Dum Pendebat Filius

Can someone explain to me the LaShawn Barber phenomenon? At the time of this writing (18:08 EDT, 1 August 2005), the TTLB Ecosystem reports that her blog is the 20th biggest (in terms of incoming links) on the Internet. 1558 sites link to hers.

Her political views are depraved and repellent, but half the country agrees with her, at least most of the time, I reckon. But you can get wingnuttia of a similar tone and flavor in plenty of other places. What’s the appeal of LaShawn’s Corner? When she’s not declaring war on Islam and criticizing the Bush administration for its failure to torture and/or kill Muslims in sufficiently large numbers, she’s bragging about her entreprenurial ventures and declaring her Christian piety. I can understand why most of the high-traffic right-wing blogs have the readership they have, but not hers. Does anyone have any insights into this particular phenomenon?

Update, 2005/08/02, 20:47 — Dadahead has posted a response to my question.

Also, looking at this post again, I probably ought to clarify something: I don’t mean to say that half the country holds political views that are depraved and repellent (although anybody who voted for Bush in 2004 made a serious mistake). I should have taken a bit more care over that second paragraph. Still, there’s a substantial audience for LaShawn’s type of extreme right-wing “thought,” and while her views are certainly more extreme than those of most who would identify themselves as conservatives and/or Republicans, I suspect that many people feel themselves comforted and/or vindicated to see the world painted in the crude rough strokes LaShawn clearly favors.