Last Friday, blogger Matt Yglesias penned a rather innocuous post that, in part, criticized a centrist messaging factory called Third Way of whom you've probably never heard. This criticism apparently ran a tad afoul of the folks for whom Matt blogs, the Center for American Progress, because a few days later, the acting CEO of CAP's "Action Fund," Jennifer Palmieri, used Matt's space to post a disclaimer, written by her, explaining that Matt's opinion is his own and not uniformly shared by everyone at CAP, some of whom think Third Way are great people.
This was a rather clumsy way of getting that message out (the disclaimer was more widely read than the original post, and only ensured that more people read the criticism of Third Way), and it appeared to many other bloggers to be a case of "bigfooting" or a "chilling" of "free speech." So everyone sort of freaked out a little bit about it. If you want to see everyone freak out about it, read this article by Steve Benen, who drew the short straw as Chronicler Of The Freak Out.
Anyway, this is how these things ALWAYS turn out, on the blogs. But, the reason all of this is of interest to me is the fantastic phrase that Matt generated in his initial post: "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit," which is probably well on its way to becoming a beloved blogosphere term. So, remember: if you want to appear to be "blogger-smart" at this holiday season's gatherings, try to find a way to work "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit" into conversation. Like: "Yikes! This egg nog sure is some hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit! You got any bourbon?"
Naturally, if you want to simply be "blogger-annoying" at this years' holiday gatherings, simply recommend the new Fleet Foxes album.