President of the Message Board

Forget the commie scare, in many ways Obama and his gang are operating more like message board cowboys these days than totalitarians bent on world conquest. For those who've fought the board wars think about the attack on Fox News a sec-- isn't the term "Faux News" popular with lefty commenters on most political boards? Don't they question the network's very existence in the very same manner the White House is doing now?

Another popular message board trend is the ad-hominem attack. Anectodally speaking, it seems more common for the far left posters to use this dredge first even if both sides engage in it far too much. They must think that by first assassinating their opponent's character their argument will be that much easier to assassinate later.

But it quite often fails epically, resulting in a horde of other posters attacking the attacker for the attack. If bad enough the horde will also include some on the same 'side' as the attacker, which is exactly what we're seeing now with in the Fox thing with unlikely supporters such as Helen Thomas and the New York Times cropping up.

Here's another clue--the word 'obtuse'. In a story today carried on CNN an administration official, when discussing troop levels in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying:

"Afghanistan is not Iraq," one senior administration official said. "To say that we can take what we did in Iraq and Xerox it and send it to Afghanistan is obtuse."

This is not a commonly used word amongst the commoners. Nobody I know uses "obtuse" in daily conversation, most would think it has to do with geometry, but I'd guess a lot of Olbermann and Maddow viewers use it quite often since it's popular on the boards.

Now, it's unlikely the White House will get "banned" by the moderators for violating the terms of service, unless the moderators are the voters and banning represents the bouncing of some of the players in 2010 and 2012 . Anyway, it would be fun to know what the Journo-Listers think about all of this.