A bit of a gripe

As anyone reading my political commentary can probably tell, I'm a conservative. Every day, after I get my son up, dressed and fed, read my Bible, and the little man and I do the day's lesson, I manage to find a bit of spare time to engage in one of my 3 hobbies: reading, crochet and politics. I don't have a ton of time to hang out on the internet and I don't tend to post a lot, but I do have a few sites I visit regularly because I enjoy their "quick hits" links for the news and they usually have excellent commentary.

Over the past week or so, with the Rush non-controversy rolling, one of my favorite blogs has gone all Hot Air on me and it's got me pretty peeved.

I can deal with differing opinions on a conservative blog. We're all human beings and we're not always gonna see eye-to-eye on everything. What I have a problem with is when the moderators on a site post what they consider "red meat" over and over and over in order to get traffic to their website and then proceed to chide the commentors for their passionate opinions on the subjects that they themselves post about. It's hypocritical and annoying. If you don't like Sarah Palin, don't post about her. If you are an atheist and don't care to see people of faith get riled up about something, don't post a faith-bashing thread. And if you think everyone should just move on from the Rush non-controversy then for the love of God, STOP POSTING ABOUT IT!!!

Hot Air is notorious about doing this exact thing (which is why I call this type of behavior "going all Hot Air") and it's so annoying that I've gone from checking over there daily to a brief look once every week or two.

So, yesterday I go to my favorite blog after being offline for most of the weekend. The very first post I see is one from the site owner calling everyone out for being so angry over the Rush thing. Of course, what's sparked the conflict on this site is that the owner and at least one of the mods refuses to acknowledge that the issue isn't just a matter of defending Rush's statement but of standing up for conservative principles and values on the whole; something which the GOP has failed miserably at in the past 8 years. That issue aside, I then look at the preceding posts for the day. The 3 post immediately before the one I've just described are all about the Rush thing, or some "cocktail party elitist" slamming Rush, or some website or another agreeing with the site owner's own view on the subject.

For an entire week every post about this issue has gotten a pretty significant backlash so if the site owner and mods had an issue with it- they claim to just want the whole thing to go away- you'd think they'd move on to something else. Alas no. We get 3-4 posts on this topic every day then a nasty diatribe about how unreasonable everyone's being. It's just too much.

As I stated earlier, I don't have a ton of time to hang out on the net. I get most of my news and commentary from a few select sites. So to see my favorite site engaging in what I can only imagine as traffic-whoring, and of the worst kind, it gets my hackles up a bit.

Anyway, I think I'm going to start frequenting Manly's Republic more often in place of my current favorite. Manly seems to have a good head on his shoulders and so far I haven't seen him traffic-whoring, so hopefully I'll find a new lurking home over there.

End rant.