Top Five Threads.

It's a pleasant feature of liberal blogs that the comments threads are, perhaps inevitably, at least as entertaining as the posts that precipitate them.

So, inspired by this Balloon Juice thread in which Peter Daou hilariously ignores Lincoln's dictum, and results in such inspired such marvels as

Who the fuck is Peter Daou?

The “leave Britney Hilary Sarah alone” boy?

...I bring you The InstaPutz Top Five! These threads were either madly entertaining, or had unexpected long-term repercussions.

1. Alex Rawls loses his shit (Tbogg)

Post Premise: Alec Rawls, whose father apparently took some bad DNA in college, believed the memorial design was Flight 93 was an "Islamo-fascist shrine."

Thread Reaction: Laughter. Rawls subsequently doubles-down on the crazy.

Sample Gem:

People here seem to be under the impression that a half mile wide crescent, oriented on Mecca, can occur by random chance. I think that is pretty flakey, but don't worry, Murdoch provided plenty of confirmation. Look further into my analysis. There is also an array of crescents of trees in the Tower of voices section of the memorial. These are turned exactly 90 degrees to the large red crescent, so that a line across the tips of the crescents points to Mecca. There are numerous other proofs of intent in Murdoch's plan as well. He obviously anticipated the willfull blindness of people like you tboggers, and put in the multiply redundant proof necessary to make his accomplishment irrefutable once it is a fait accompli. Wake you little brains up. Take a look.

As for whether rotating the whole structure 90 degrees would make it acceptable, not at this point. Once the terrorist-memorial is discovered, obviously no remnant of it can be allowed to remain, because that is a remnant of a terrorist memorial.
# posted by Alec Rawls

The thread immediately attains legend status.


2. Former Penthouse letters editor is aware of all internet traditions (LG&M)

Post Premise: Wingnuts believe Michelle Obama is a racist. Duh?

Sample Gem:

Donald,
I am aware of all internet traditions and also of literary conventions in which placing something in quotes or in a blockquote means that your are quoting that person.

But here you are not.

It seems to me that what your are about is, well, sort of questionable.

Can you please expand on the idea your propose that putting something in blockquotes that does not appear at the linked item is a fair thing to do.

Most people would find it, absent a reasonable explanation, to be very strange.
vanderleun | 06.17.08 - 12:16 am | #

Within two a half hours, Van der Leun would have his epitaph and his fine work as Pajamas Media editor would be forgotten.


3. A short history of cock, as told by Jeff Goldstein (Sadly, No!)

Post Premise: Jeff Goldstein, the proprietor of Protein Wisdom, had an inexplicably good rep within the wingnut community. Until Retardo's cock compendium was published, that is.

Sample Gem:

So, Kevin can suggest I’m a breastfeeding coward (”I never said he was a coward — just that he was hiding under his kid’s crib and needs to go enlist NOW, or at least, as soon as he’s done giving the boy his breast milk”), but when I offer to meet up with him so he can repeat this to my face, I’m out of line?

Must be that old cycle of violence thing. I started it by having no fucking idea who Kevin was, Kevin posts some personal shit about me, and I respond by offering to slap him across the face with my dick. In between breast feedings. Where, you know, milk comes out of my nipples and goes into my son’s throat.

But yeah, I’m the one with issues.

You can pretty much draw a direct line between Sadly, No!'s effort and the fact that Ace of Spades no long returns Jeff's calls.

4. A Kaus meme is born (Matthew Yglesias)

Post Premise: Though Mickey Kaus was later (sigh) vindicated, Yglesias believed the Slate blogger's rationalization for harping the Edwards/Hunter story was weak.

Sample Gem:

Hey, you know what I hear, Mickey Kaus likes to fuck goats.

Posted by Pritesh | October 14, 2007 5:24 PM

Micky Kaus blows goats. I read about it on another internet site and has not been refuted yet. Thus, it is true, and, if anything, underestimates how much Micky likes to blows goats.

-

Posted by Hank Essay | October 14, 2007 5:29 PM

the discussion over at Eschaton is both lively and factual. three independent sources confirm that Mickey Kaus blows goats, the real question is if he swallows or spits.

How many goats do you need to fellate before Jacob Weisberg lets you go all the way with the Slate office dog?

Posted by mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | October 14, 2007 5:34 PM

47,000 hits later...


5. A Jarvis/Quick cage match (Bill Quick)

Post Premise: Jeff Jarvis calls bullshit on Pajamas Media. Bill Quick is displeased. The two bloggers, both of whom are among the most loathsome folks on the planet, proceed to bloody each other -- to the immense delight of the left side of the blogosphere.

Sample Gem:

Bill Quick
November 5th, 2005 | #31
Dean, just speaking for myself - I have no privy to PJM plans - I suspect that down the road a piece one of the intentions may be to equip most PJM members with the “Blog reporter’s tool kit” that I, Glenn, and others (including Wretchard) have discussed from time to time, so as to transform the organization into a distributed news network fully capable of doing on-the-scene reporting - and then market the news product to commercial news consumers or display on a portal site of some sort. Something like that most definitely would compete with the likes of NYT. All the major news nets, as far as it goes.

Hehindeedy!