The New Republic's anti-semites for Lieberman

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 8:21 AM on August 8, 2006.

I take my cues, not from Kos or the Democratic Party but from Joe Lieberman's friends, like Lanny Davis, who smears Ned Lamont -- and the blogs as a whole -- with his deft use of comments on blogs that refer to Lieberman.

Got that? Comments on blog posts that refer to Lieberman.

(Davis, by the way, is a friend and frat brother of one George W. Bush who was once branded by the prez in a not homoerotic ritual -- as well as being a current Bush appointee. So, you know, he's the perfect guy to be commenting on what the Democratic Party should be comprised of.)

So, given that commenters on blogs that refer to something comprise a fair and balanced assessment of that something, I thought I'd try my hand at this nifty trick.

Here goes.

For my maiden voyage I thought I'd take the leap from Lanny Davis' Wall St. Journal rant for Joe Lieberman to the pages of those perennial Lieberman backers, The New Republic.

In all honesty, I'm just impressed that TNR even has comments, something the National Review's blog doesn't deign or dare to do.

So I sifted through TNR's straw poll for comments on today's Lieberman/Lamont race and found some interesting things that can irrefutably be tied to TNR and Lieberman supporters. Except, whoops, TNR supports Ned Lamont. You know how you can tell? It's right there -- in the comments. By about a 2-1 margin (though I didn't have the patience to read every comment and count -- please correct me if I'm wrong).

But here are some other comments that can be read as reflective of TNR, and therefore Joe Lieberman (or, GAH!, have I ruined my own experiment and they can now be read as representative of Ned Lamont!)

• A vote against Joe Lieberman is a vote for the anti-American, pro-Hizbollah, pro-Hamas, pro-UN, anti-Semitic wing of the Democratic Party. It is as simple as that.
• Lieberman... I receive my directives from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
• And, it is the Jewish Democrats who backed Likud over Labour to sabotage Oslo and to re-build the IDF on the Anglo-American model.
• btw, after it appeared in the news today that Lieberman is closing the gap in a new poll released this morning, the Lamontsters seem to have perpetuated a denial of service attack against his site, causing it to crash. They are trying to smear that as Lieberman's staff not paying their internet bill. Real class acts. (Ahh, unsubstantiated accusations, the likes of which I haven't seen since, since, since, The National Review's blog from today.
• And finally, this sensible fellow shows how TNR is finally getting some sense in the editorial noggin: I don't have the time to address all the "a vote for Lamont is anti-semitic/anti-Israel/a purge/a defeat for Democrats" nonsense. Lieberman undermined his party's ability to act in loyal opposition to an administration run amok. Period. He deserves to lose his seat.

Lesson: comments can, and often are, made by anyone with the ability to type. They have something to do with the blog, but not a hell of a lot. Smearing a blog based on the commenters has about as much relevance as smearing a speaker based on a heckler...

Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.