Interview with the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller
Posted on November 22, 2005
Many know him as the Emperor Misha, Darth Misha or the Rottweiller. We usually address him as simply Misha, and we want to thank his royalness for allowing this humble blog to do his first time ever, exlusive interview. So, on with the show. Our interview with the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller. A little warning, this interview is about a mile long.
1. When did you start blogging. What inspired you to do so?
I started back in August of 2002. What inspired me to do so? Well, it was a number of things, actually. I’d started out devouring opinion columns like the ones on townhall.com right after 9/11 to find out how other conservatives like myself felt and because it helped to read pieces written by others as angry as myself letting it all hang out, so to speak. It was a huge relief to learn that the vapid nonsense propagated by the MSM wasn’t in any way representative of how real human beings felt, so to speak.
Pretty soon, this led to blogs which were, at that time, really beginning to pop up all over the place and, as a natural result of blogs linking to just about everything they talk about as opposed to the “professional” media who rely almost entirely upon “unnamed sources” for evidence, I made my first acquaintance with the Loony Left by browsing to http://warbloggerwatch.blogspot.com/, a blog that has been pretty much dead for a long time now but used to be a clearing house for the most ridiculous of moonbats (a term that wasn’t in common use back then).
I had a lot of fun skewering them in their comments and, after a while, good people started noticing (that blog was quite a bit in the public eye back then) and started suggesting that I start up one of my own. A particularly insistent lady name of Donna V. deserves most of the credit, which is why she’s listed as my “blogmother” although she never, to the best of my knowledge, had a blog.
So I set up an account with BlogSpot (or “Blogsnot” as they came to be known thanks to their trademark unreliable service, but you get what you pay for and they were free) and started wasting bandwidth like there was no tomorrow.
The rest, as they say, is history.
2. Do you feel that you are making a difference? Do you feel that some of the A list bloggers have become the very thing they promised to save us from? MSM.
I can say that I didn’t set out to make a difference, that’s for sure. I really only ever started because I was told to repeatedly and, frankly, because I liked the idea. My own corner of cyberspace where I could choose the topics and rant and rave to my heart’s content. I didn’t ever expect anybody to actually read it, however, so “making a difference” never entered into my mind.
Then the site took off like a rocket. There are a number of people out there that I owe that to, and I know that I can’t possibly remember to mention all of them, but I remember Donna, of course, for cajoling me into starting, John Cole of Baloon Juice for being the first to demand that somebody pay off BlogSnot to remove the advertising banner that was the price of a free site back then, Bill Quick of the Daily Pundit to be one of the first of the Big Guys to put me on his blogroll, Rachel Lucas for making my site look great and many, many more. And then there’s James Lileks who was the first established media person to link to me, I think he knew me from my days of pissing off the warbloggerwatch.com people morons, and the Instapundit who gave me the first day of 2,000+ visitors.
So am I making a difference? Lots of people tell me I am, and I’ll take their word for it, although I don’t particularly feel that I’m worthy of the honor. Lots of people are making a difference, and most of them are making more of one than I am, if you ask me. I’m proud of and honored by whatever part of it I can claim, however, and as my number of visitors has soared into the thousands, I’d be lying if I tried to claim that I wasn’t aware of the responsibility and, more importantly, the possibilities for doing something good that that has placed into my unworthy hands. I wish I could do more, but I try to get involved in good causes as much as I can. Since blogging isn’t a paying job, I can’t always devote as much time to it as I’d like to, however. But if there’s a cause in need of help out there, nothing pleases me more than to be able to lend a hand by spreading the word.
Whether it’s doing any good I’ll let others be the judge of.
Have the “A List Bloggers” sold out?
You ought to be more careful than to ask an old rebel blogger a question like that.
It depends on what you mean by “sold out.” If it you’re talking about having become mainstream in the sense that they’re desperately afraid of appearing to have a bias, I think that quite a few of them have. Instapundit and Powerline used to be quite incisive and unafraid of stepping on toes (the latter made their fortune by stepping on toes), but then their blogs turned into businesses with a steady stream of thousands of dollars of ad revenue and they sort of mellowed out. Particularly Powerline. Those guys just never were the same after Newsweek gave them their award. But they’re just two examples. Not that I don’t understand their motivation, you can’t argue with a fat bank account after all, I just know that I couldn’t do that. I’d have to become something that I’m not in order for it to work.
On the other hand, suggesting that they’ve turned into the MSM would be grossly unfair. They may avoid controversy to keep the ad funds flowing, but they’ve still got something that the MSM never had: Credibility. Sure, they may choose to avoid being too open about their personal opinions because it’d be bad for business, but I’ve yet to see them come out lying their teeth off to advance an agenda. They’ve become more bland and boring as a result of fame and fortune, but their devotion to the accuracy of what they do say hasn’t changed.
3. How long did it take you to build up your loyal readership? What advice would you give smaller blogs that are struggling to get noticed?
Got a week or two for me to answer this one?
It actually didn’t take all that long for the ‘Rott to become what it is today. Once the Big Guns had noticed me and I’d been Instalanched, Bill Quickalanched and Lileksalanched, that was pretty much it. I like to say, now that I’m one of the Big Guys, that I can send a thousand readers your way, but you’ll have to supply the sticky factor to get them to come back. Apparently I had the sticky factor.
But that was back in the Good Old Days when there weren’t that many of us around, so what worked for me might not work as well today. New bloggers have to face the fact that there are already half a million blogs out there with pretty much the same concept and vision that they have. It’s not easy to come up with “something new” nowadays, to say the very least. Not only will you most likely have to do something that’s already been done, you’ll have to do it better than the ones who are already doing it.
That shouldn’t stop the budding blogger from jumping into the pool, however. Go ahead, the water’s fine, and the worst thing that can happen is that you flop.
The best advice I can get is to do it for yourself. Don’t do it for fame and readership, do it because you feel that you have something to say and you’re going to have a Hell of a time saying it, whether anybody reads it or not. If you’re going to measure the worth of what you’re doing by the number of hits on your referrer logs, you might as well not start, because you’re in for a huge slap in the face. Unless you’re the reincarnation of Mark Twain, you’ll be looking at weeks, maybe even months of the visitor counter barely ticking by, so don’t look to that for satisfaction. Just have fun, and let the chips fall as they may.
That being said, I do have a few pointers regarding blogging, etiquette and how to spread the word, I just don’t want anybody to get the idea that there’s a recipe out there that will inevitably lead to thousands of readers, because there isn’t.
I) Have fun. I can’t stress this enough. If you’re not doing this because you want to and because you enjoy it, it’s not going to work. It shows in your writing, and your writing is the only thing making people come back.
II) Be you. It’s alright to have an idea as to what kind of site you want it to be, but don’t try to make it something that you’re not. If you’re not buying it, none of your readers will.
III) Don’t be afraid to enter your website URL when you leave comments on other sites, but don’t spam them with nothing but “read this” comments either. First impressions count, and if the first impression you make is of somebody derailing a thread with nothing but a “look at me” comment, you can rest assured that that’s how your site will be judged. If you’re making great comments, on the other hand, that impression will last too.
IV) Don’t be afraid to write other bloggers, suggesting posts of your own for perusal either. Most bloggers like myself don’t mind one little bit and we’re actually more than happy to get a heads up from time to time, since there’s no way that we can “patrol” the Blogosphere on our own, considering the sheer size of it these days. Well, we could, but we’d never have time to write anything. That being said, don’t mindlessly spam everybody and their brother with automated email notices every time you write something unless they’ve specifically asked you to. That’s a sure way of getting your email address in a spam filter, which means that your email will go ignored when you write the post of your life as well. Also don’t think that if your email doesn’t result in a link, the blogger you wrote hates your guts. We could link every single submission we get, but we’d never have time to write anything then. And just because your post doesn’t get linked, doesn’t mean that some other post you write in the future won’t be either. Persistence is the code word.
V) Don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t take anybody else too seriously either. This is fun. If you want a paying job, get an MBA.
4. When you hear the letters A.C.L.U., what is your initial reaction?
Not fit to print, I’d say.
But seriously, my first reaction is along the lines of “what ridiculous, un-American, leftist cause are they supporting this time?” I can assure you that the last thing I think about when I hear their name is civil liberties, since I can’t recall the last time they actually defended one of those.
5. What makes you the most angry about the ACLU? Their exploitation of children? Their defense of the enemy?
All of the above?
What makes me the most consistently angry about the ACLU is that they don’t give an honest flip about actual civil liberties, yet are constantly bleating about how they’re out to defend them. They don’t care about the 1st Amendment right to exercise your religion freely, but they’ll happily sue a city for allowing a student to have a prayer meeting in his own dorm room, they’re against the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms, but they’ll happily tie up courts for months defending the “rights” of foreign terrorists who blow up American citizens to have lawyers, visits from home and “due process”, they don’t have a problem with child pornographers or child molesters like NAMBLA, as a matter of fact they’ll happily sue on their behalf, they’ll look the other way while students are being persecuted by teachers and school boards that disagree with them (as long as the student isn’t a liberal), but ask a foreign national to produce ID before voting and they’ll see you in court etc. etc. etc.
They only give a good damn about civil liberties if they don’t belong to Americans and if they aren’t mentioned in the Constitution.
6. What is the most effective way in your opinion for people to fight the ACLU?
Shoot the bastards.
Oh, you mean legally?
Keep talking about them, expose them for what they are every time they as much as think about issuing an opinion and, most of all, put your local politicians on notice that if they’re ever caught supporting them in any shape, form or fashion for any reason at all, they just lost your vote permanently. And follow through on it. No empty threats. Every time a local pro-ACLU weasel politician sends you a begging letter, make a point of not giving them anything and let them know in writing why you won’t.
7. What is your take on judicial activism in today’s America?
I hope it’s about to make a turn for the better as a result of the shift in the population but, as it stands, it’s pretty much as bad as it can get. And don’t get me wrong, when I say “judicial activism”, I don’t mean “any decision by the courts that I happen to disagree with”, I mean “any decision by the court that isn’t based entirely upon the letter of the law.” No interpretations, no penumbras, no emanations and most emphatically no “looking to foreign legal practice for advice.” If I wanted to live under French law, I’d emigrate.
Yes, that approach will lead to results that I personally won’t like or results that are just plain ridiculous because the lawmakers couldn’t predict all possible ramifications of the laws they passed, but that’s what we’ve got the legislature for. The legislators make laws, not the judiciary. If some ancient law turns out to be plain stupid today (like the Texas sodomy law) or if a situation pops up that the Founders couldn’t possibly have predicted, write a Bill and let the people decide if it should become the law of the land. That’s how our system was designed to work.
Which is exactly why liberals want the courts to pass their laws for them, since they know full well that 99% of their bullshit wouldn’t ever make it past the voters.
8. What can we realistically do about it?
Shoot the b… Sorry.
What we can do and should do about it is to make it a major issue. Make our legislators understand that we’re paying very close attention to where they stand on this issue and that their decisions will have immediate and unpleasant consequences in the voting booths.
Some have suggested that we make appointments to our highest courts time limited or even that we start voting on appointments. I disagree. I believe that the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they decided not to do this, that it was important to the whole idea of separate branches that the judiciary is kept out of politics. Where it went wrong was when the judges themselves decided that they weren’t “separate but equal” and decided that they were “separate and G-d” instead. And even though voting on the judges would seem to be the perfect solution to this inasmuch as we could vote them off the bench when they got out of line, I don’t think that it’s the way to go. It’d just turn them into politicians for good. Besides, we already have a way of getting rid of judges overstepping their bounds. It’s called “impeachment” and I believe that it’s time that we made a demonstration, pour encourager les autres. When judges rule based on the letter of the law and nothing else they’re the last word as well they should be, but when they start inventing stuff that was never in there, they’re clearly usurping the powers of the legislative branch, which is more than sufficient grounds for impeachment.
Unfortunately, none of our politicians seem to have the testicular fortitude to do so. They’ve all bought into the “Judiciary is G-d” idea and seem to have forgotten the powers that our Founding Fathers vested in them.
9. Is this why the nomination of Miers was such an important issue to you?
It’s certainly one of the reasons. We need an open, ruthless debate on this issue, and we need it in front of the people, and the best way of getting this is to pick a fight. The Miers nomination was nothing but a “can’t we all just get along?” nomination designed to specifically avoid such a fight which, coincidentally, is perfectly in tune with the spineless administration we’re suffering under right now.
Another reason was that Miers clearly wasn’t the kind of candidate that we need on the Supreme Court, no matter how much of a wonderful person she might be otherwise. What we needed and continue to need are legal brainiacs who wouldn’t go to the bathroom without consulting the Constitution first. We need people whose whole basis for any decision they make is the letter of the law, people who know the law inside out and, on the few areas where they might be fuzzy, wouldn’t dream of consulting anything other than the actual law in order to find out what they should decide. In other words, we need people with zero social skills whose idea of a fun time would be spending a Saturday night in the Library of Congress reading up on legal precedent.
And that’s where the Bush administration proved to be ridiculously tone deaf. They assumed, somehow, that stating that Miers was a good Christian who attended Church every Sunday or that she was a successful conservative business woman would make Christian conservatives like me feel better about her.
These would all be good reasons for me to consider inviting her to my wedding or for choosing her for preacher at my church, but that’s not what I was looking for. I was looking for a Supreme Court Justice, and instead I got somebody who’d make a perfect babysitter. Telling me that she’s a good Christian is actually a perfect argument why I shouldn’t support her nomination, which may sound strange considering that I’m a devout Christian myself, but it really isn’t all that weird when you think about it. It’s not that being a Christian or a conservative should disqualify you, but if it’s your main qualification, you’re SOL as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t like ideologues on the court when they’re liberal, so tell my why I should like them any more when they’re on the other side? I want legal eagles whose first, second and third priorities are the law. I don’t want anybody that makes me wonder if his latest decision was based on his faith or politics, no matter what stripe they’re of. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in Mrs. Miers past to suggest that she was a law nerd, so I had to judge her by what I knew, which was her faith and her politics. Not good enough.
10. How much time do you devote to your blog each day?
That depends. I’m not getting paid for it and I have a family to spend time with as well, so I have to limit it to whatever time I have left over once that’s taken care of. Add to that that I have to have something to write about and that I have to be “in the mood” and you’ll find that it varies wildly. On an average day, I can probably spend an hour or two on it.
11. How much hate mail do receive each day?
Not nearly enough. I maybe receive one a month if I’m lucky, which is a great pity. I enjoy hate mail immensely and, even though I’ve made a clear point of the fact that I’d never share contact information about my hate mailers (unless they make criminal threats, of course), I don’t seem to attract all that much, which is disappointing considering how much work I put into pissing people off.
I know part of the reason, however. I’m male. None of the female bloggers I know are one third as “offensive” as I am, yet if they as much as criticize the weather forecast they’ll receive more hate mail in a day than I receive in a year.
It looks like the loony left can’t even muster the gumption to write a nasty anonymous email to somebody who might kick their ass, which is really not much of a surprise at all. They’re cowards at heart, and only ever pick a fight with somebody whom they perceive to be “weak”. Of course, that leads to much hilarity when they pick on a conservative lady and find out just how “weak” they are, hehehe.
So I guess they’re scared of me, which is something I find almost as hilarious as responding to the occasional hate mail that I do receive.
12. In October of 2004, the ACLU turned down $1.15 million in funding from two of its most generous and loyal contributors, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, saying new anti-terrorism restrictions demanded by the institutions make it unable to accept their funds.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s provisions state that recipients of its funds may not “directly or indirectly engage in, promote, or support other organizations or individuals who engage in or promote terrorist activity.”
Do you find this disturbing? Would you put it past the ACLU to accept funds from terrorism? Realistically, do you think their actions deem some sort of investigation?
No, I wouldn’t put it past them in the least. They’d take money from anybody to support their cause and, whereas I do hesitate to accuse them of doing just that, I’d certainly like to know their real reasons for making such a fuss over a harmless request to make a statement that most sane people would make without batting an eyelid.
And before we get silly, I’m not suggesting that the ACLU is buying IEDs for al-Qaeda in Iraq, but think about this for a second: They make a huge noise about refusing to pay attention to where their funds are coming from and, at the same time, they do seem to be spending an awful lot of time defending the non-existent “rights” of terrorist detainees.
I don’t think it’s over the top to start wondering about their motivations when faced with these simple facts.
So yes, I’d have the FBI crawling all over their bank accounts if I were President.
13. One would think that an organization that claims its purpose is to protect our Constitutional rights would readily defend our second amendment. However, the ACLU believe that the second amendment does not apply to individuals, only militias.
Would you care to share your opinion on this?
I think I already did, but I’d be happy to repeat it. An organization claiming to be the champion of civil liberties opposing the most basic civil liberty of them all, namely the right to defend yourself, your family and your property against harm, a Constitutional right that hasn’t ever, not once, been disputed by any Supreme Court?
I believe that speaks for itself.
Calling the ACLU protectors of our Constitutional rights is as absurd as calling Osama bin Laden the Pope.
14. Do you believe that this organization, founded on Communism can be reformed?
No. I don’t. I believe that the rot is so fundamental and the organization so massive that trying to change it from within would be an exercise in futility. Like the Soviet Union, the only option for reform is to dismantle the whole thing and build something new in its place.
That last bit is important. I do believe that it’s important to have an organization willing to stand up and fight the good fight, but the ACLU isn’t it. They’re fighting their own fight while pretending to be something other than what they are, and that’s what makes them dangerous.
15. What do you think is the greatest threat to America today?
We have two. One is external and is the one that we’re fighting a war against currently. It’s a threat, but on its own it doesn’t stand a chance against the military might and the resilience of the American people. Compared with other threats that we’ve faced and conquered in the past, Islam doesn’t hardly rate and wouldn’t rate at all if it wasn’t for their sheer numbers. I’m not saying that we won’t be hurting before it’s all over, because we will, but we will win.
The other and much more serious of the threats, the threat that is the main reason that the first one is a threat at all, is the rot from within.
Being born a foreigner and being extremely grateful for being an American now, I don’t particularly like saying this, but the American people have grown soft. We don’t, as a whole, appreciate what we have and, thanks to centuries of relative safety behind two large oceans and particularly due to six decades of relative peace, we’ve come to believe that nothing can ever threaten us and that we can solve all problems “nicely”.
Also, we Americans don’t deal well with defeats. Viet Nam traumatized America in a way that could never have happened where I came from, because we were used to not winning all the time. We’d win some, lose some, lick our wounds and jump right back up for the next round. That’s why the fifth column in this country is playing the Viet Nam angle so hard now, because they know that it’s the only way to defeat America. Forget about defeating us on the battlefield, that just isn’t going to happen, but ripping open that old ‘Nam wound works every time. It’s our greatest failing as a nation: We’re gun shy because, horror of horrors, we might lose. We lost once before, so who’s to say we won’t lose this time as well?
If you look at the U.S. Armed Forces, you’ll find that the Old South is disproportionately well represented among its most glorious fighters. I personally believe that one of the major reasons is that the South is used to the idea of losing and carrying on regardless. It’s not the end of the world, and just because you lost the last one, it doesn’t mean that you’ll lose ever again. The only guaranteed way of losing is if you lose the will to fight.
As a nation, however, we haven’t yet learned that lesson. If you combine that with the constant barrage from the left about moral relativism and how we’re not in the least bit better than anybody else, you have the real threat to our continued existence as a nation.
That, and the fact that we don’t know how to fight dirty when faced with an enemy like radical Islam. Our commitment to what is right is laudable and it is something that we should never give up because it makes us different from most other nations on the planet, but we shouldn’t commit to it so much that we lose sight of the greater picture, which is our ultimate survival. The last big fight between civilization and Islam wasn’t won with “messages of hope and compassion” and this one won’t be either. Unless we quit the Mr. Nice Guy nonsense and respond in kind to our enemies, we’ll lose. Unfortunately, we’ve been so insulated from the real consequences of being beaten in a war that we think that it doesn’t matter either way.
This is not to say that I doubt the ultimate outcome. When the potential horrors of defeat are brought home to us in a real and tangible fashion, as inevitably they will be the way things are going, we’ll rise up and fight back without mercy, I just wish that we could skip the bit with nukes in American cities and get right down to the business of wiping our enemies out completely.
16. What do you think of Bush’s nomination of Alito to the Supreme Court?
I think that he had no choice. I won’t wax poetic about him “doing the right thing”, because anybody can do the right thing when you’ve got a gun to your head. He knew damn good and well that his base was crumbling, and his dragging his feet before he finally did what he should’ve done from the start is clear evidence that he didn’t do so because he realized that he was wrong but because he realized that this was one weaselly trick that he couldn’t get away with.
That being said, he DID do the right thing and that’s what people like me were asking for. We got it, it’s over, water under the bridge. I didn’t oppose him because I liked to, as a matter of fact I hated to, but because I had to.
17. Please take a moment and expand upon what you think America needs to hear the most in today’s times.
We need to hear that yes, Virginia, our chosen way of life is better than what the rest of the world has chosen, for the simple reason that we chose it and we’re the only ones that we have to answer to. We, the people. If we’re to change our ways, it’ll be because we Americans want them to change, not because some intellectual claiming to know better says that we should.
We also need to hear that we’re a peaceful nation of fiercely individualist warriors, and that there is no contradiction in that. No better friends, no worse enemies. We need to be reminded constantly that we didn’t ask for this war, that it was forced upon us, and that we are faced with the choice of winning it unconditionally or surrendering all that our Founding Fathers sacrificed their lives for. There is no middle ground.
Most of all, we need to learn to be proud of our American heritage and all that we’ve achieved. We need to relearn the pride and gratitude that comes from living in the only superpower in the history of the world that didn’t use its power to force itself on others or steal what was theirs, we need to learn to not apologize for being the richest, strongest nation on Earth because we worked very hard for everything we’ve got, and we need to be constantly reminded that all of this, this blessing that is our homeland, was built on individualism and courage and not on collectivism and fear.
18. Would you suggest to your readers, that they should bookmark stop the aclu as a daily read?
If they care about the ACLU and how they’re waging a constant battle against everything that this nation stands for, I’d say that they’d be punishing themselves by NOT stopping by your site daily, since it’s the be-all and end-all when it comes to keeping up to speed on their sinister dealings.
Your site is a daily read of mine, that’s for sure.
I’ll keep the conclusion short, cuz the interview was long. Thank you so much Misha for the honor of interviewing you. Your insights were awesome. Thank you.
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8 Responses to “Interview with the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller”
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Syndicate Me
Awesome,excellent and first rate!
Would make a superb Marine!
OUTSTANDING One of my favorite blogsters. I count it a priveledge to read his blog dailey. Keep up the good work Misha And BTW thanks Jay and Nedd You are part of my daily blogosphere also Ditto on the Good Work.
The Rottweiler is my favorite read – I loved your idea of interviewing him, Jay. Great initiative.
Plus, I reread his paragraphs 15 and 17. Outstanding!!!!!!!!!!!
PS: You should put a link to Misha’s blog so that your readers that aren’t already famliar with him know where to find him. Your blogrolls are huge and people might not scroll through all of them to find the link.
IMHO, the interview should be read with the accompanying .mp3 of the Imperial March (by Metallica, no less). I uploaded it to our site for anyone who wants to grab the file to listen to for effect while reading the Emperor’s words.
Awesome interview!!!
Bravo to both of you!!!
BRAVO!!!
Loved the interview so much I had to link it to those who visit my site.
Good job. Great questions and lo and behold, someone who actually answered them without filler or bullswaddle.