Weekend Offtopicism

YOU ARE VISITING THE OLD MALKIN(S)WATCH. THAT'S FANTASTIC. PLEASE VISIT THE NEW MALKIN(S)WATCH WHEN YOU GET A CHANCE.

Welcome to the new self-gratification (ew) section of MalkinWatch, wherein I get a little bit tired of always commenting only mostly on those things that fall under Malkin's watchful eyes (you know which picture I'm referring to) and devote a bit of the weekend to talking about other issues of importance to me.

It was either that, or get into her whole anti-vaccine fetish, and I just can't face that.

So let's spin the Wheel of Issues and see what we come up with, shall we?

It's passing "Blogging may have jumped the shark"...

There went "The continuing brilliance of David Neiwert"...

Ah, missed "Just rename it 'Talking Points About Social Security Memo' but keep up the good work anyway"...

And it's landed on one of my personal favorites: "Feeling inadequate while reading Digby."

I wrote about this tribal divide sometime back and I agree with Matt’s analysis. This has its genesis in the original sin of slavery and is best illustrated by the fact that as the country has divides itself distinctly between the parties in a 50/50 fashion, the dividing line continues to fall along the same lines of the old confederacy. Once again, the best way to understand this is to go right to the heart of the beast and quote the first Republican president (who hailed from one of the bluest of blue states) Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York in 1860:

You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite - license, so to speak - among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all.

Read the whole thing, of course , and marvel.