Tuesday, June 09, 2009

The Never-Ending Class of Ann Althouse and Her Commenters

This'll come as no shock to anyone who's been paying attention since Ann Althouse waddled into the blogosphere: Re-post a picture from Drudge that shows Michelle Obama not smiling and say "Caption Contest!" Then stand back and let the cretin hop begin, smug in your knowledge that it wasn't you who first posted the picture, and you didn't say anything spiteful or hateful or racist about the First Lady of the United States.

250 comments as of this moment, many (most?) of them not even attempts at captions, let alone wit, but instead, repetitions on the themes of Michelle Is Fat and Michelle Is Ugly and Bitch and Ho and I Always Knew She Was An Angry Negro.

Instaputz has a few of the early ones posted, if you'd rather not risk full immersion into the cesspit, along with some good observations about the owner and her regular guests.

And for a certain someone's ego-surfing pleasure: What a pathetic piece of shit you are, Ann Althouse.

4 comments:

Ruthb!ll1 said...

My gut feeling is that Althouse deliberately posted this pic for the bread & circus crowd to roar about (no surprise--consider the source). What I find a bit odd but again not at all surprising is that so many people reacted so rabidly towards Michelle's expression. My impression is that Michelle was looking at someone other than Carla Bruni when this pic was taken. I think that Michelle was merely making a quizzical expression at someone else in the nearby crowd, not making an ugly face at Carla who's just a few inches away from her. Does anyone else think it's highly unlikely that Michelle is reacting to Carla when they look at this particular photograph?

bjkeefe said...

I guess I have a slightly darker view than you of Althouse's motives.

I agree that Michelle's was more of a quizzical expression, if not just some neutral facial arrangement in between one of the hundreds of times she had to smile for the camera that day. Ditto Carla -- the two of them were momentarily paying attention to two different things would be my guess, and a camera can make a moment last forever, or so they tell me.

The thing about the Michelle-hate, though, is that this has been going on since forever. I still find it surprising, in some ways. I first noticed it on the PUMA blogs, which if you know anything about them, you know are dominated by women. The vehemence was not to be believed, especially when you consider that (a) these blogs formed, originally, from disgruntled Hillary supporters, (b) were ostensibly composed of Democrats, at least at the beginning, (c) spent most of their time complaining about real and imagined sexism directed at Hillary, and then later, (d) most of them rallied in defense of perceived sexist attacks on Sarah Palin.

I'm shocked, shocked to find double standards at play on political blogs!

Ruthb!ll1 said...

Dear Brendan,

I doubt that your view of Althouses's motives is darker than mine. I feel that she & her ilk are hate mongers & publicity hounds (to put it politely). I try to avoid reading their poison unless I link to it when I'm reading news or blogs online. Please know that I did not mean to suggest that the Michelle-hate is not alive & well.

Just think of what some people would say if this were the Obamas instead of King Albert II & Queen Paola checking out this artwork from Belgium where I live:
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=30499

bjkeefe said...

Oh, yeah. Greater Wingnuttia would definitely call that picture grounds for impeachment.

And I don't doubt Althouse would get about nineteen posts out of it, too. It'd be onion rings and carrot sticks all over again.

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