Obamatown: Tough Place To Be Honest

I occasionally like to poke around Salon.com for a healing dose of tolerance, inclusion and progressive enlightenment whenever my heathen conservative predilections get the better of me. Imagine my shock when browsing through some reader comments when I saw the sort of lowbrow discourse usually reserved for people who couldn’t get into Swarthmore or Brown and never drove a Saab: “go fuck yourself;” “you’re so full of shit;” “shut up idiot;” “get a fucking clue;” “screwball… crank;” “bitch;” “whore;” and the never encouraging, “cunt.”

What was happening here? A good-n-proper reaction to the obligatorily reviled Ann Coulter? Did Sarah Palin say something unacceptably state-schooly on TV again? Did an enemy trollette deposit some right-wing talking point in an otherwise high-minded and compassionate Salon discussion thread?  Alas, something much more catastrophic had occurred: one of the flock strayed and had to be punished. 

Spunky feminist and noted Obama enthusiast Camille Paglia dared speak ill of the first seven weeks of the Obama Presidency in her most recent monthly column, and Salon’s intellectual backwash devoted readership would not stand for it. So just what did Ms. Paglia say to force these rabid jackals to cannibalize one of their own? Ironically, nothing critical about Obama himself, rather, she criticized “his flacks, fixers and goons — his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes” who led The Chosen One astray. In fact, she bent herself into a yoganidrasana to avoid criticizing Obama, “in whom [she] still [has] great hope and confidence.”

However, it seems that even critiquing the lackeys, yes-men, tax cheats, polished turds and fellow Ivy League Affirmative Action admits who now infest the White House Best and the Brightest Part II is enough to mobilize the Hope/Change Musketeers into battle since it’s an admission that all is not rainbows, sunflowers and waterfalls in Obamatown…

-- Riley Hunter, describing the liberal backstabbing TMR knows all-too-well (and loves to respond in-kind to) as opposed to the NewAge image of "rainbows, sunflowers and waterfalls" they try to project, like they're working in Big Hollywood.