Josh Marshall's Inexcusable Error

I used to read Josh Marshall when he was just a regular blogger. Then he decided he had to be an empire and took to focusing on the day's political minutiae, which was enough to get him off my screen.

The latest from his site is really beyond the pale. Naturally, in today's despicable mediasphere, it will do nothing but garner him more traffic. Which you suspect is probably his goal all along.

Some writer on his site, who is afraid to even use his real name and goes by the 11th grade-level pen name "The Insolent Braggart," suggested that global warming skeptics should be executed:

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers

June 2, 2009, 9:42PM

What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.

So when the right wing fucktards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

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This is the kind of thing that does far, far more damage to the legitimate argument than anything any skeptic could ever say. It will never be forgotten and will exist as a thorn in side of everyone with something legitimate to say, forever, something they will have to work twice as hard to overcome. It's just an utter disgrace, and the fact that it's anonymous just makes it all the worse.

It's beyond me why Josh Marshall, who is trying his best to be a respectable journalist in a new age, would retain this person on his writing staff. IS's excuse?

I am not a trained writer... and was not able to get my point across.

Actually, this is the least of his problems. The real problem is he's not a trained thinker. He's just an idiot who reflects poorly on everyone.

The advent of ClimateDepot has seriously twisted the debate over this crucial issue, sending most of it to the domain of clowns and crackers. Which is, of course, their goal -- if they can trivialize the debate, no one will take it seriously, and they win.

And so IS's real sin is exactly that he enabled them to do this, and quickly.

He seems but a young graduate student somewhere, who lacks the maturity to take himself seriously. Until he learns -- and I'd say he has done enough damage already and doesn't deserve another change -- he will only putrify the debate and remain as a black eye on Josh Marshall and something for the global warming issue to live down. Thanks a lot.

If this is what a so-called leading blog on the blogosphere has to offer, even in correction, it just tells me again how stupid and juvenile this whole enterprise has become. And this is supposed to be our intellectual future?