Time flies when you’re having fun: Eschaton is ten years old today. I must’ve been one of the first people to put Atrios on the blogroll back then, having barely been blogging for a month myself; no idea how I even found him — probably via Avedon? Back then the closest thing to a liberal (let alone leftwing) voice in the American blogosphere was Andy Sullivan, he who accused the “liberal elites in their coastal enclaves” of treason while the bodies were still falling out of the WTC. The only real progressive bloggers were people like Avedon and other science fiction fans, small voices lost in a wilderness of howling rightwing insanity.
And then came Atrios and he quickly became a focal point for all those people disgusted with these wingnuts and warbloggers, inspiring quite a few others to start blogging while, certainly in these first critical years, he himself was also very good at promoting new, interesting bloggers. For better or worse, he was crucial in the establishment of the liberal blogosphere, in providing pushback against the insanity of both the warbloggers and the wankers in the socalled professional press.
To celebrate, he has put together a list of the Ten Greatest Wankers of the Decade, a veritable treasure trove of assholes and douchecopters:
- Ten: Megan “2×4” McArdle
- Nine: Richard “the liberal voice in the Washington Post” Cohen
- Eight: Diane “The Dixie Chicks are traitors” Sawyer
- Seven: Jonah “Liberal Fascism” Goldberg
- Six: Lord “you peasants better know your place” Saletan
- Five: Mark “Very Important Wanker” Halperin
- Four: Joe “as the one true Democrat my job is to oppose anything Democrats are for” Klein
- Three: Andrew “The Bell Curve is too valid scientific research” Sullivan
- Two: Fred “Dumb, rightwing and hateful? Here’s your publishing contract” Hiatt
- One: Who else could it be?
Some are more active these days than other, many other worthwhile candidates were skipped (where are Glenn Reynolds or Anne Coulter?), but this parade of horrors is still a sadly accurate view of a decade that’s been more bad than good.
Barry Freed
April 17, 2012 at 5:06 pmI think Eschaton was probably the first blog of any kind that I started commenting on regularly (before that it was mostly Slashdot and mostly as an AC). It’s been about half a dozen years since I’ve been back in those threads and it was good to recognize a few of the regulars from back in the day while leaving my congratulations on a few of todays threads. It was especially a favorite haunt while watching election returns during the dark days of the Bush years. There was a real sense of community in those threads. OTOH, Disqus actually made me miss Haloscan – imagine that!