Trolling Right-Wing Political Blogs Proves That November Can't Come Too Soon

HISTORY: "fixed my flat from this morning and got out on the bike. riding for 15 minutes and pow! fss—fsss—fss—fsss. yes. another flat." This kind of lower-case personal reminiscence, interspersed with media and tech reviews, were Johnson's bailiwick at LGF until 9/11. A week later, considering a National Review denunciation of Islamic terrorists, he wrote: "I agree totally—something I never imagined I would say about an article in the National Review." Quickly outstripped the Review in conservatism, denouncing the Johannesburg Earth Summit ("generated between 300 and 400 tons of garbage"), the "NEA's pomo multiculti agenda," and "the left-wing extremism that dominates U.S. college campuses." But he's really a single-issue voter whose bugbear is terrorism, and who will support any foreign adventure purporting to fight it. Was an early supporter of the invasion of Iraq ("Stability Is the Last Thing Iraq Needs") and has his eye on Iran ("Iran's Manhattan Project Still on Track"), and on America too: was pleased by a 2004 poll that showed 44 percent of Americans believed the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of American Muslims ("that's not going to make the moonbats among us feel very good"). Was delighted by the 2004 election ("Moonbats...packing your bags and heading to Canada to escape the evil Cowboy Chimp's imperialistic regime"), but dismayed in 2006, especially when Muslim Keith Ellison was elected to Congress ("They'll be celebrating in Gaza tomorrow").

MODUS OPERANDI: For this election, Johnson has interrupted his traditional Muslim-watch more often than usual to run pieces critical of Obama ("Obama Fools Mississippi") and Clinton ("I doubt the crying tactic will work very well with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad"). Fairly quiet on McCain, but insists that "I know who I want to vote against: the Hillary-Obama Appeasement Complex."

WHAT TO EXPECT: More reverse jihad, a late McCain endorsement, then still more reverse jihad.

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Jonah Goldberg
The Corner/Goldberg File/Liberla Fascism Blog
corner.nationalreview.com

ORIENTATION: Legacy-pledge conservative

TONE: Self-amused

FUN FACT: Son of Lucianne Goldberg, the Republican operative who got Linda Tripp to wear a wire in the Lewinsky affair; helped Mom spread the word in multiple TV appearances.

CANDIDATE: McCain, duh

STUPID/EVIL RATIO: 90/10

HISTORY: Goldberg worked for wire services and produced TV projects and documentaries prior to joining National Review in 1998. Shortly thereafter, he launched the National Review Online (NRO). Writes for the Review online and off, and for other publications. Themes and style were evident from his earliest NRO "Goldberg File" contributions. Prefaced a post on Bill Clinton's Kosovo intervention with a quote from The Princess Bride (which remains one of his cultural touchstones, along with Animal House, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica) and took a breezy attitude toward matters of life and death ("We should kill Milosevic...Stalin moved populations like I play Risk on my computer"). Later, welcomed "the opportunity to wax Swiftian and offer my modest proposal for saving the rainforest," resulting in wan P.J. O'Rourke rip-off proposing to "sell the rainforest to Disney" (which "is becoming an incredibly liberal company anyway"). Muddled, heedless style often necessitated a lengthy "Corrections" section, with errors mostly belligerently defended or blown off ("my crack team of researchers is unavailable to me, and I will have to get back to that one at the end of the week"). In January 2002, created the Corner, where short-form posts suited his lighter side ("Okay, I just tried to take a follow-up nap"), leaving Goldberg Files for longer examinations of single topics with a pretense of seriousness, e.g.: "It's so depressing that 'people of color' has replaced 'colored people'...the practice is just one small sign of how completely the racialist Left has abandoned the moral juggernaut that was Martin Luther King's original argument: that everyone should be judged by the content of their character..." Breezily acknowledged his own non sequiturs: "Like saying violence never solves anything, people understand what I mean even when in reality what I'm saying isn't true." In 2007, Goldberg published Liberal Fascism, expanding his NRO method to book length, alternating accusations of fascism against liberals such as Hillary Clinton with insistences that he was saying nothing of the kind.

MODUS OPERANDI: Goldberg's comical persona—once pretty much all he had—is now mainly a fallback position in his attempts at serious commentary. For example, he begins one Goldberg File with the observation that "God, unlike, say, North Dakota, has an uncanny gift for staying in the headlines"; then launches into an incoherent but apparently earnest defense of religion based on the obnoxiousness of scientists and Penn Jillette; then wraps up with a philosophical assertion—"whatever electrochemical signals my brain may be receiving, my awareness of their existence doesn't diminish the fact that I love my wife or that I think love is something more than mere electrochemical signals"—and a joke about a turkey sandwich.

WHAT TO EXPECT: Comparisons of the Democratic candidate (whoever he or she happens to be) to amusing inanimate objects and Nazis.

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Michelle Malkin
www.michellemalkin.com

ORIENTATION: Nativist

TONE: Very, very angry