Reading notes

I’m really at a loss for words when I see things like this, and in the Wall Street Journal —

Little Green Footballs has given out its second annual Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year. This year’s winner: Rachel Corrie, the terror advocate who died in a bulldozer accident last March. Corrie picked up 28.8% of the vote in the 10-candidate finals, edging out Michael Moore (26.7%), who also finished second (behind Jimmy Carter) in 2002. Moore, who we hear dedicated his most recent “book” to Corrie, is the Susan Lucci of idiotarians. As one LGF commenter writes, “Michael Moore has to be crushed he didn’t win.”

I used to visit LGF long ago when its blog design techniques were new, clever, and freely shared. (Maybe they still are.) But as its content fell into its present state I realized I needed to stay away. Engaging in — or even reading — the hateful talk there just seemed to me like playing Russian roulette with your soul.

Rachel Corrie a “terror advocate”? How can a peace activist be mistaken for a terror advocate? “Bulldozer accident”? She was run over, twice. What kind of people ridicule the violent death of someone they didn’t know and at worst only disagree with? (Rachel couldn’t have been anyone’s enemy.)

Compassionately conservative? Or hearts of stone? Waving the flag and voting for Bush at a precinct near you.

Background:

• Wikipedia: Rachel Corrie
• Veterans for Peace: Statement on the murder of Rachel Corrie

(Less reprehensible but equally unfunny, and similarly illustrative: Jimmy Carter, Nobel peace prize winner, an idiotarian?)

[via Daily Kos]