Entertaindit Balance
356 words.
Since I’ve been ragging a lot on Daily Kos writers lately, I suppose I should be fair and balanced and identify some conservative Entertaindits too. I’ve already mentioned Ann Coulter a few times, which was a no-brainer. But overall I find that it’s much harder to locate Entertaindits on conservative blogs.
Conservative bloggers generally fall into one of two categories: Quoters and Bloviaters. The Quoter constructs an article by quoting a large portion of some news story that supports their view and then attaching one or two sentences of commentary to it. This is typically the style for Michelle Malkin and GOP Bloggers. If the quote supports a conservative view, the commentary is usually pretty bland. If the quote somehow attacks a liberal, the commentary is usually something sarcastic (“Speaking of feeling sick, check al-Reuters’ latest shenanigans in its coverage of the Rahman case at LGF.” -Michelle Malkin). In either case, there’s such a small sample of the author’s writing that it’s difficult to identify a true Entertaindit.
The Bloviater is more commonly found on radio, television, and print, but you can also see it in the new, much-hated Red America blog. (I first heard the term “bloviate” on Papa Bear Bill O’Reilly’s show. I didn’t know what the actual definition of the word was at the time, but I still knew that it described Bill O’Reilly to a tee.) These bloggers “discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner.” A defining characteristic of the Bloviater is the obsessive need to appear credible. Therefore, they usually include a lot of facts and evidence that looks pretty reasonable on the surface. You have to dig a little to find out if the facts and evidence is actually truthy or not, and most people (including me) are too lazy to do that.
So as you can see, it’s a lot more work to weed out the conservative Entertaindits.
(By the way, liberal bloggers basically have two categories too: Quoters and Inveighers.)
P.S. Wow, I think RedState will be fruitful ground for potential Entertaindits. I just read Pathetic. I’ll have to keep an eye on this guy Clayton.
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