Per my post last night, I must call a technical violation on the thread. The dumbest motherfucker alive is now (and will likely be for the foreseeable future) Ann Althouse.
Althouse put up a thread on Journolist (disclaimer: I’m a member), the comments of which largely focused on the fact that Ezra was a Jew and Jewy Jew Jew Jew. Ezra put up a Tweet about it.
Ann Althouse, of course, went fucking apeshit about it, including posts alleging a massive retributionist conspiracy of
Jews
liberals, and accusing the Jew Ezra Klein of creating the anti-Semitism he says was directed at him what on account of the sneaky Jewness and all. (Conspiracy Annie also thinks that Obama scripted his “Special Olympics” comment, because ohmygodshe’sfuckingcrazy.)
Her obsession is remarkable - she’s actually stopped posting her own travel porn long enough to demand a proper apology in a proper way, because the secret to being Ann Althouse is that she’s never actually not offended, but she has to do enough promo work during her perpetual offense to let everyone know how offended and important she is. Althouse even asks why liberals hate her, which is a.) mistaking the belief that she’s a shambling joke of a human being for hatred and b.) answered by the fact that she’s better at life, blogging and a conceptual understanding of the universe than all of her “haters”.
Incidentally, Althouse is so terrible because she points out the underlying dynamic of many conservative bloggers (at least the ones who allow comments). The community almost invariably becomes a heavily edited paean to the greatness of the moderator (and their undeniable embodiment of everything that’s right with civilization), where the most offensive and terrible shit about anyone who’s not them is allowed to slide so long as it doesn’t harm their psyche. Althouse is a horrific communicator - garbled, oversensitive and inconsistent all at once, and insanely defensive about any criticism of the incredibly stupid things she says on a routine basis.
Are there any former students of hers (she’s a law professor, which I know seems like a cruel infliction of inhumane punishment on her students) with any information about just how terrible she is as a professor? I’ve thought about how bad a professor would have to be to make me want Althouse to replace them, and the answer always tends to involve the professor downing a pint of mash liquor and coming into class with a loaded shotgun. Other than that, I think I could deal.
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Frighteningly enough, Althouse reminds me of a woman that I dated many moons ago. The degree of her rage and her willingness to take the offensive wasn’t necessarily linked to how badly I had acted, it was more directly linked to how wrong she was. If she knew she was on poor ground emotionally or factually her anger at my being “wrong” and her willingness to verbally and psychologically attack went off the scale. In essence, it was a psych mind game aimed at making me think that “hey, if you’re that angry, that offended, that hurt (etc) then I must have REALLY fucked up.. I’m sorry!”.
If you want to see that Althouse characteristic in action, go to the video debate with Franke-Ruta debate. Althouse knows that she is on shitty, hateful ground with her comments on Jessica Valenti and knows that Franke-Ruta is going to mention it, however obliquely. Her subsequent rude, nasty attack on almost zero provocation, which stunned Franke-Ruta (who obviously made the mistake of expecting civilized discourse) is well known.