Matt Yglesias flags this comment from a McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb screed:
But in their new role as bloggers, the paper’s editors seem to have all the intelligence and reason of the average Daily Kos diarist sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of dungeons and dragons.
So, to recap: The New York Times editorial page editors have now become bloggers, and thus are therefore unintelligent and unreasonable, like Daily Kos dairists, who are waiting for the next session of D&D. Matt notes by way of reply:
Say what you will about RPG-loving nerds, but surely we recognize that these widely-loathed creatures are the very same widely-loathed nerds you could find in the BC Calculus class, taking AP Physics, or wasting time being taught Turbo Pascal. ... You can't, in other words, mock the nerds in the basement as being too dumb, it's just not right.
I'll admit, one of the things that gave me comfort during my years of nerdish exile (wait, I think I'm still in nerdish exile!) is the thought that I was probably smarter than my tormentors. In fact, for a lot of us outsiders and nerds, it was the knowledge that, at the end of the day, we didn't fit in because we were too smart for the "in" crowd that enabled us to keep showing up for our daily rounds of abuse during high school. We may not have been cool. We may have liked pretending to be elves. We may have memorized embarassingly large chunks of dialogue from Monty Python movies, but fuck! At least we were smarter than these assholes!
Which leads to Matt's conclusion about Goldfarb (a blogger, mind you!) and a large contingent of McCain's supporters:
To speculate irresponsibly a bit, a lot of McCain's fans seem to me to be nerds who, instead of growing up and embracing their inner dungeon master, have instead decided that hanging out with the jock will make people think they're cool too.
If Matt's right, and I suspect he is, then Michael Goldfarb deserves both sympathy and a bit of advice: Michael, Michael, Michael, they'll never think you're cool. In fact, they're laughing at you right now! Join us, and embrace your inner Dungeon Master!
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