JEEZ, THINGS HAVE REALLY DEGENERATED: In this post, I rained scorn on dumbass claims that Kos was gay. (One of which was cited in the Blogometer item from yesterday that I had just linked). So what do I get? Somebody says I’m trying to spread the idea. I mean, that’s just pathetic, and says more about the way the accuser thinks than anything else . . .
There’s a sensible reply from Ogged in the comments:
Are the Reynolds bashers kidding here? What he wrote isn’t just unobjectionable, it’s gracious and I think totally sincere. The quoted paragraph is in the middle of a post defending Kos from accusations of corruption, so it hardly seems strange that he’d defend him from another charge floating around. And if you’re going to impute backwardness to his readers, you have to go all the way: saying that Kos is married and has a kid carries a lot of weight with the unenlightened, doesn’t it?
(Via TTLB). Glad somebody figured it out. And, sadly, there seems to be a lot of backwardness, of various varieties, out there. This is not the blogosphere’s finest hour. Seventh-grade, indeed.
UPDATE: Bill Ardolino surveys more not-so-finest hour moments.
And reader Ricky West emails: “Let’s see, you defend Kos and his acolytes attack you. Lesson learned: that’s what you get for defending Kos.”
The scorched-earth approach seems unwise to me; in fact, it seems to be turning a fundamentally minor issue into a bigger one. And it certainly doesn’t make me feel great about being “gracious.” Though at least today’s Blogometer noticed. Well, actually they noticed that I defended Kos and Kos attacked me. Like I said, jeez.
MORE: Reader Toby Weber emails:
What’s notable about the left side of the blogosphere’s reaction to the Kosola allegations and Kos’ request for silence is that they seem to confirm how much sway he actually has.
Kos requested that liberal bloggers not write about the story, and many didn’t until their hands were forced by TNR, if at all. Even weirder, the usual liberal commenters on right-wing blogs aren’t participating in the comment threads that deal with the story (at least at the blogs I frequent, like Ace of Spades & Protein Wisdom). Kos said that by discounting the allegations, you were passive-aggressively pumping them up. That’s now a full-fledged meme among many liberal blogs.
It’s fascinating how the two sides of the blogosphere have evolved and behave in such different ways. I think Tom Maguire’s Pack (the right) vs. Hive (the left) analogy is playing out quite well. Kos it seems, is the queen bee (no gay implication intended Really!).
Not being on Kos’s mailing list, I didn’t know I was supposed to keep quiet instead of defending him. I’ve defended him in the past, too, but I don’t think I’ll be quite as quick to do so in the future.
Meanwhile, more thoughts at Catallarchy, and Eric Scheie comments on the intricacies of double-reverse outing.