Libertarian Librarian

My blog has been snarked. Six anonymous snarky comments in the last week or two. I was also spammed, but that's no biggie-- maybe I'm getting enough traffic to appeal to spammers? Seems unlikely. Anyway. The snarks.

Funny thing is, they all seem to have a leftward slant. Well, one tries to pass itself off as rightwinged, but it is either a really pathetic effort, or tongue in cheek. And, as much as I have ripped snarkiness in the past, I understand the urge to do it-- I do it. Everyone does it. We all have a snarky streak. So, okay. But Mr. Snarker (and all future snarkers and just plain commenters), please sign in as... anybody. Snarking behind the anonymous label is just so... lame. I mean, make a name up-- but give us something to call you besides that annoying anonymous poster who's too much of a wimp to give a name.

The most recent first, then backwards, with my commentary in response to the snarks in between:

Some really boring choices [for 25 foods to have on a desert island], comrades. Right down the list, starting with those of our host. Doesn't anyone out there own a cookbook anymore? Really, what is a hamburger and fries doing as someones number one?

The fast food generation speaks, and totally surrenders it's palate.

Well, the term comrade is certainly unlikely to garner you much support on nearly ANY blog, but perhaps it was meant as incendiary. Also, you may want to look into what exactly is the purpose of the apostrophe. As to the content here-- well, you only get 25. As much as I enjoy shrimp scampi, salmon, sushi, lamb chops and lots of other foods, they are excellent in large measure because they are a change of pace. I would not want to have a steady diet of those foods. Overall, the foods selected allow for more variety precisely because they aren't specialized. Finally, did you even read Kilfire's list? Hard to call that fast foodish.

Next, we have a snark in response to my commentary about how dreadful the NFC North was and that the possibility of a team winning the division with a 6-10 record was not that implausible:

The Packers are toast, and who the flip cares? Really! Get a grip on yourselves people and grab onto some life. Your identity should not be grafted onto Brett's stem, and if it is you have my pity

Very kind of you to offer us all your pity. Very nice indeed. Goes well with the rest of the condescension in this snark. First off, the post was pretty generic, and really didn't whine a whole lot about the state of the Pack-- and trust me, I know whining when I spew it. Secondly, as Gym Jim noted in response to this snark, why exactly does Mr. Snark assume that someone who is interested, even passionate, about sports needs to "grab onto some life" and that our "identity should not be grafted onto Brett's stem"? How do you make that leap of "logic"? If nothing else, that sort of "look down your nose at those dufus sports fans" is not going to help the impression in much of the country that liberals are intellectual snobs.

Next one is a bit more involved, and is in response to my "cronyism" complaint about the Meirs' nomination:

Of course W is more concerned with rewarding those loyal to him, then he is to appointing talented, qualified people. Where have you been? Lost in some sort of dream world where if we hope for things to turn out correctly, they do? The whole Bush clan has always been about rewarding the loyal. Go right down the friggin list of cronies, starting at the Veep, and that is all you see. Come on! Wake up and smell the growing stink of the gangrene spreading on all the limbs of America.

Bush doesn't care about America. He never has, and he never will. He is incapable of caring in general, and it's far past time to rip his smirky face from that of America's. He has screwed up everything that he has touched or tried. Enough is enough. Impeach the bastard now for crimes against humanity, and send him into obilvion where he belongs.

The people are starting to rise up. Doesn't it feel more and more like the days of Vietnam to you? It does to me. This administration is creating great tears in the fabric of our nation, and I'm sick of it. They would sell their grandmothers to slave labor if they thought they could get more political power by doing it.

Here we get to see the far left impotence and rage at its starkest and most edifying. In a nutshell, this is why Bush won his second term-- the left was so busy hating Bush, so convinced that he was some sort of abomination, that it was nearly inconceivable to them that large swaths of the population would vote for the man. I actually tend to agree with the first paragraph-- well, except the last sentence-- but any sympathy I might have for Mr. Snark's position is almost immediately eradicated by the rabid, frothing at the mouth claptrap that follows in paragraphs two and three. This is an amazing thing to me-- much, perhaps most if Howard Dean is any indication (hopefully he isn't), of the left just doesn't get it. As to Vietnam and the people rising up. No comrade, it doesn't feel like Vietnam to me, and if the administration truly is ripping great tears in the fabric of our nation, it is only because folks like you are pulling equally hard, if not harder, from the other side.

Number four. This is the faux right wing post, written in response to my worst ads list:

Screw the stupid ads. I gotta wonder why on earth you would be watching news on Fox?

They're so clearly biased to the left.

Anybody buying that? And just for the record, I wasn't watching Fox News (I don't get much cable-- stone age dweller my friends), I was watching the news on my local Fox affiliate. A fact that was clearly noted in the post to avoid precisely this kind of misunderstanding.

Moving on. Number 5 is in response to my "I feel safer already" post decrying the appointment of should've been convicted felon Sandy Berger to a non-partisan think tank.

I guess since Rush isn't in jail, even though he admitted to forcing others to commit crimes to feed his addiction, the powers that be decided to throw a bone the other way in the world of bias and double standards.

Which is a staple argument for both sides. Since the other side did something wrong, or something suspicious, it's okay that we did something wrong or looked the other way. What crap. Did your mother never teach you that two wrongs don't make a right, Mr. Snark?

And, just as a "boy, what a lousy analogy" retort, Rush suffered a lot more public ridicule and abuse for misusing prescription drugs than Sandy Berger did for stealing confidential documents from a federal repository. This does not excuse Rush's actions, but in my opinion he paid a larger penalty for his misdeeds than Berger did for significantly more criminal behavior.

Okay, final snark-- going back to my top 25 most attractive women athletes list:

Why must our society turn women into objects?

Everywhere you turn, even on this simple blog, there it is. Women are objects to be owned by men.

Hey, who you calling simple, pally?

Our society? Not to disabuse you of a long-held, and clearly cherished, canard Mr. Snark, but men have been admiring attractive women for a lot longer than the U.S./Western society has been around. And once again, how do we make that "logical" leap from admiring attractive women to turning them into objects? I watch football nearly every week and I watch particular players more than others because they are on my fantasy football teams-- is that objectivication? Is that wrong? Why would it be? If you Mr. Snark (Ms. Snark? Don't mean to be sexist-- the comments just sound like a man to me. If not, my apologies) are incapable of being able to distinguish between looking at attractive women as a pleasant, hormone driven and completely human experience and looking at women as property or some sort of "thing" then I really think you have the problem.

Now, you can make the case, I will probably even agree with much of it, that our society is overly focused on beauty and sex. The barrage of images we receive daily on tv and elsewhere is pretty intense. Which is all the more reason to admire and highlight women of accomplishment as well as beauty-- all 25 women on the list meet that criteria. Heck, 30 years ago you'd be hard pressed to make a top 25 list because women's sports were pretty much non-existent outside of tennis and golf.

So, back off Mr. Snark and take your pretensious, narrow-minded and often just plain wrong little bits of "wisdom" elsewhere. Before I taunt you a second time. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries.