« Breaking: Christian Coalition president-elect quits, blocked from pursuing issues beyond abortion and gay marriage | Main | Barack Obama and His Good Friend Rick Warren »

November 26, 2006

Justifying their love (and hate).

I'm not generally one to nitpick over the usage and definition of words. I tend to find such exercises to be tedious and petty.

But every once in a while its worth doing--especially when it points out a specific hypocrisy. And we all know I'm nothing if not an apt hypocrisy-pointer-outer.

There's a dustup brewing between the rightosphere blog bigshots and lefty blogger Glen Greenwald over the use of the terms "Islamist" and "Christianist" (as well as "Islamofascist" and "Christian fascist") and what they mean.

Perhaps the only thing more tedious that parsing out word usage is blogger pissing matches. Its more often about bruised egos and silly muckraking than not.

But this particular pissing match is a keen demonstration of one of the more blatant hypocrisies of the right: they can say whatever the hell they please about all Muslims and anyone who disagrees is a terrorist sympathizer. But when some Christians are called out on similar behavior and labeled with similar terminology, there's a walloping outcry from the right so fierce as to shatter glass.

The thrust of the pissing is mostly between Greenwald and the genuinely bizarre Ann Althouse. But I did find it interesting how other "big dog" righty bloggers jumped on to Althouse's bandwagon.

The post is lengthy. But genuinely worth the read as it adds another dimension of understanding to the nasty depths the right blogosphere will go to in order to justify itself.

Posted by Carla at November 26, 2006 08:36 AM