Bloggasm

Simon Owens:Which conservative bloggers do you think create the most spin? And if you had to pick a conservative blogger to label a worthy adversary, which blogger would that be?

Joe W: I don’t really read conservative bloggers too much, but the one I have personal experience with is Michelle Malkin. She actually linked to me a couple of times. The first time was when Michael Moore posted my mosaic of Bush, “War President”, just after Kerry lost in 2004. She tried to co-opt the image by spinning it as pro-Bush. The funny thing was that at that point “War President” was almost a year old and the whole we-rightwingers-view-the-mosaic-as-patriotic meme had played out a long time before among second-tier rightwing blogs and in the comments of the original post — I had even touched on this interpretation in the statement I posted when the shit had started hitting the fan in April of 2004. Malkin, of course, was just commenting on the mosaic because Michael Moore had associated himself with it, implied that she had come up with the pro-Bush interpretation on her own (and, lord knows, maybe she did), and quoted me from the part of my statement that dealt with the ambiguity of the piece’s message. That was pretty surreal. After that the “War President” is pro-Bush meme was resurrected for a little while. It was pretty amazing to watch the ditto-head dynamic in action. The argument Malkin was making was a year old, but just by her expressing it rather than some second-tier blogger it all of a sudden became a belief in some people’s heads…

Simon Owens: Do you think there is any way Republican congress members will actually punish Bush for his recent brush with the law if there’s enough demand for it?

Joe W: God, I don’t know. I’m left of the Democratic party and my blog reflects that. I don’t focus on the the ins-and-outs of DC politics the way many bloggers do. As far as Bush and the Republican party go, I think it is interesting to see how conservatives — and I don’t just mean politicians I mean conservatives in general — deal with the extent of Bush’s corruption and incompetence. It’s interesting to see who is a partisan Republican and who is a decent conservative. You know, as Tom Tomorrow always jokes, Bush could take off his mask tomorrow revealing himself to be Greater Cthulu and some Republicans would still be telling Zogby that they think the country is headed in the right direction.

Simon Owens: Which branch do you think most important for Democrats to seize control: Executive or Legislative?

Joe W: I don’t put a lot of faith in Democrats or electoral politics in general. But that said, I’d like to see the Democrats take back the White House. This nightmare has gone on long enough and I’d like to get back to business as usual.

Also, I think a Democratic victory in 2008 will create an interesting dynamic in the left side of the blogosphere. Right now there is tremendous unity on the left, unity between liberals and hard leftists. I’ve never seen anything like it — I’ve never seen, for example, Chomsky endorse the Democratic nominee for president which he basically did in 2004. If a Democrat takes the White House this unity is going to fracture. One imagines that bllogs like mine will be criticizing the president from the left a lot of the time and the big partisan Democrat blogs like DailyKos and so forth will be doing a lot of cheerleading.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

Joe W: Left I on the News
Informed Comment
Oil Wars
A Tiny Revolution
Whisky Bar

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