Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, has just made a huge splash in the world marketplace of ideas, of power, and of capital. All major news outlets have something to say about the book. The basic message can be conveyed in this brief shout-out:
Moral authority, which is our greatest source of strength, has been recklessly put at risk by this willful president.Of course, the Red-meat Radical Right (RRR) cannot stand idly by while the much reviled Al Gore triumphs. So it is no surprise to find them trolling the Net for places to insert their vitriolic, ad hominem comments. The UK Guardian proved no exception when it put a version of the Al Gore story in a prominent place. Early comments on the article praised Gore, cheered for him, and even begged him to run for president. Commenting started at 1:33 am (GMT) on May 24, 2007. With the time-zone differences, it took a while for the RRR to get the scent, but they did.
At 5:05 AM, sandyfeder had this to say:
Gore's comments are - as is sadly typical of what remains of the Left in America - weak, spineless, wrong-headed, dangerous, adolescent, pathetically utopian and utterly unrealistic. I fear that he may actually run for the presidency of my beloved republic, I fear that he may present a formidable challenge to Gingrich, Thompson, Giuliani or McCain (any of them would be acceptable, and better than Gore), and I fear for the whole of modern civilization should this quasi-Marxist, appeasement oriented, moral relativist be given control of America's military. Whoa unto us, whoa unto Britain, whoa unto Israel, and whoa unto all of the peace-loving, clear-eyed, sober, serious people of the modern world. A Gore presidency would be a victory for the jihad and a catastrophe for the human race.Not long after, at 7:53 AM, wrathhound concurred:
Whoa unto us, whoa unto Britain, whoa unto Israel, and whoa unto all of the peace-loving, clear-eyed, sober, serious people of the modern world.
whoa dude. U rool.
Catch your breath now... I always have to. To stop laughing I have to summon the force of undiluted will. But it's worth it because beneath the unintended comedy there is always a clear analysis of RRR vitriol that is even more funny than their actual words.
With the above comments, the obvious place to begin parsing is the comically ignorant use of "whoa." It makes perfect sense -- perfect sense -- that someone of the Red-meat Radical Right could not understand woe because woe is a form of suffering and that happens to others -- usually the poor and disenfranchised. Woe, you know, belongs with those masses of suffering humans that the RRR refuses to acknowledge... except maybe to blame them for the harm they bring upon themselves.
Regardless, the RRR can always manage to make perfect sense of anything. All they have to do is throw a saddle on it, straddle it with their extravagantly endowed crotch, and start shooting.
