October 31, 2013

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Self-described socialist Alex Pareene is more of the same. A bank-hating, entitlement-loving egalitarian that resembles the greasy dorm dweller at your college, Pareene ladles out slovenly praise for leftist income redistribution that has become a universal theme in the modern punditry class.

The left clearly likes to revel in its status as the underdog fighter of patriarchal, white, misogynistic authority. Until the very caricature of the finely dressed, cigar-smoking, pasty-faced capitalist is disfigured beyond comprehension, these radical levelers have vowed to keep shrieking about “privilege” until hoi polloi come to their senses.

The worst part is that they are rounds ahead in the fight. Affirmative action is accepted practice if the Supreme Court doesn’t set precedent by knocking it down sometime next year. Gavin McInnes’s run-in with a supposedly open-minded college professor over the topic of family versus career brought an army of epithets over his crazed assertion that women might actually enjoy motherhood.

It has become taboo to “shame” anybody for violating basic norms”€”including sexual deviance, poor manners, or even violent behavior. (Of course, that has not prohibited shaming that is deemed politically correct. It’s perfectly fine to make a public display of spurning racists or people who think men and women are, in fact, different. That’s called “enlightened” humiliation.) In short, progressivism has won the PR war.

So why the constant yammering on social justice?

My only guess is that leftism’s bitter warriors will not halt until all advantages are vanquished from society. Screeds decrying racism, prejudice, sexism, ableism, and all of natural man’s maladies will continue to be published until we are all sniveling, crippled shells of ourselves and anything more than a blind hunchback is considered a privileged elite. This is the world of egalitarianism, where the only success allowed is taking everyone else down a few pegs.

Plenty of rags employ writers who beat this theme like a dead horse. But Salon is just so over-the-top in righteous indignation, anyone who considers it a serious outlet for substantive analysis needs their head checked. At one time, the site was home to journalist and civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, who pulled no punches when it came to criticizing the Obama Administration’s murderous drone policy and brutal crackdown on whistleblowers (funny how Joan Walsh never called Greenwald a blithering racist). Now it publishes articles by progressives who fear teaming up with meanie libertarians to rein in Uncle Sam’s all-encompassing surveillance state. Oh, how the not-so-mighty have fallen.

The only site that reaches Salon’s repugnant liberalism is the Huffington Post, brainchild of a woman who married a Congressman that happened to have an inkling for those with a Y chromosome. My friend Julie Borowski accuses the Web mag of using rage-inducing headlines to attract attention from those they wish to poke in the eye; and by golly, she is right! The marketing scheme is ingenious. But cleverness does not always translate to respectable. What Bernie Madoff pulled off also took some cunning dupery.

Sensationalism has kept Salon one of the most viewed political outlets in the United States. From a capitalist perspective, that’s all fine and dandy. From an intellectual standpoint, it’s certainly cause for worry. Unless we want more whiny beta males hating themselves for the gender-wage gap, it would be best to deny Salon.com any more traffic. But being a man who takes pride in mocking the total idiocy of equalizer crybabies, I probably won”€™t follow my own advice.

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