Anyway, there's been some talk about onions around here lately. A quirky post about a Clinton campaign video touched off a giant blog swarm and what I think was my highest traffic day ever. Based on an earlier blog swarm last September, I now know that what sets the left blogosphere into intense, concerted action is calling attention to Bill Clinton's old sexual problems. I wonder why.
The most pathetic member of the swarm was Christopher Orr, who blogs at The Plank, which is part of the New Republic's website. He seems to have gotten his ideas not from trying to read my post but from consuming the tripe of lefty bloggers who went into a tizzy trying to protect Mrs. Clinton:
Althouse's reading of the scene inspired a fair number of incredulous posts from other bloggers ..."Other bloggers"? Don't you have the responsibility to say that the "incredulity" was entirely from left-o-sphere bloggers? This wasn't neutral. And it was phony incredulity. Really, are you that gullible or are you part of the effort to protect Mrs. Clinton?
He goes on to make some embarrassing blunders, but I don't want to bog down this post explaining them. I've written three comments over there -- demanding two apologies. And then Andrew Sullivan dips his toe in the controversy by linking to Orr's post. Brilliant.
Do you think I'm dissuaded from writing any more about the Clenis?
ADDED: "Ann Althouse is getting heat for her sexual interpretation of Bill & Hillary's Sopranos scene." That's the style of link I like, from WaPo's Howard Kurtz.
AND: I just want to emphasize that I stand by my original sexual interpretation. You've got a married couple talking about two foods, one of which is obviously a hole, and the other of which is so clearly phallic that this Google search gets over 70,000 hits.
The man wants the hole-shaped item, and the woman forbids it. She insists that he confine himself to the phallic item, which has been sliced down to puny, thin stick form. The man looks at it sadly, and the woman tells him it's for his own good. If you don't see sexual imagery there, you exist on a very narrow band of human imagination. I don't see how you are competent to watch film. Christopher Orr appears to be a film critic, too!
When Clinton sadly bites into the carrot stick of his own castration, it makes a crunch noise -- ouch! -- and it's that noise that causes the ominous looking man at the bar ("Johnny Sack") to turn and look at him. He then walks by and gives him a glare. What does that glare mean in the Clinton video? I think it means: "What kind of man are you?"
UPDATE: Christopher Orr tries to respond to my criticism of his attack on me. I respond in his comments this way:
1. You miss the whole point of the part about suing, which was an allusion to another controversy we'd been discussing on my blog, and not anything about me thinking I could sue. You write "after complaining that the blogger wrote 'sexual things' about her, she theorized that he had a small penis and would therefore prefer phallic calamari to vagina-like onion rings." You omit that the blogger calls himself "Instaputz." I wrote: "By the way a 'putz' is a little penis, so he might want to order the fried calamari instead of the onion rings." So you deceptively laundered out the whole quality of the joke and made me look as if I were just sour and vindictive. Incredible!
2. I write what I think, including what I think about the sexual connotations of a wife denying her husband circular food items and confining him to a bowl of pared-down cylindars. I am aware that my writing is popular, and I realize that things like that bring readers, which I enjoy, but I admitted that that one line was a taunt intended to poke other bloggers to respond. So what? Blogging is something of a game sometimes. I have fun with it, you know? And in that aspect of blogging, the Site Meter keeps score, and it's part of the fun to watch the score. I never say that I think the traffic was only a result of that line, so, again, you miss the point.
3. I defend myself from attacks. Not always, but to the extent that I choose. There were some high-traffic bloggers saying vicious things about me. I hit back, totally justified, and in a mostly humorous way -- as with the calamari wisecrack.
Finally, you say "I fear the best I can do is to say that I'm rather sorry to have engaged her at all." Ha! You'd prefer to slam people and have them silently take it, right? Bloggers don't do that. The comfy old days of MSM are gone. Thanks for admitting that you can't handle the new situation where the people you attack have a way of fighting back.
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