From sedition to Afghanistan

Back in the day, my editorial writing professor told us that in The Biz, an editorial that took a stand on events that occurred far away and that had little impact on our day-to-day lives was referred to as "Afghanistaning." The idea was that the editorial writers had punked out on issues important to their readers and instead weighed in on things no one cared about (this was long before we invaded, by the way).

Anyway, I notice that the tagline on Matt Davis' online column makes it look like he was hired as a journalist and not as the affirmative action conservative that MLive's representatives described him as, and while it mentions that he was employed in the Michigan Republican Party (which, as I understand it, is more recent than his journalism work, which means it's really more relevant to readers), he neglects to mention what brought him to fame ... well, Jeff Wattrick describes it much better than I.

Davis admits he actually has no idea if this white privilege thing is real or not. Probably, he was too busy fomenting sedition to Google it.

You may count me among the dissenters to those who believe that merely toying around with the idea of an armed insurrection against the United States government is grounds for firing. After all, we may know accurately describe his employer, MLive, as "MLive, where toying around with the idea of an armed insurrection against the United States government is no longer a significant barrier to employment." We first and foremost traffic in weird humor around here, so you can understand our excitement at being able to legitimately refer to one of the state's major media outlets in such fashion. It's a credit to the industry, it is.

Wattrick mentions that his first piece for MLive was so uncontroversial that Davis himself appears to not really give a shit about it. Leastways, not enough of one to find out really anything about it. He's still got opinions about it, of course, and I'm guessing that the fact that he was able to put one in writing without the use of the ALL CAPS key is why they call him the thoughtful conservative.