halcyon days of yore

Ah, there's nothing like other people's brushes with power to bring out the self-righteous twerp in some folks.  I was just waking up and splashing around in Technorati-land this morning when I came across this homesick abortion of a post by hitherto unknown to me blogger "Liza" of "Culture Kitchen".

To wit:

When I wrote Jane Hamsher is an idiot, Barbara O'Brien scolded me for calling out this white woman's antics...I was insulted, as so other black bloggers (I think there's a verb missing here.-ed.), for ("at", not "for"-ed.) the arrogance of the act. Given how priviledged (sic) she was by having the time, money and access to blog the Lamont campaign, why couldn't Jane Hamsher find as many black and latino bloggers in Connecticut and give them a voice and visibility through her blog?

...If you answer that, you can answer why Jane Hamsher is included in this group as opposed to any black or latino bloggers.

See, Liza's pissed because nobody invited her to lunch with Big Dog.  But, instead of coming right out and saying that, she's seizing on this opportunity to try and generate herself some publicity by insinuating that there's some kind of racist agenda at work.  Now, I will admit that when I saw the pictures from the meeting, I was surprised at the lily-whiteness of the crowd, but upon further inquiry, I was informed that several minority bloggers were invited, but declined.  Of course, silly me, I took the trouble to ask what the deal was before jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst.  Sure, lack of minority bloggers is a problem, but that's not really Liza's real agenda here.  She's using this as an opportunity to call attention to herself and climb up on the cross.  (That last nail's a bitch, innit?)

But, Liza, honey, if you want some attention, I'll be more than happy to give you some.

First of all:

Given how priviledged (sic) she was by having the time ("in having the time", "to have the time"? whatever.-ed.), money and access to blog the Lamont campaign, why couldn't Jane Hamsher find as many (as many as what?-ed) black and latino bloggers in Connecticut and give them a voice and visibility through her blog? 

Last time I checked, the dashing CT Blogger is, in fact, a black man.  And we've linked to him numerous times here, in fact, probably as much or more than any other Connecticut Blogger.  He shot the famous interview video Jane did with Ned Lamont that the rightards seized upon so eagerly as evidence of Ned Lamont's ties to liberal bloggers.

Not to mention the fact that Steve Gilliard (black), Pam Spaulding (also black), and Matt O (Latino) are contributors here, and our own beloved Pachacutec is a Latino man as well.  Oh, and of course, I'm gay, but I guess in Liza's world, the queers don't count as a minority, cos I could swear I saw a couple of them at lunch with President Clinton.  Or maybe the fact of my homosexuality is outweighed by my white-man-ism.  (Or would that be my white-man-hood?) But hey, Pach is gay and Latino, so he gets double points on the aggrieved minority scale.  He's got my back.

All of that is beside the point, though.  We don't work with any of those people because of their ethnicity.  We love them because they are all outstanding bloggers, awesome writers, and good friends.

Asking around, however, I have found out that Liza gets a lot of mileage out of playing the role of Alma Martyr.  It seems she is forever bitching that Atrios, Kos, et al never link to her and she hangs the blame for this on the fact that she's a woman.  Whereas, everyone I spoke with assured me that if she would actually WRITE SOMETHING PEOPLE WANTED TO READ, they'd be more than happy to send her some traffic.  It's so much easier, though, to invent conspiracies and wail about The Man rather than accepting that she's just not a very good writer and kind of a muddled thinker.

So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing people who are more talented than yourself and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off, maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion.  Although judging from your other posts that I read, mediocrity may be a chronic condition for you.  Still, I bet you could get a long way on locker-slamming and hair-flipping among the other 13 year olds.  Hell, it got you your own post here tonight, courtesy of Yours Truly, and I guess that's something.  You just might have a future in this blogging thing, although I think you might be more at home on LiveJournal or MySpace where you can post lots of photos of yourself to distract from your decidedly tepid prose and numerous grammatical faux pas. 

Sorry if I come off a little harsh, but it's probably kinder for me to tell you all of this now rather than letting you twist around for years in your persecuted little world before you collapse under the weight of your own pretensions and fade back into well-deserved obscurity.  Buuuuh-bye.

UPDATE: Okay, let's get something straight here.  By using the word "betters", I meant people who are more talented than Liza, and they are legion.  If you've decided that there's racial baggage in that statement, it says a lot more about your issues than mine.  Another thing that frosts me about this is when people say I'm being racist by going after Liza's execrable spelling and grammar.  Now, am I correct that this means you think that black people should be held to a lower standard of linguistic proficiency?  That's pretty damn racist if you ask me.  I don't think it's too much to ask that someone who wants to be considered A Writer should learn to properly use the language.  Liza has a masters degree.  I think that she should be able to properly spell the word "privilege", or at the very least, to use spell-check before she puts her posts up.

The really sad thing about this is that there was an opportunity here to address some really important points, but that opportunity has flown as an army of shameless attention-whores have jumped on the bandwagon and attempted to get their licks in.  For the record, I apologize to Liza for taking such a direct route of attack, but I do believe it is worth noting that I attacked her writing and her perpetually aggrieved tone, not her gender, and certainly not her race.

I have now said absolutely everything I intend to say about the topic. Thank you for your time.

UPDATE 2: Due to widespread misinterpretation, the word "betters" has been struck from this post and replaced with something that more accurately conveys my authorial intent.  Please.  Stop.  Whining.