Banned From the Big Liberal Blogsophere: A Restrospective

      With my ban from Democratic Underground on Saturday 8/27 it is now 3 for 3. In the interests of both history and some mirth let us take a look back. Let's go the videotape!

      First there was Firedoglake. I was there the reviled Obamabot many from the start were asking that I be banned demanding to know 'How long are we gonna allow this?!' I had made an immediate big splash there with my first post in June "Firedoglake Ought to be Renamed RushLimbaughLake."

     This got lots of jeers-with some offering muted praise that I had brought up a good point that the way I had done so was irresponsible-but over all I received 277 responses, which on Firedoglake is a tremendous amount, usually on Jane Hamsher herself can regularly expect this much. So I declared victory. As this went so well I wrote another piece the very next day, "And Here's Another Way Firedoglake is Like Rush Limbaugh/"

     Although some naysayers started off the comments section by feigning boredom and disinterest-'yawn! bad joke is over' by the end of the day I had another 61 comments-again by FDL that is a lot of comments. And so it was during my time there my diary posts were always highly read and I even made a few-sort-of allies most notably, Freedom From All, who also sometimes went by the alias NoGod. His name does a good job of detonating my attitude as well.

     One could argue that public opinion or the opinion of the Obama hating FDL is just one more God, and he seemed to struggle with this as while he had been a long time FDLer now and again he would rebel and risk being tarred as a Right winger or Obamabot-for the record he supports Obama much less than I do.

    For the grisly details of my time as the resident Obamabot at FDL please see

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/banned-at-fdl-was-it-something-i-said.html

    and

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/restrospective-of-my-time-at.html

    For all this, the one thing you can say for FDL is it gave me closure. Jane finally banned me, falling back on the excuse that in some vague way I had said something intentionally dishonest. She never explained what this was and upon banning me, everything I had ever written was erased so there is no way to look directly at what had been said. My offending comment was in response to a piece she had written claiming that Obama's campaign, particularly in the person of David Axelrod, had being attacking Romney using anti-Mormon tactics and overall insinuating that he is "weird."

    What got me is that this was her second post like this on the day. Is that really the biggest concern right now, worrying about whether Mitt Romney is being treated entirely fairly in the course of a political campagin? I sent a reply saying that Romney is kind of weird-certainly his sense of humor is when he joked that a waitress had grabbed his ass during a campaign stop, or where he joked at another stop that he understands the plight of the unemployed as he himself is out of work; in the case of someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and never has had to work a day in his life-the work he has done while at Bain Capital was not about being a "job creator" but job destroyer-this falls a little flat and shows how out of touch he is.

    For this I was banned. Still I had closure for the reason was clear;at FDL there is a very simple litmus test: if you in any way support Obama or even disagree with any criticism about him no matter the facts of the matter-even when Righting arguments of those of the Cato Institute are employed-you are an Obamabot and therefore a "neo-liberal."

   So even someone like Bin Quick who talks about Donald Trump as an opponent of "neoliberalism" is given a respectful hearing but if you support Obama you never will, not at FDL

   At least this is clear. At KOS and DU I've been banned for much more vague reasons. My debut at KOS was every bit the barn burner that was my debut at FDL. However, it concluded with my being banned after just one post. What were the causes? It seems to be a few things. For one thing my screen name "abortionondemand" led some to claim that I was a Right wing troll-totally untrue but irony is not their forte. In the same vein, my opening line "Firebaggers and Obamabots! Obamabot's and Firebaggers! Lend me your ears!"

   Again I can only assume that they leave their ironymeters way down at KOS but for this they concluded that I'm a Right wing troll. For more on this (in)auspicious debut see

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/07/if-daily-kos-is-progressive-blog-where.html

  and

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-on-my-inauspicious-first-day-at.html

  And now my recent blackballing at DU

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-hit-trifecta-now-democratic.html

   This was different as I had really no run ins, got some recommends and had no real indication of a problem. One person asked me about the name and I explained I mean aborionondemand ironically. He said he understood but wasn't a fan of it and that I might get more questions. They never came but instead with no warning was banned after posting on Saturday.

   So what do I take from all this? Obviously the Big Liberal Blogosphere is not for me though I am very much a liberal. My sensibility is not conducive to those at the Big Liberal Blogsosphere, that I truly do need Freedom from All. Many others have similar stories-like Jim Schaub at ExtremeLiberal-who had a similar experience to me as has John Conners at Motor City Liberal.

   Many who are genuine liberals, and for that matter part of the very struggling Americans these so-called liberals claim to want to help, find that when they try to post at these blogs they are treated like Right wing trolls and told they are not true liberals.

   That's why I use the term Big Liberal Blogosphere as today the best places for those who want to think independently are the smaller emerging liberal blogs.