Is Nick Coleman "Wake4Democracy," or do all bitter libs sound alike?

The only thing I should have to say about the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Nick Coleman, whom Brother Hinderaker aptly describes as "a little-read, third-rate columnist for a second-tier daily newspaper," and whom I describe from his byline pic as "Brent Spiner after several dozen dioxin injections," is, "Who the hell is he?"

Ah, the power of the blogosphere.

But then I've seen Coleman's like (or should that be "ilk"?) before on republicanforum.com. One member, who went under two dozen different handles after we finally locked him out for misconduct, originally sparred with me many a time as "Wake4Democracy." Like most of our resident libs, he showed up in the usual state of frenzied rage over the very existence of the Bush presidency, and got his frenzied rage stoked considerably by getting his ass whipped by yours truly (and others) on a regular basis.

The Powerline-Coleman war (which is a war in the sense that this massacre in Mosul today was a "battle") isn't taking place in the same venue, of course, which, given Coleman's disinclination to face his nemeses head-to-head, would seem to give the "little-read, third-rate columnist" the remarkable distinction of being an even bigger pussy than my old friend Wake, who counted among his parting shots impersonating me on-Forum and posting an avalanche of racist, libelous messages to try and ruin my online reputation.

I'm guessing hacking onto Powerline's site and duplicating that performance is vastly beyond Coleman's capabilities, but if you appear to see Hindrocket, Big Trunk, and Deacon suddenly sounding like David Duke, Fred Phelps, and Jimmy Swaggart, keep this in mind.

At any rate, many bloggers big and small have weighed in on Coleman's blithering today, so I won't go through it line by line.

Well, okay, I will, but not with windy analysis far in excess of any substantive content that may actually have found its way into his rant by sheer random chance.

Oh, hell, you'll just have to take your chances.

The end of the year is a time to bury the hatchet, so congratulations to Powerline, the Twin Cities blog that last week was named Time magazine's "Blog of the Year!"

Now let me get a new hatchet.

Given where he proceeds to bury the first hatchet, isn't the second one kind of redundant?

These guys pretend to be family watchdogs but they are Rottweilers in sheep's clothing.

{scratching head} Your guess is as good as mine. What family does Coleman imagine they keep an eye on? What is the "sheep's clothing" meant to symbolize? The "rottweiler" crack could only refer to writing style, which doesn't come within a parsec of Johnson or Mirengoff. Hinderaker would come closest because he leavens his scholarly tomes with a noticeable sense of humor, which I would think would generate a parallel with "baying hyenas" instead.

Ironically, it's Coleman himself who displays the most "rottweilerian" characteristics.

They attack the Mainstream Media for not being fair while pursuing a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers.

Leaving aside the fact that Big Media stopped being "mainstream" several forged documents ago, how is pursuing a right-wing agenda "unfair," particularly when PL is quite transparent about its point of view and that the site is devoted to its advocacy? If Big Media would just be honest about its bias instead of embarrassingly trying to insist up and down that they don't have one, even in the midst of their headlong plunge into the ultraleft fever swamps, they might start regaining a fraction of the ton of credibility that they've squandered.

The aforementioned "agenda" actually predates "conservative think tanks," and in fact helped to spawn them, including the Claremont Institute.

As to "millionaire power brokers," do you want to say "GEORGE SOROS!" or shall I?

They should call themselves "Powertool." They don't speak truth to power. They just speak for power.

That's just Marxian gibber-gabber.

The lads behind Powerline are a bank vice president named Scott Johnson and a lawyer named John Hinderaker. If you read Powerline, you know them better by their fantasy names, Big Trunk (that's Johnson) and Hind Rocket (Hinderaker). I will leave it to the appropriate professionals to determine what they are compensating for, but they have received enormous attention from the despised Mainstream Media and deserve more.

Yes, the already-infamous penis reference. Although that might only refer to Johnson; could Coleman be invoking homophobic imagery regarding the "hind" in "Hind Rocket"?

I guess only "the appropriate professionals" could determine that with any degree of confidence.

I wish I didn't have to do it, because I already get ripped a lot on the site, which thankfully also has had some nice photos of bikini-clad candidates for Miss Universe to keep me company. But I accept Powerline's contempt; I am only a Mainstream Media man, while Big Trunk and Hind Rocket are way cool. They blog.

What Coleman means, of course, is that he thinks PL should get more negative Big Media attention, for which his pathetic column is supposed to be the down-payment. Given how he flatters himself in his second clause above, he makes his infuriated consternation at PL's accolades in Time about as inconspicuous as a nose zit on prom night.

What he has against cheesecake is anybody's guess (I could speculate that that might be a hidden reason behind the possible homophobic implication of the aforementioned ostensible penis reference, but given Coleman's geezerly veneer, it could be just that he never got any when it mattered, and now couldn't perform if he did). But the overt martyr pose is definitely something he doesn't want his readers to miss.

Almost like "bikini-clad Miss Universe contestants."

I work for a dopey old newspaper committed to covering the news fairly...

If I credited Coleman with having even the faint ghost of a sense of humor, I'd take that as an attempted tweaking irony. But I have no doubt that he really, truly believes every word of it. Because, in his mind, "pursuing a left-wing agenda cooked up in editorial board rooms and funded by millionaire power brokers and an army of hard-left 527 organizations" is "covering the news fairly."

Fairly for his agenda, that is.

Thus does another liberal project his own corruption upon his opponents, and give himself a moral gold star for his crusading efforts.

If Extreme bloggers...

IOW, conservative bloggers.

...who know nothing that happened before last Tuesday, had the same commitment to serving the public, I wouldn't have a problem.

IOW, if "extreme" bloggers dutifully and dociley converted to liberalism.

But like talk radio, they are dominated by the right and are only interested in being a megaphone without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or professional standards.

IOW, the blogosphere is yet another communications medium in which libs are getting their asses handed to them precisely because they can't compete and can't stack the deck against their adversaries, which is what "oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, [and lack of] professional standards" - none of which he ever so much as specifies with a single charge vis-a-vie the Powerline guys - really means.

Time magazine's "Blog of the Year" is not run by Boy Scouts. It is the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won't recognize. Unless you came from Alabama with a keyboard on your knee.

Hmm. If Powerline is the "spear," with whom does Coleman really have his beef? This is more than purloined martyrdom; it's egomania run amok.

It's also, come to think of it, another veiled penis reference.

As to the transformation of Minnesota, it is not, in fact, very far from turning "red" as it is. The governor, Tim Pawlenty, is a 'Pubbie, as is Senator Norm Coleman (hopefully no relation). And after his embarrassing conduct of the past few months, it's not difficult to see Marvelous Mark Dayton getting cashiered in '06 from the Senate seat he purchased as a hobby four years ago.

It'll never become "Alabama," which Coleman (Nick, that is) evidently equates with "hell," but bear in mind just how far into Toontown the man has wandered already.

But enough. It's time for auld acquaintance to be forgot.

That's the second time he pulls back the hammer before ramming it down again. You think he's got a boner for these guys?

So as a gift to Powerline, let me try my hand at some blogger-style "fact-checking."

If Coleman were to make a habit of this, he might actually become a journalist.

1) "It's totally unexpected," Johnson, the banker, told the newspaper after Powerline won "Blog of the Year."

But the Aw Shucks Act doesn't fly. Powerline campaigned shamelessly for awards, winning an online "Best Blog of 2004" a week before the Time honor. That online award was a bloggers' poll, and Powerline linked its readers to the award site 10 times during the balloting, shilling for votes.

Sure, for the Wizbang-sponsored award - which they didn't win. So did every other competing blog. That was part of the fun, and was mounted in that spirit. Indeed, it was lib blogs like DailyKos that got carried away and started taking it as seriously as if it were an election campaign.

Why Coleman conflates that with the Time recognition, which couldn't have been expected (unless he thinks PL has moles high in the upper reaches of the AOL-Time/Warner hierarchy), can only be explained by, well, a pointed absence of fact-checking.

2) "We keep it very much separate from our day jobs," said Hinderaker, meaning the boys don't blog at work.

But they do. Johnson recently had time at his bank job to post a despicable item sliming Sen. Mark Dayton. If I had the money they think I do, I'd put it all in TCF. Then I'd pull it out.

More assumptions in lieu of research. First, I think it's a safe bet that all three gents are sufficiently advanced in their careers that they don't have to punch a time clock. Second, I think it's also safe to say that because they are advanced in their careers, they are more than capable of maintaining them and also finding time to blog on the side.

If "Saint Nick" had bothered to, oh, I don't know, call up Hinderaker or Johnson or Mirengoff and ask, I'm sure they would have told him basically the same thing.

And he probably wouldn't have used their quotes, since it didn't fit in with his "agenda."

Beats me how Coleman can think PL "slimed" Mark Dayton. In point of fact, they ridiculed him mercilessly for his version of the Full Bore Linear Panic, which put them in the company of countless other blogs and much of official Washington, D.C. I also can't fathom why he would think that they would assume "a little-read, third-rate columnist for a second-tier daily newspaper" would be rolling in the dough.

Maybe Hindrocket should hit him up for a contribution.

3) Powerline sells thousands of dollars in ads, including one for T-shirts that say, "Hung Like a Republican."

But does Powerline or its mighty righty allies take money from political parties, campaigns or well-heeled benefactors who hope to affect Minnesota's politics from behind the scenes? We don't know, and they don't have to say.

And Coleman doesn't bother to find out. Doesn't stop him from slipping in the scurrilous innuendo, though. Ditto the "thousands of dollars in ads" comment, which implies tens or hundreds of thousands when even a couple grand would technically fit the definition.

What's he got against "hung like a Republican" t-shirts? Heck, I thought his "mighty righty allies" line was kind of catchy, myself.

But (not to quote Coleman) enough. It's getting late. And Brother Hinderaker did a nifty job of direct self-defense already. I particularly like these two snippets:

Poor Nick Coleman, the Minneapolis Star Tribune's worst columnist, devotes his entire column in tomorrow's newspaper to attacking us. I'd like to respond to his charges, only I can't figure out what they are.

...and...

Bizarre references like this one have, however, caused me to wonder about his mental health.

I wouldn't so wonder, personally. Coleman is, plainly and simply, an ultraliberal in the Bush era. As such, he is incapable of sounding sane because his ideology forbids him from recognizing just how much the political landscape has shifted out from underneath him. And Powerline is a big, fat reminder of it right smack in his own backyard. That, to answer Hindrocket's rhetorical question, is Coleman's point.

Yep, life is good....