Baby, It's Cold Outside

Blogs are big. Blogs are tough. Michael Bérubé knows:

I think back to what my dear old mother used to tell me when I would run out to play with the other kids. “Michael,” she would say, “if you’re going outside, don’t forget to bring your blog.”

“Mom!” I would protest. “I don’t need a blog – nothing’s going to happen to me. Don’t be so overprotective alla time! And stop fixing my collar!”

“Michael, I’m not being overprotective. Someday you’ll look back on this day, and you’ll say, you know, my dear old mother was right – a boy needs a blog.”

“Sheesh, mom. As if. ’Bye.”

And, of course, I would run out into the world without a blog. Well, she was right, and she was right about the day that I would say that she was right. Sorry, mom.

Michael Bérubé's big, tough blog served him well the other day as he clubbed schoolyard bully David Horowitz with it.

Once, long ago, Horowitz may have been a reasonable person; at least he held reasonable, left-of-center political views. His brain is now so addled that he cannot distinguish among Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Bernardine Dohrn, Barbara Lee, Bill Moyers, John Edwards, and Barbra Streisand. They're all terrorists, because they don't agree with Horowitz's current reactionary, Manichean views. They didn't want to invade Iraq! They share "negative views of the Bush administration"! And there are lots more of them, right here in his imaginary network of the left! The horror, the horror! 

In a written debate on Horowitz's farcical website FrontPageMag, Bérubé completely demolished the imaginary network, along with any pretense Horowitiz might have had to intellectual honesty. That is, the demolishment would have been clear to any sentient reader except for the fact that Horowitz deleted many paragraphs of Bérubé's argument, so that Horowitz could plausibly accuse him of "not answer[ing] any of the points made in response to his original criticisms." If you can't win fair and square, just censor your opponent's arguments and then say he doesn't have any. A bully and a fraud.

That's where the big, strong blog comes in. Bérubé posted the real debate on his website, reinserting the censored sections, and the world is safe for honesty again, at least until Horowitz posts his next entry.

Mothers are right: it's a nasty world out there. So be sure to bundle up, and don't go anywhere without your blog. You never know when you might need it.