I’m not as brave as Tommy, I don’t have the stomach for extended Freepi spelunking. I prefer the better-educated class of wingnuts over atThe Corner. Plus, I don’t need the whole hazmat gear, just a good strong pair of hip waders and some pepper spray.

So here’s my favorite batshit quote of the night from over there. Ladies and gents, I give you the illustrious intellectual stylings of the saggy but stalwartly dim John Derbyshire (emphasis mine):

I’m thinking of another election 29½ years ago, when Margaret
Thatcher swept into power in the U.K. As I recall, there was no great
fuss one way or the other about her being the first female Prime
Minister.Those of us who supported her just knew she had the right
stuff, and so she did.

If the first female Prime Minister had been someone lesser, especially someone from out in left field —Barbara Castle,
say — that likely would have been a disaster, and a great many people
would have concluded that electing a woman Prime Minister had been a
really bad idea.

It is of course a great thing that we are (it seems pretty certain)
electing a black President. It’s just a crying shame it had to bethis
shallow, empty man, who has never shown a flicker of interest in wealth
creation, whose head is stuffed with all the vapid nostrums of 1980s
student leftism, and who seems — putting the most charitable
construction on it — not to mind the brazenly thuggish tactics of his
supporters.

I’d gladly join in the cheering and self-congratulation of our
nation’s first black president, if it were a person of the caliber of
Margaret Thatcher. This guy is just Jimmy Carter lite.Way lite — ol’ Jimbo had at least run a business and served in the military.

Okay, first: Putting aside the fact thatBarbara Castle had a 60-year political career, that she was was already known as a firebrand while Thatcher was still wet behind the ears, that she served three decades as an MP, that she introduced the first Equal Pay for Women Act in Britain, and ironically, that the sheer power of her example paved the way for Thatcher’s later success, putting aside ALL of that, even her many adversaries respected her tenacity and most would scoff out loud at the characterization of a giant like Castle as “lesser.”

As for “out in left field,” well, I’ll give Derb-O the pun, but not the inference that Castle was out of touch with political reality (other than maybe political reality as experienced by a certain aging, reactionary, xenophobic, conservative, homophobic, transphobic, pundit ex-pat with pederastic tendencies).

As for the Thatcher being “swept into power” part. It’s true she was borne to office on the waves of an incredibly pivotal election, whatever else we here might say of it, it was a groundswell, a movement mentality. The implication here is that supporting Thatcher’s first term was an act of faith, that younger Derb, et al “just knew” Thatcher had the right stuff, it was a gut thing, a lofty righteous crusade type of thing. The Obama movement on the other hand? Those hundreds of thousands that responded to the call of history, you know, the ones that didn’t boo McCain last night when the President-Elect thanked him? Merely thugs in “this guy’s” thrall of vapidity and shallowness.

Excuse me? Sir? You might want … wait, I think I’ve got a tissue. See …you’ve got this whole…erm… flecks-of-angry-spittle thing happening on the upper lip there…

I realize the select population at The Corner may not realize how out of practice (with reality) they are, but it’s laughable how shopworn and overworked the invective is, especially in the service of putting over their oh-so-dismissive air of world weariness.