The Wall Street Journal Frets Over (Liberal) Blogs

The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger bemoans the influence of blogs in his weekly column today. In particular, he's upset about the tone political blogs set; the way everyone is so angry when they post online. Actually, Henninger, playing the usual conservative sleight-of-hand game, pretends it's only liberals who are angry, as he dutifully cherry picks nasty reader comments recently posted on Huffington Post and Daily Kos to prove his point.

As for right-wingers, in Henninger's world they're apparently models of etiquette. But of course, as I note in my book, high-profile conservative bloggers and their followers have perfected mean-spiritedness as they often cross over into demented loathing, particularly when condemning the press.

For instance, when legendary ABC News anchor Peter Jennings succumbed to lung cancer during the summer of 2005, David Horowitz posted comments titled, "Peter Jennings Sympathies for the Devil." Horowitz's press-hating followers online cheered the sentiment and stomped on Jennings' grave:

• " I won't be a hypocrite and shed tears at his passing. I was revulsed by him when he was alive and am indifferent to him in death."
• "I hope Lenin is giving him the business with a red hot pitchfork."
• " Mr. Jennings has dissolved into the nothingness from which all left-minded loonies sprang originally."
• " Another left wing talking head bites the dust!!"

Even when the passing journalist was relatively unknown, wingers showed no hesitation in denigrating the dead. In early January 2006 came news that David Rosenbaum, a New York Times veteran of more than 30 years, had been beaten during a random Washington, D.C. mugging and subsequently died from his attackers' wounds. Member of Free Republic, the popular online conservative forum, marked Rosenbaum's brutal passing with astonishing bouts of depravity:

• "The mugging death of that Slimes presstitute is proof positive that there is a G*D, and than he has a sense of ironic humor."
• "Any other common citizen beaten to death by a street thug would be a tragedy...it is only human to think there is an element of blowback when the victim is a liberal reporter for the for the left's Al-Qaeda's primary organ."
• "There's little difference between a NY Times employee and a terrorist these days."
• "No one is innocent that works for the NYT, Maybe some other paper, but i have no sympathy for the treason times or anyone who works for them."

I'm sure staffers at the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page would want to condemn that type of nasty tone.