Right? I haven't activated the comments function on this blog, mostly because I want to control how things look and also because anyone can communicate with me by email (using the name of this blog followed by @wisc.edu) and I'll post comments that I think are worth reading, but some other blogs have comments. Prof. Yin has comments, and I just discovered that someone said something about me in response to something nice Prof. Yin said about me. The commenter is "Mithras," who has named himself after a god and also has a blog. Check this out:

"...she exhibits a level-headed non-partisanship."

You are kidding, right? I haven't noticed one time that she criticized conservatives for anything or praised liberals for anything.

"The Democrats try to scare me about the Republicans, and the Republicans just want to be loved."

She doesn't curse, is that what qualifies as a thoughtful conservative now?

Well, talk about overheated rhetoric. Oh, and taking things out of context. I was writing about the letters I get from both parties, who both assume I'm already a supporter, and comparing the styles of the pleas for help:

I always find it weird that they assume you're a hardcore supporter, but they must find that the assumption helps make people feel needed and willing to chip in. I even receive membership cards to things I've never joined and letters inquiring why I haven't "renewed" my membership, letters full of wacky self-examination, mulling about what they could have done wrong to turn me away, like some needy old lover. Those last few things are all Republican moves. The Democratic letters are always trying to scare me about things that are about to happen, how I'm about to lose all my rights and so forth. I would have thought the Democrats would be more about love and the Republicans more about fear, but not so, at least when speaking to people they think might have some money to hand over. The Democrats try to scare me about the Republicans, and the Republicans just want to be loved.

The assumption that "Democrats would be more about love and the Republicans more about fear" hardly seems more flattering to the Republicans. And the part Mithras quoted, "the Republicans just want to be loved," goes with the earlier statement that their letters are "full of wacky self-examination, mulling about what they could have done wrong to turn me away, like some needy old lover." I haven't read much of Mithras's blog, but I see from Technorati he's reasonably popular. Well, I don't like his rhetoric from what I've seen (that one comment about me).

"You are kidding, right?" is the sort of line that passes for a witticism in TV screenplays (the actor lays heavy, faux world-weary emphasis on the second word). That thing of adding "right?" at the end of a statement, you can get dependent on that, right?