People come up to me and say “doc, do people really come up to you?” (thank you Emo). But after that they often ask, “doc, why do you regularly read dKos and Atrios and firedoglake and other unpleasant, fatuous, spurious, scurrilous and scatalogical sites of their ilk?”
Well, I tell them, sometimes its for the humor. These people are sincerely earnest in their paranoia and obsessive, hysterical righteousness and panic that the Four Arrrrs Of The Apocalypse(right-wingers and Republicans, the religious and the rural) are in control of government and gaining control of the left’s last bastion, the media. I sometimes laugh aloud at the absurdity I read on these blahgs, masquerading as intelligent and insightful commentary.
Secondly, I read them because it constantly reinforces my belief that these people are not only wrong-headed on policy and issues, but also without a clue as to the strategic or tactical method of gaining political power in this country so that they can institute those policies on those issues. Mainly because, and let me use the scientific term here, they are loony-toons.