You can’t remove the vulgarity from politics. Scott Eric Kaufman’s college-boy/preacher’s rant is as silly as his referring to himself as “far left”; he contradicts himself within a few moments of tapping the first keys on the keyboard. At the same time, I don’t read Kos. Politics is religion in America for those who pay attention, and I’m still an atheist.

But apart from all that, the brilliance and brittleness of a rapier wit is that it only works in context. If you didn’t know DD how could anyone know how this was meant?

“That Daily Kos type is gonna feel pretty fucking stupid when the guy who missed him first time comes back for the second attempt.”

It’s not particularly funny either way, but I can hear in my mind the tone of Anglo-archness that would make the intention at least a little clearer in person, though Brit snobbery fogs Brit politics (and Welshmen may as well be Texans)

Blogging is treated as casual, but treating any public communication casually multiplies the risks that your words will change their shape.

…The problem here is one (ironically) of register. In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t. You can have a private gathering, but it isn’t necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones….On the net, you have public, or you have secrets. The private intermediate sphere, with its careful buffering. is shattered. E-mails are forwarded verbatim. IRC transcripts, with throwaway comments, are preserved forever. You talk to your friends online, you talk to the world….And this is what the end of privacy means. It means the end of the private register. Not everything that is private is meant to be secret, meant to be hidden. It’s just not intended to be public. That grey area is fading, and soon it will be gone….

In forty years when all the really well known bloggers are reminiscing about the origins of blogging, dsquared will be referenced way out of proportion to his fame. Shorter…, anybody?

The man is a legend.