Roughing Up Nancy Pelosi

My goodness, as Don Rumsfeld would say when confronted with a critical question about his Iraq policy, Nancy Pelosi's supporters certainly are touchy when anybody like me dares to criticize her. My recent posting about what I called her "stumbling start" since the Nov. 7 election put her in line to become the first woman Speaker of the House elicited more than 50 comments from HuffPo readers, the vast majority of which were howls of derision and outrage couched in the most colorful personal terms.

And here I thought my post was a rather mild critique of the California Democrat, at least by my standards, that stated the obvious. But that's not how most readers saw it.

They accused me of everything from not being a Democrat or even a "real Democrat" (hard to believe that I could have fooled Vice President Mondale when he made me his press secretary) to being Sean Hannity's ghostwriter and using "talking points derived directly from the Republican National Committee" to exhibiting "blatant sexism and obvious misogyny" to "gasbaggery of the most inside-the-beltway, conventional kind" to meddling in internal Democratic politics that are "really none of your concern at all" to falsely labeling Rep. Jack Murtha as a "firebrand" while calling Rep. Steny Hoyer a "moderate" to suggesting that I drink "a whopping cup of STFU" (that's "Shut the Fuck Up" for those unfamiliar with blog-speak) to my personal favorite, from a reader who compared my Pelosi post with an earlier one in which I favorably compared GOP House Majority Leader John Boehner to his disgraced predecessor Tom DeLay, and concluded that I was a "flaming asshole." (I reject the adjective "flaming.")

Ironically, this outpouring of uncivil invective came as Susan Smalley's laudable posting about the lack of civility by HuffPo bloggers in response to some recent incendiary comments by Rush Limbaugh (now, there's a REAL sexist, misogynist and gasbagger) appeared next to mine. Smalley's post drew some 80 comments, the tone of which was set by a reader who ridiculed her for getting her "panties in a bunch about people who are rude to Rush," and added, in the tone of a petulant spoiled child, "The hell with civility. Civility is for face to face. The Internet comment is for saying what you REALLY feel."

Fortunately, there were a few rational souls who, like me, agreed with Smally, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavorial Sciences at UCLA who specializes in early child and adolescent behavior. I found myself applauding two readers, the first of whom wrote, "I tend to pay the most attention in face to face or Internet conversations when the discussion shows a level of expressing an opinion that is constructive and civil. Ranting and raving gets none of us anywhere." The second one wrote, "While [Smalley's] sentiment is appreciated by at least some of us here, the moral high ground was cast aside ages ago. People come on the Internet to make themselves feel better, and that usually entails being jackasses, conservative or liberal." I couldn't agree more.

Well, I guess being brayed at by jackasses who rant and rave anonymously comes with the territory of the HuffPo domain. Actually, I'm used to it, having often been excoriated by conservatives and liberals alike during my checkered career as a journalist. Take, for example, the firestorm touched off in December, 2002 after The Hill ran a cartoon depicting Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) aiming a missile at an airliner labeled "Campaign Finance Reform." As I wrote in one of the more than 500 weekly columns I penned for The Hill, I received more than 200 angry emails after an official of the American Conservative Union urged readers of his website to contact me.

As I wrote at the time, "Barking like trained seals, cranky conservatives from coast to coast gleefully denounced me" and our cartoonist as "sick puppies," "liberals [who] have sunk to an all-time low," "left-wing emotional cripples," "spineless, morally bankrupt lying liberal Dems" who should be caned, and "Faggots, all of you are faggots." (I also pointed out that McConnell, to his creditk asked us for a signed copy of the cartoon to hang on his office wall.)

So there you have it. As I wrote in my much maligned Pelosi post, when the Mafia puts a contract on you, remember that it's not personal, it's just business.

Finally, just to soften this bleak portrait of me as a Pelosi-bashing tool of the Republican Party, let me reference the column I wrote after Pelosi beat out Steny Hoyer for the post of House minority leader in November 2002. Noting that Republicans couldn't wait to portray the San Francisco Democrat as a knee-jerk liberal and "female Che Guevera from Haight Ashbury," I cautioned them to "hold off ordering the champagne because Pelosi may be just what the Democrats needed to put the pugnacious new House majority leader, Tom 'The Hammer' DeLay, in his place when the 108th Congress convenes in January.

"She has some of the best political bloodlines in Congress," I wrote. "She learned how to turn political favors into votes by helping her father, the political boss of Baltimore, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., keep track of constituent requests in what he called the 'favor file.'"

The Pelosi-DeLay matchup "will be something to watch," I predicted. "Both are hyper-partisans and indefatigable fundraisers with a keen instinct for reading the national political psyche. Pelosi is every bit as liberal as DeLay is conservative, but both are equally pragmatic politicians as well. And while her political foes usually disagree with her, they also respect her. "Nancy is an honest liberal," said outgoing House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Nancy stands right up and says, 'This is who I am.'"

I concluded, in what looks, in retrospect, to be a brilliant piece of political punditry, that "Republicans may view Pelosi as the answer to their dreams, but the daughter of the legendary former congressman and three-time mayor of Baltimore could turn out to be their worst nightmare."

So have at me, HuffPo readers. I can take anything you can dish out. Just try to keep it reasonably civil.