What happens when a person’s dreams die and they have to explore alternatives?  What if someone never really got over their original dream?  My Imaginary girlfriend has served her time in the penalty box and has come out swinging, trying to debunk my labeling of Douglas Ernst (ugh, she was quiet for long enough for me to humor her one more time) as a partisan hack.  Her insistence that I support all of my accusations seems trivial when comparing my work to someone who lies as much as Douglas Ernst, but here we go again.  What if someone wanted to be a screenwriter, but failed and became a partisan hack instead?  Where could we find such an example?  I present to you: the bitter partisan hackery of Douglas Ernst.

By now, it should be obvious that Douglas Ernst is a partisan hack.  If you don’t believe me, here’s a quote I would like you to read, “(regarding) the sad state of affairs the country is in. If I was a partisan hack I’d say that it all began with Barack Obama’s apology tour of the world.”  I picked this quote for 2 reasons, 1. I think it is funny that Douglas Ernst is pretending that he isn’t a partisan hack; 2. Douglas Ernst is pretending he isn’t a partisan hack while simultaneously blaming all of our country’s problems on a new president’s so-called “Apology Tour.”  You can’t make this shit up. It wasn’t a decade of war, a brutal financial crash, a feeling of abandonment in natural disaster victims, the tarnishing of American character and honor when war atrocities and sanctioned torture were revealed to the citizens, none of that.  It was the “Apology Tour” that President Obama went on in 2009 that has caused the sad state of affairs in our country.  After reading that quote, if anyone thinks that Douglas Ernst is not a partisan hack (including Douglas Ernst himself), I would happily read whatever you want to write to prove me wrong.  Otherwise, we should all admit what we know to be true and move on to why Douglas Ernst isn’t being all the partisan hack he could be.

It’s a numbers game.  Partisan hackery isn’t about writing 1 long article a month that is well researched, well written, and balanced.  It’s about writing 15 posts a month about why Liberals suck and Conservatives rule.  Douglas Ernst is doing this correctly, not a single article he as written will take you more than 2 minutes to read, nor will they say anything positive about anyone who doesn’t claim to be conservative.  That’s part 2 of the numbers game, accepting and defending people who (even in a slightly, kinda, way) claim to be conservative so that your numbers are inflated, but provable.

The most important part to Douglas Ernst is that they have to claim to be conservative.  If he was maximizing his partisan hackery he would write about all the people who say they are liberals and then claim them for the conservative cause.  Any true conservative would argue that someone like President George W. Bush is not a conservative (a quote from conservapedia: “”Bush clearly is not a Reaganite or “small ‘c’ conservative.”), but he does claim to be a conservative, so Douglas Ernst accepts that as validation and defends him vehemently.  That’s exactly what a partisan hack would do, but Douglas Ernst needs to adopt (kidnap may be a more appropriate term) more people who label themselves as liberals into the conservative fold.  There is room for improvement, but for the most part, good job Douglas Ernst.

It’s about misinformation.  Partisan hackery requires you to take the truth and twist it into whatever shape you want it to be and then convince others that you’re not lying.  Douglas Ernst is doing this correctly; he repeatedly lies about little things a normal person wouldn’t suspect that anyone would lie about so his lies sound believable.  Since Douglas Ernst is more than willing to lie to support his claims, he doesn’t think he actually needs the truth to write a short post that takes 2 minutes to read.  That is where his partisan hackery is lacking.  I would say that you must write 25% of your posts fib free so that anyone defending you could point at those posts and say, “look here, Douglas Ernst is saying some uncomfortable truths about conservatives”, that gives you just enough appearance of partisan-free hackery to fool some people.  The space between always lying, instead of using the truth to say something similar, is the area that needs improvement.  But, for the willingness to lie to support his opinions, good job Douglas Ernst.

There are lots of things Douglas Ernst is doing right, but there is one area in which he could use some improvement: celebrity endorsement.  Douglas Ernst spends an unusually large amount of time bitching about celebrities.  A quick search of his blog for the word “Hollywood” will yield 731 results.  After seeing that number I didn’t need to do any other searches to know I was on to something.  If you look through the search results, all you see is negative articles about people who have no idea Douglas Ernst exists.  Keep digging, and you’ll find his rants about movie adaptations of comic books and you can practically taste the bitterness from Douglas Ernst’s words.  At this point, I felt kind of bad for Douglas Ernst and had to stop reading.  Here is a guy who loves comic books and wanted to be a screenwriter, that is picking apart the work he wishes he was doing.  Just because he’s not doing what he wishes he was doing, it doesn’t mean he has to alienate the people who are.  If he wants to take his partisan hackery to a new level, he will have to get some of them on his side to help, not only advance his cause, but advance his career as well.  His bitterness and envy will need to be shelved for now and revisited when he has some powerful celebrity allies in order for him to be all the hack he can be.

Some may say this was a side-step and curse my imaginary girlfriend because we didn’t move forward, but I feel differently.  It puts what Douglas Ernst thinks about the “Hollywood Elitists” in perspective and it allows us to learn a little more about him.  Both of these will be necessary for my next few posts to make any sense.  We’re in the back half now, almost ready to add everything together in a big bowl, mix it up, and bake it to see what kind of cake we get.  Only a couple more entries left, I’m hoping you’ll stay with me so that together we can find out if Douglas Ernst hates America.