“Hippie Punching” (Updated) 2

Susie Madrak managed to get the term “hippie punching” into the news this week.

I’ve never quite been sure what “hippie punching” means, other than a sort of misdirection play, sort of a modern equivalent of “shoot the messenger” that might be expressed as

When you don’t want to deal with the cause of a problem, blame the hippies.

Never mind that no hippies have been seen in the wild since 1969 and that many of the persons who use the phrase with themselves in the role of “hippie” not only were not hippies, but also have never seen one–indeed, their activism is quite the opposite of anything hippie–but let them have their little fantasy.

As of today, the Urban Dictionary has only one definition, added three days ago from what is clearly a rightwing perspective (the user who posted it uses a nom de innertubes of DA+IRS+IS+GONNA+GETCHA+SOON).

With that out of the way, what Mithras said.

Interpolation:

Noz defines the term for me. From the comments:

“hippie punching” is when democrats gratuitously attack their liberal base, perhaps for the misguided reason that it somehow helps their credibility with “regular” americans.

End Interpolation.

Full Disclosure:

I used to read Susie’s blog regularly and enthusiastically; her style influenced mine significantly when I was a wee blogger with even fewer readers than I have now.

I got out of the habit of visiting her place for reasons related to what Mithras said. The signal to noise ratio got too high.