Je Regrette Beaucoup

David Letterman is fine, but I like my Bush critique the way I like my Bourbon whiskey. (Forgive the Shakespearean redundance.) I like it undiluted and on the rocks. That is to say (forgive the Shakespearean excess) I want it strong, cool, a sip at a time.

That's why I like Atrios/Eschaton, who links to more profuse criticism of the latest Bush -- or Bush-related -- travesty with simple disdainful phrases. For instance, he writes:


Glenn Reynolds

Was dumb as a stone when I started blogging, is dumb as a stone now.

Of course, this is inside baseball since you need to know Reynolds is Instapundit, who is pretty much a Bush cuddler and in love with Iraq the way a pig loves slop but who also is a very popular blogger.

But all us political junkies know this stuff. And all us Bush haters get red with anger every day like some poor lobster damned to an eternity in the boiling water. So all us Bush haters need a gatekeeper who with the utmost efficiency points us to the shame of the moment, either in the mainstream press or, more likely, something from the mainstream press filtered through a blog.

For me the key is efficiency. I do not want to wallow in the anti-Bush vituperation. A little more than a little is by much too much (forgive the outright stealing from Shakespeare) because even though it is at first encouraging to find those who share one's disdain, if you spend too much time wading through it you quite rightly draw back from that state of mind in which (like Lord Hamlet; forgive etc.) you conclude that "prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell (I) must like a whore unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing like a very drab."

That's why I like Atrios. He gets on with it.

Political community on the Net?

Super dooper. Super dooper. But let us not turn it into a circle jerk.

Forsooth.