7 Commentardiest Commentards in 2007

No doubt compañero Salvador Allende would have recommended the forced sterilization of these retards. Let's do this:

1. Anonymous, rabid pro-lifer
If you get the gist of my post I was advocating better public policy toward birth control in Chile then this guy latches onto abortion because that's all his priest tells him. Then watch how he confuses "logic" for unbending dogmatism and filthy public policy. He says:

As long as the lifeless body is thrown into the trashcan by a certified abortionist, and not staring up at you from your closet, it's all okay. I mean, let's not be illogical. Why does it matter if the child is strangled with a shoestring by her mother, or is injected with poison by a "doctor" who goes into the mother's womb with the mother's permission. Or don't you support the right of every woman to kill her child?

What a douchebag (appropriate, no, considering that's practically all that's available in Chile). Here I squirt some dirty douchebag juice right back in his face:

...your "logic" that 'killing a baby is killing a baby' fails to acknowledge that most democratic, first-world societies have accepted the woman's right to abortion, but that virtually no modern society has legitimized killing birthed babies. In your world, it may be the same thing. But in the first world, there's a distinction.

2. Clare from Clare Says.
Although perhaps not a candidate for sterilization, Clare certainly defies coherency when she aggressively advances Chile's "Scandinavia of the South" narrative, telling me how-dare-you call Chile 'third world' then pointing to Cambodia and saying, now that's third world. Fine. But then she turns around and smugly says, "...its not actually comparative-- the whole third world thing." WTF, Clare. Make up your mind! So I tell her:

I'm happy that you consider Chile the best off among its neighbors, there are many measurements attesting to that I'm sure. I wonder, however, why you go to such great pains to describe how great Chile's HDI is, in comparison to other countries, and then you chide me for comparing when it comes to Inequality, which you so brush aside with disturbing ease, saying, "there is in many places"...

I would ask you to think more deeply about what it means that Chile has one of the WORST levels of inequality in the world. It's okay to compare. The World Bank did.

3. Malcolm B, the tiresome pedant over at 'Oil Wars'
So we had a little back-and-forth here I said:

my impression is that Chavez doesn't really give a shit about his people. He's sitting on a black gold mine yet poverty remains abysmal. He's aligning himself with other cruel, populist rulers and proving himself no better than the Bush he criticizes (although fortunately smaller in scale).

To which he responds:

Comparing Chavez to Bush (who has engaged in criminal invasions that have lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians)

Note how Malcom B-tard completely disregards my embedded disclaimer "fortunately smaller in scale". Then he gets personal:

---well, this remark serves to discredit you, makes you appear as an average, middle class, fearful opprotunist.

Sure I lunge for the jugular whenever I get a chance but I flatter myself that at least I look for a chance and this guy just has nothing. He's a dogmatic, pompous, incoherent, poor-hating, liberal boor. Then he starts getting all bizarrely voodoo like those hacks over at DailyKos:

My guess is that you have a psychic investment in a very racialized, classist status quo. Yes, it is easy to be a cynic--and cynicism and laziness is what killed Allende and brought Bush and Pinochet to the forefront as expressions of rightwing reaction and state terror.

Sadder yet I'm sure Malcolm tried out for DailyKos but didn't make the cut.

Anyway I remind Malcolm that Chileno is the most intelligently liberal blog about Chile, bitch-slap his rosy-red picture of Venezuela's happiness with Chavez by referencing Venezuelans I personally know whose livelihoods were undercut by Chavistas, plus I throw in a few other words about Malcom's miserable character. Hey, he started it. And besides, Chileno Focus Groups place high Satisfaction marks on my feisty tirades so click here to count yourself among the Satisfied.

4. Anonymous Coward, whose pronoun from now on will be "it"
Basically a sustained pro-Establishment whine but thankfully the aspirated "I-haven't-been-laid-in-40-years" tone lobbed underhand pitches. Low speed, highly rewarding batting practice. In an exemplary exchange, "it" says:

You criticize some leaders' "hatred" of the poor, but then you characterize poor Latin Americans as "brown people." Do you realize that sounds racist?

I say:

It sounds racist to you because you are ashamed of brownness. I see no shame in "brown", nor in "white" nor in "black" - you are the one who sounds racist.

5. Lago.
For the longest time I thought Lago was cool but not only was he a douchebag, but a douchebag filled with gasoline and back in November he lit the match. Prolly he was trying to do that the whole time but just was using wet matches: in other words, his inability to express himself well was disguising his explosive douchiness all along. He wrote:

You are just so unlucky. Canadian police, since the fifa thing, have just keep losing credibilty affaire after affaire. As you were the only blog in the world defending them, you will pay :-)

huh? Not only is he fundamentally confused about the position I took (and if I had taken that position I certainly wouldn't have been the only blog), but he kept trying to heap on the same erroneous point, that I'm somehow a bannerchild for all of Canada's police. The exchange is long and tiresome and the smell of burning douche-rubber will get to you but check it out anyway just to see what I'm talking about: Lago is a flaming douchebag.

6. Bruj@
In a nuanced blend of Xenophobia and Ignorance, our dear Bruj@ inadvertently achieves that fine, rare and bubbly thing we call Humor:

I suppose that really you are not Chilean, and suppose that you do not live in Chile. Therefore you cannot speak that you do not know.

LOL.

(For the record, she is a grown woman who calls herself "Witch").

Now, saving the best for last:

7. Pato!
Who so graciously takes it upon himself to speak for all Chileans when he declares:
If you ask any Chilean, they will tell you that we have a "rasca" country but we are still proud. Please try to mention a couple of good things about Chile or just go back home and forget about our little country that we really love.

I know what rasca means. I also know what fresco de raja means.

Alright it's a wrap. My condolences if you didn't make the list there were so many fine candidates. Better luck in 2008!