Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Amateur? Moi?

Jo Egelhoff, of FoxPolitics.net, is mighty upset that her candidate for DPI chief lost in yesterday's elections. For some reason, she decided to take her frustrations out on me:
And then there’s the spin of amateur liberal pundit Chris Liebenthal. Simply unbelievable in the face of WEAC money thrown at the race. Absolutely unbelievable.
I think [Fernandez] would have had a better chance of winning except for two things. The fact that she was too willing to sidle up to the special interests was one of them. The other was that some of her ideas and positions showed just how unqualified she really was for the job.
Perfect lack of class. And lack of truth.
In her frustration, about the only thing she got correct was the spelling of my name.

Please note that she does not indicate why she thinks there is a supposed lack of class or truth. I guess in her world, her saying so makes it true. This appears to be a common ailment among a lot of the right wingers, so it does not surprise me. It is also rather ironic that this is coming from someone that occasionally links to my posts, but has yet to be able to transcribe the title of the post accurately.

Another thing that is not surprising is her denial of my point about special interest. The tangled web from K12 (who keep checking in here to see if I wrote about them) to All Children Matter, she is not what most people would call squeaky clean from the entanglements of the special interests.

Considering that the two Supreme Court races in which similar special interests were involved led to the bought elections of two justices that start with a cloud of shame even before they were sworn in, it is not at all surprising that people are shunning that type of politics now. It also didn't help Ms. Fernandez to have Howard Fuller, a pro-school choice advocate, throw his support behind Evers.

But the part that I am still chuckling about is the "amateur pundit" line. Obviously, Ms. Egelhoff meant pundit to be defined as critic and commenter instead of learned person. She wouldn't want to give me any credit now, would she.

But the amateur part is a bit bemusing. Amateur could mean novice, but since I am approaching my second blogiversary, counting the time that folkbum has been kind enough to get me started and host me for this whole time, I don't see that being applicable.

It could also mean that I do not do this for pay, but for the love of it. Well, I do enjoy the discourse, and have a cyber-soapbox on which to offer my opinions, but I also have these blog ads on the side bar, which I am told will someday produce revenue. So I do (or more accurately, someday will, hopefully) receive compensation, no matter how meager, for my work here.

The third option for amateur is the most accurate, but probably not what she meant. That would be when amateur means the opposite of professional. It is quite true that I do not have someone paying to write what they want me to write, like Bush and the Republicans paid some "professionals" to do. Nor am I part of an echo chamber that follows these professionals.

But hey, Ms. Egelhoff, thanks for reading.

1 comment:

  1. Amateur? My goodness, I thought you were a professional. I guess all those advertisements must have fooled me.

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