Wanker? Marc Cooper is taking it on the chin from the peanut gallery, apparently for having had the audacity to tweak his editors at the Nation for employing Alexander Cockburn, etc. Having been purged from his site's blogroll recently (rat bastard !!), I suppose I should avail myself of the opportunity to pile on, or even lend my support to this burgeoning drive to blacklist the writer for denouncing Ramsey Clark, Kim jong-il and other miscreants, but I think some respect should be given to anyone who barely escaped Pinochet's reign of terror with his life. Unlike Hitchens, he hasn't joined the Amen Corner on the Iraqi debacle, and he's an honest-to-goodness journalist/activist/blackjack player, not some college professor shilling for the Democratic Party between classes.

Of course, Cooper will often go after liberals and leftists with an animus that seems disproportionate to their misdeeds, particularly the Clintons, and he has a clear bias towards ineffectual and outdated progressive institutions (especially labor unions) and leaders (ie., Ralph Nader), and against those on the left, such as "Kos", Barbara Boxer and Michael Moore, who can actually draw blood against the opposition. He's also not a fan of the Democratic Party, or any other institution that attempts to be a broadbased, mass political movement; his ideal political party is one that would represent the likeminded 20% of the electorate, letting the other 80% run things in D.C. while his allies remain virgin pure in permanent opposition.

In short, if you're looking for an ally in an electoral context, he ain't it. However, if you still believe that the death penalty is an abomination, that workers deserve more than having their interests "defended" by a political party that demands their money and their votes but does nothing to fight for their rights, that there should be zero tolerance for Democrats who vote to support the judicial ideology of Scalia, Thomas and Alito, and that, in the long run, there are more important things in the world than the outing of Valerie Plame, the internal politics of Air America Radio, or the sinister machinations of Diebold, then Cooper is well worth the read.

UPDATE: For a bit of comic relief, this young man was clearly off his meds when he posted on the same topic. "Assclown", indeed....