Demonstrating the limits of his hidebound and dogmatic approach to the subject, Thers trots out some well-known archival footage of Happy Furry Puppy Story Time Music Hour c. June 2003 C.E., seemingly oblivious – or indifferent – to the mountains of critical scholarship which have taken place in the wake of its discovery. In Thers’ paternalistic view of history, the Left Blogosphere was a mere receiver of the dominant MSM culture – primitive metalhead barbarians exposed to the high culture of the middle Republic, if you will – and their role in this story, as the lesser culture, is simple to absorb and learn to ape the forms of ‘civilization.’ The story of harmless, even noble savages, and their domestication. But the true story, as any serious scholar of the field would know, is considerably more complicated – a story of cultural intercourse flowing both ways, of creativity, of senseless, senseless destruction and uncouthness, and gin gulped from crumpled plastic cups. Consider, as one example, this painstaking reconstruction of a comment thread, recently unearthed by Prof. Lee Siegel from the presumed site of tedbarlow.blogspot.com:

The parallels to the present day could not be more stark.