Sunday
Yours truly got a mention in a whimsical New York Times article by William Safire in which he makes the point that "coiners can’t be choosers"... once an epithet, in this case Moonbat, escapes into the general meme-pool, the coiner has no control over how it actually gets used.
Moonbats just seems so fitting to apply to leftists and other pacifists, and besides, the left already has plenty of names for the rational realists.
Don't worry, I'll continue to use it in it proper context.
Posted by Mike Lorrey at September 4, 2006 07:08 AM
Noam Chomsky? Fair choice.
I had always thought 'Monbiot' was the ancestral form, as well as being the archetype.
Ok, I was wrong. It happens.
Posted by Chris Harper at September 4, 2006 10:36 AM
Chomsky is a moonbat, but IMHO his erudition and linguistics reputation gives moonbats too much credibility. The Chicago 7, the Merry Pranksters, the SLA, CPA, WWP, UPJ, ANSWER, and particularly, Ramsey Clark, are all much more within the mainstream of the moonbattery.
The primary reason that the term has come to be applied to the left, Mr. Safire, is due to David Horowitz'
"Moonbat Central" website, exposing the moonbat left. No lefties have made a similar effort. And of course, it would make me even less popular among my fellow libertarians, given how we tend to adore our absolutists, to further use the term to describe certain outspoken militants within the movement.
Posted by Mike Lorrey at September 4, 2006 07:02 PM
without comment, cartoon for september 6th: http://www.idrewthis.org/
Posted by alecm at September 7, 2006 11:18 AM
alcecm... actually that is a very reasonable example of a moonbat, and I include the artist...
I think everyone deserves to have basic health care
Translated: health care must be provided at other people's expense.
If every credible scientist alive says global warming is real, I believe them
So do I... except every credible scientist alive does not say global warming is real and some also say it is real but human action has little or nothing to do with it.
Isn't it bloody obvious by now that the war was sold dishonestly?
You mean like the idea Saddam really did intend to build nuclear weapons?
Torture!! Endless war!! Down with brown people!!
Translation: anyone who disagrees with the moonbat is a psychopathic fascist.
Yup. That is a moonbat alright, sanctimonious and dissembling in equal measure.
Posted by Perry de Havilland at September 7, 2006 11:31 AM
The late Mike Royko, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, invented the nickname Governor Moonbeam for the former Governor of California, Jerry Brown. The name stuck. After several years, Royko himself was so sick and tired of hearing it applied to Brown that he asked his readers to please stop using it.
Too late! The name will follow Brown to his grave and the best he can hope is they'll omit it from his epitaph.
Posted by Jack Olson at September 8, 2006 06:50 PM
