When News Is Slow, Invent a Controversy: R.S. McCain vs Ann Althouse

Robert Stacy McCain loves to push the envelope in getting hits for his blog, The Other McCain.  He ignores real conservative controversies (probably to avoid losing linky love) like the Geller/Spencer EDL slur, but creates a conservative controversy that gets him links (and it works, because here I am linking to him).

This week RSM called Ann Althouse "a rube" because the latter voted for Barack Obama, and insisted that Althouse admit her mistake.  He writes:

Friday, the Wisconsin law professor asserted that she “made a rational choice” in voting for Obama in 2008, because she does not want to admit the truth: She was wrong, and not merely incidentally wrong, but disastrously, catastrophically wrong.

Ann Althouse is a comely right-leaning blogger in Wisconsin.  She is also a law professor there.  She has been quoted by Rush Limbaugh and gets a huge number of visitors each day, and voilà, there is the reason for McCain's recent attack on her.  Althouse complied, discussed McCain's attack, rebutted him, belittled him, and wrote about him at length.  With her huge readership, she played right into McCain's hands, no doubt sending huge traffic his way, at least for a day or two.  McCain played her like a cheap fiddle at an Alabama hoe-down.  Cue wild fiddle music:  Grab your partners, round and round, doe-see-doe!  Yeeehaaa!

I agree with McCain's assessment of Ann's decision to vote for Barack Obama, as quoted above.  I am disappointed to learn that Ann did something so downright dumb and destructive.  But, as Donald Douglas has pointed out, McCain is just trolling for traffic.  And it worked, big time!  Has "The Other McCain" become the "National Enquirer" of the blogosphere?  What's next, Stacy, "Bigfoot Marries Elvis in a UFO"?

I forgive McCain for this cynical blog ploy, for one good reason:  it was very entertaining.  McCain earned his hits.

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