Best of the Blogosphere, Part 2: the Medium Lobster on the Power of the Glow

(Second in an occasional and entirely whimsical series. Other entries here.)

Fafblog has been, for years, one of the funniest sites on the web -- one of the funniest political sites, sure, but also just one of the funniest, period. The political undercurrent just gives it a nice bite, like food spicy enough to get your mouth tingling.

Recently, alas, they have been on hiatus -- and many people across the web have been suffering serious Fafblog withdrawal. But, hip-hip-hurray, they're back. To celebrate, I thought I'd mention one of their old posts, a personal favorite from the deep well of Fafbloggy goodness. So the second official Attempts Best of the Blogosphere™ post is The Power of the Glow.

When I gave the first of these awards, I was able to give a general sense of the post by saying what it was about -- a blogger reading and interpreting, humorously, a political book. Fafblog is not so easily summarized. Suffice to say that this post gets at -- really, really gets at, in the way that sometimes only brilliant satire can get at something -- the essential Republican reason that they think that Bush (particularly) and other Republicans (generally) are better on terrorism than Democrats. Oh, it's not what they'd say if you asked them. Rather, if you boil down their argument, taking all the calorie-less water out of it, it's what you'd be left with.

It's not that they make us safer in any practical way -- they manifestly don't: aggressive wars, torture, the basic failure to secure ports and chemical plants, and so on and so forth, make it abundantly clear that actual, tangible security is not the standard here -- or, rather, that actual tangible changes that might improve security aren't. Rather, they think security comes not from, y'know, looking carefully for bombs or not making people hate you, but from... the Power of the Glow.

And for that, you'll have to go read the Medium Lobster at the now-happily-back-on-line Fafblog. Or reread it, if you read it then. For, like the best humor, it's not only funny: it's right, telling you something true and important about the world.