Adieu, Jihad Watch

My latest banning from Jihad Watch comments this past September left a bad aftertaste, only augmented acridly by the lack of support -- if not at times a melange of faint praise if not outright disdain -- from Jihad Watch regulars (save for one friend among them) in subsequent comments threads where my name resurfaced, particularly the one thread where the sneering Spencer and the prickly Marisol swooped in to deposit their, as Hugh Fitzgerald would have said with needless affectation, deux cents.

That by itself would not have been enough to tip me over the edge. For one thing, I've been banned three other times in the past (as far as I can remember; it's somewhat of a blur), all more or less as unfair as the most recent banning, yet I rebounded from them eventually to edge my presence back onto Jihad Watch comments. (Amusingly, the prickly Marisol (sounds like a variety of spring flower) and the hotheaded unhinged awake (sounds like a syndrome of manic-depressive sleep apnea) both have tried to argue that because Spencer deigned from on high as a benevolent Czar or Sultan would permit a cringing underling, to permit me to edge my way back slowly into Jihad Watch comments, that I should be as tremblingly grateful as a cowed Hindu dhimmi bowed before the Muslim tax-collector under Moghul rule remerces Allah for his life spared.)

At any rate, my decision will not affect my unwavering support of Jihad Watch as the gold standard par excellence of the Blogospheric ticker-tape UPI service of the Sidestream News on the problem of Islam (wow, what a mouthful); from here on reflected only by the prominent place I have always given it on my blogroll (a favor Spencer has refused to reciprocate not only to me, but worse to the far worthier Diana West, as well as to the far more influential Michelle Malkin and Debbie Schlussel, to the far more valuable Andrew Bostom, and to the far more constructively productive Gates of Vienna -- from whom one and all he has petulantly yanked their links off his blogroll after some mysterious falling out he has had with them, one by one, as we near, as Hugh Fitzgerald might have said (and probably numbered among them), ten little Indians). The denouement of that mystery, however, yet awaits a suitably shrewd Hercule Poirot to nose his probing proboscis after its musty scent among the back rooms and false walls of the Gentlemen's Club.

Nor will my decision mean I won't be popping in on the Jihad Watch website now and again, perhaps once a week. What it will mean is that I won't begin each and every morning complementing my first cup of coffee with a keen interest in perusing, for at least an hour or two, with a mixture of enthusiasm and horror (in the context of a spectrum ranging from amusement to exasperation), the latest stories generated by the Muslim world, then revisiting it perhaps periodically throughout each day, time permitting, and (at least before I was banned in September), participating in the lively discussions in the comments threads there mostly with mature and intelligent contributions, some of which may have been (Heaven help us) critical of this, that and the other thing Spencer or Fitzgerald formulated.

Aside from the reasons already stated, I have come to the realization (or, rather, the realization that has long incubated in my head has come to fruition) that Jihad Watch is, and has been for years, repeating itself. This is not so much the fault of Jihad Watch, nor of its editors: it is the fault of the Muslims and of our Western Dhimmis, whose respective pathologies, like all pathologies, tend to reiterate their madness incessantly, like that of zombis or cackling demons. Some of the features may change, kaleidoscopically; but the substance remains grimly, morbidly, relentlessly, the same.

As for the odd essay of analysis and commentary one finds on Jihad Watch (that is, commentary longer and broader than the glitter of sparkling wit or the salt and pepper of wry asides sprinkled here and there by Spencer or Marisol), I have begun to tire of those as well, and the latest addition, "Roland Shirk", as unremarkably capable as he is overall, only arouses the usual tedium, and irritation, of the painstaking unraveling of arguments (or amalgamations of apparent argument) constructed of an annoying device of interlocking parts, some sound, some flawed.

And so, them I bid adieu -- or, as with the end of the first Mary Poppins book, my farewell may well be just an au revoir.