Fun with Wingnut Insanity

One of my favorite parts about Wikipedia are the Talk pages, in which Wiki editors fight over what gets to be in the official articles.  And while writing my last post, I happened to check out the Talk page for Sonia Sotomayor, and it had plenty of fun stuff in it.

Here are some highlights:

There are a few conservatives who insist that the NY Times is to the left as the National Review is to the right, and defending the National Review as "a mainstream conservative publication."  And while I agree that they're fairly mainstream as far as conservatives go, they don't even pretend to be engaging in the type of journalism the NY Times does.  One person suggested that calling them "reactionary" is the same as calling the NY Times "revolutionary."  Apparently, conservatives haven't yet realized that most liberals don't consider it to be liberal.

And then there's a nutjob named "Yardleyman" who actually suggests that Sotomayor was heavily editing her own page under the name JRtx, and suggests those edits should be "watched closely."  And this ties in well with the general paranoia and delusions of grandeur seen in many conservatives, who like to imagine that they're actually combatting the forces of evil they pretend to oppose.  And it's also part of their projectionism, as they'd edit their own page if they were ever important enough to have one, and can only imagine that everyone else would do the same.  And as the funny conclusion, Yardleyman himself was eventually blocked.

And you might want to check out the lengthy battles as to whether Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic justice (she will be), as well as whether Puerto Ricans are immigrants (they're not).  But because conservatives just have to discredit their opponents at every turn, they just can't let even the tiniest point go.  One person goes as far as to suggest that an Oregonian in New York would be considered an "immigrant," simply as a way of saying that Sotomayor's parents were immigrants.  Wow.

And then there are those who insist that Sotomayor is provably "far-left" due to the same out-of-context quotes that conservatives keep tossing around.  When it's pointed out that this is personal opinion, you get responses like "Stop lying and calling her a "centrist". She said it. You can't deny it."  Sadly, conservatives are so wrapped into their own little world that they can't separate factual statements from the opinions they form from those statements; and anyone who has a different opinion is "lying."  

And finally, the funniest bit is when some conservative changed the words in a specific quote from Sotomayor, in order to reflect their personal word choices on the abortion issue.  Specifically, they changed the quote "the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds" into "the government is free to favor the pro-life position over the anti-life position, and can do so with public funds" and then removed the quotes.  And oddly, this was a case in which she favored the conservative position on abortion.

And unless I'm mistaken, the fun will continue until August, when the actual confirmation will be.  Looks like this is going to be one crazy summer.