Trust Althouse to find the good stuff: this silly article from Dave Kopel, a piece that exhibits an all-too common vice: extremism in defense of a bullshit "moderation."
The rules of this silly little game are simple: treat everything like a game. Then, pretend that everyone plays it but yourself. Althouse, for instance, is by any objective measure deeply shallow and ludicrously dishonest, obsessed chiefly with enhancing her position relative to others: she wants to win, to be On Top, to gain status, to be The Grand High Squawk of the Blogosphere and Exalted Queen of the Dipshits. That's why she can't respond to criticism of any sort without pretending it's all part of some grand conspiracy to give her a Black Eye -- so she makes like anytime someone calls her out for saying something untrue or stupid, this is in reality a Feather in Her Cap. Althouse is essentially a Joseph Heller character without the verisimilitude. Read the post I just linked to and tell me I'm wrong. She can't conceive that people comment on her posts just because she's wrong, or make fun of her just because she's a total flake.
But you knew that. It's the Kopel article that's more instructive here. Kopel's thesis is that law professor and Rocky Mountain News Columnist Paul Campos is just as bad as Ann Coulter because Campos thinks Glenn Reynolds is nuts. No, seriously. Let's play with Kopel!
They seem like opposites: she's tall, blond and right-wing; he's short, balding and left-wing. Yet both are extremely intelligent weekly columnists with a gift for turning a clever phrase. They attended the University of Michigan Law School together, where he apparently developed a lifelong hatred of her. Enmity notwithstanding, he lately seems to be modeling his own style after hers. The more I read Paul Campos, the more he reminds me of Ann Coulter.
Note the insinuation that Campos hates Coulter because of something personal and mysterious that occurred back in law school. This "grudge" theory is relevant because Kopel's case is that Campos is not basing his opinion of culture on Mr Spock's Vulcan logic, but Mere Emotion. Note also that there's no actual evidence of such a grudge, just an insinuation. Note also that the physical contrast between the two is itself pointless for anything besides a cute little rhetorical device of the sort that impresses morons. Though it might also permit the unwary reader to conclude that the evil Campos-Troll is just jealous of the Elf-Maid Coulter Evenstar. Feh.
Moving on:
For example, on Friday afternoon, March 2, Coulter spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the most important annual conference for conservatives, held in Washington. She used the word "faggot" in connection with John Edwards. Predictably, the Edwards campaign and the Democratic establishment pitched a fit, garnering Coulter more attention.
The next day, Campos, in a move straight out of the Coulter playbook, spoke to a local meeting of the Young Democrats in Denver. Four times he called Coulter a four-letter word (which this newspaper won't print). The word refers to female genitalia, and it rhymes with "lame publicity stunt." For his Rocky column last Tuesday, Campos condensed his speech.
Like Coulter, Campos employed lawyerly verbal formulations in which he technically claimed that he was not directing his gutter language at his obvious target.
Unfortunately for Campos, Coulter - a wily veteran of the publicity game - ignored his vulgarity.
Observe: Kopel is arguing flat-out that the sole reason Campos took on Coulter for calling John Edwards a "faggot" is to gain publicity by calling her a "cunt." Four times! This, of course, raises the question of whether or not Campos really did this. And by the magic of the Internets, we can actually check this for ourselves:
Now suppose I were to stand up here and call Coulter a \[expletive]. (Interestingly, unlike "faggot," American newspapers won't print this word, although it's no more offensive). That would, I believe, be a highly inappropriate thing to do. Even though it's my personal opinion that, if anyone deserves to be called a \[expletive], Coulter does, it's still the sort of thing any decent person will avoid doing.
Yet if I were to point out that Coulter is, by any reasonable standard of evaluation, a \[expletive], I suspect much outrage would ensue. After all, Nancy Pelosi is giving a speech later tonight inside this same hotel, in which - in this hypothetical scenario - someone Pelosi doesn't know (i.e., me) would have called Coulter a \[expletive].
If such a thing were to happen, the entire right-wing noise machine would leap into action. Ann Althouse would probably write a column in The New York Times about how, if Pelosi were really a feminist, she would unequivocally condemn some guy Pelosi has never heard of, who called Coulter a \[expletive] in front of 75 people in a hotel room in Denver.
Meanwhile, Coulter calls John Edwards a faggot on national TV, at the same podium from which Mitt Romney had just told the world how much he loves Coulter, and the result is that, rather than being shunned by every decent human being on the planet - or at least by people who would like to be elected president - Coulter is immediately invited on to CNN to discuss her views further.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is your "liberal media" in action.
Uh, it seems like Kopel -- and Althouse -- is in fact making Campos's actual point for him, by going out of their way to create a false equivalence: an equivalence that we know is false because of the obvious difference between how Coulter is treated by the MSM and the treatment meted out by the right wing machine by... people like Kopel.
Anyway, whatever you think about Campos's remarks, his use of "cunt" is tied to a larger argument about the media: and whatever you think about Coulter's use of "faggot," it was merely a throwaway insult. For Kopel not to see this means that he's either an absolute moron or a a slimy little "lawyerly" (to use his term) wingnut bullshit artist. I lean towards the latter interpretation, myself.
And the hits keep coming!
A couple of weeks ago, Campos also successfully insulted upward when he accused University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds of advocating murder, and urged that the school censor Reynolds. Reynolds too has a vastly larger record of scholarly publication than Campos, and Reynolds' Web log, InstaPundit, is the most influential in the world (based on incoming links statistics at truthlaidbear.com).
The attack on Reynolds got Campos a lot of national attention, even though his legal claim was based on little, if any, research. Reynolds had advocated the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, which Campos declared to be a violation of the Geneva Convention rules against targeting civilians. Campos was apparently unaware that there is substantial legal authority for treating civilians who act in a military role (e.g., nuclear weapons scientists) as military combatants.
Which would be a good argument, if we were in fact actively at war with Iran, which, one may quibble, we are not. A policy of "preventive assassinations" really is, well, illegal lunacy on its face. Their respective legal publishing records and hit counts are entirely irrelevant.
Amazingly, Kopel isn't done. Here's one I'll just let you gaze at in gobsmacked wonder:
Both writers make outlandish claims about other people. She insists that for the last 50 years, nearly all liberals have been on the side of treason. He compares Glenn Reynolds (who is a libertarian) and national radio host/blogger Hugh Hewitt (a mainstream Republican) to "fascists."
Hugh Hewitt is "mainstream"...? Yes, run with that one a bit further, won't you?
Which brings us to the electrifying conclusion:
Campos/Coulter have virtually identical approaches on the Iraq war. She writes that people who oppose the Iraq war are stupid, irrational or evil. He writes that people who favor the Iraq war are stupid, irrational or evil....
Campos/Coulter demean themselves and degrade our civic culture with their outlandish rhetoric. They would do better to aim their writing and speeches at the adult, accurate level which they have each achieved many times in the past.
Kopel is a fine one to be making comments about "accuracy"; his column rests upon obvious distortions, tendentious claims, and swinish insinuations. This is not "civil discourse," no matter how many times Kopel doesn't say "fuck." This is an attempt to pretend that extremism -- Reynolds, Althouse, Hewitt, support for a war that the overwhelming majority of the nation has concluded is at best stupid and irrational -- is somewhere in the "reasonable" middle.
"Civility" for people like Kopel is a trick, a lie, a maneuver, a weapon. It's corrupt and debased.
The proper response to this sort of a ploy is ridicule and disdain. Not engagement. Kopel is merely another unprincipled wingnut hack.