people. I guess Fox's Beltway Boys will be surprised to hear that.
Signed, a different anon
"My candidate" is not imploding, he is just being attacked with 30-year-old charges of using an offensive word. Talking to other white people.
I'm not saying the charges are true -- most of them are provably false. But the problem with defending yourself against a charge is that it makes people think the charge is "meaningful".
If this race is about who used the "n-word", I have a feeling Webb won't win that one. That's not what it should be about.
I haven't participated in the rumor-mongering here, or in my comments, so your point is unfounded anyway.
I'm simply saying I'm not going to dignify the attacks any more with my time and energy.
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