"I read her as telling me that's hopeless"

Charles had been "in search of love in those days" when he first met Sebastian, "that low door in the wall . . . which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden," a metaphor that informs [Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited] on a number of levels. (St. Sebastian by Pietro Perugino, 1445–1523? Musée du Louvre, Paris)

"Sissy Willis responds," Ann Althouse wrote a year ago in an update to her post "Right and left: my sad experience." For some reason, we're getting a ton of hits from that venerable post today after all this time. Ann wrote of our own comments then:

[Sissy] thinks there is something inherent in left and right positions that produces this different behavior. I am trying to reach out to the left and say: Behave better! Engage me! But I read her as telling me that's hopeless.

'Reminds us of Neo's conversion, eloquently chronicled in her "A mind is a difficult thing to change" series. And now a fascinating new ship on our horizon, Jay Lassiter of Lassiter Space, who  emails this eye-popping message this afternoon:

When I got a chance to chat with the editor of France Soir and a radical danish Imam (on a BBC show), I found myself right in the middle of it again. So before I get skewered in the lefty blog world, check it out and feel free to leave a comment. Sissy, you're the first person I thought to send this to. Maybe there's more common ground than I first thought?

Click on over there to see how the Q&A went. We think we've got a live one here:

Is it me or is this guy nuts? Here's the mouthpiece of the radical Muslim cleric's organization that made it their business to inflame tensions in the Muslim and Arab world with these cartoons, and he's trying to tell me that he seeks to encourage peaceful dialogue between the east and west. Sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. I hate to say it, but chatting with a radical Imam really reminded me who the enemy is here.

Forked tongues come to mind. These people want to kill us, Jay.

Update:  Ann explains in the comments that her year-old post got linked by Red State yesterday. His bottom line: "Let's remember that having fair-weather friends is better than having none at all."

Egad. It looks like a full-blown AnnaLanche (70 visitors are on as we blog). We needed that. Thanks, beautiful lady.

Update II: At Ann's suggestion, we examined the entrails of her Site Meter stats and found that year-old post of hers had been cited by the WSJ's James Taranto in his "Best of the web today":

Blogress Ann Althouse notes something curious about the online behavior of conservatives vs. liberals:

What I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy.

I'm struck by the way the right perceives me as a potential ally and uses positive reinforcement, and the left doesn't see me as anything but an opponent -- doesn't even try to engage me with reasoned argument.

We've had exactly the same experience.

How cool is that?

Update: Ann emails with more:

And now it just got an Instapundit link. Funny. Does everyone think it's a new post? It's over a year old!

As The Professor would say, Heh.

Comments

[Ann Althouse]

Sissy: It got linked here yesterday.

http://redstate.com/print/2006/2/8/10658/76363

[Teresa]

Amazing how blog posts live on isn't it. *grin*

[goomp]

With consevative blogs the truth will out.

[Teresa]

Regarding your latest update note from Ann... I did initially click over to the post from the Instalink yesterday. I didn't look at the date on the post, just started reading... but since I did read it last year when Ann wrote it - I was really thrown for a few minutes... THEN I looked at the post date and knew I wasn't imagining things - I had read it before.