The Tea Party tweeter who gloried in Roger Ebert's cancer gloats that his attacks went perfectly as planned as his vitriol was gobbled up by a media and public that relish American hate. But now he's "suddenly very sorry" for his "increasingly awful tweets" about Ebert's cancer as he was blindly swept up in the vicious "jab for jab" world that marks US political discourse. "It’s a polarized country we live in. Often rabidly so. I play that game. Most of you reading this play it, too," writes right-wing blogger Caleb Howe in Mediaite.
"We play for ratings, for clicks, for retweets. We play to satisfy bloodlust, vengeance, self-righteous fury." Howe admires Ebert's writing prowess and his intelligence. "I should like this guy," he notes, but when Ebert slipped into "rabid lefty tweeter" mode and slammed California high school kids for wearing American flag shirts on Cinco de Mayo, Howe got his hate on (sometimes fueled by vodka, he admits). But he "forgot about humanity" in his "cheap, callous" attacks, Howe confesses. (More Caleb Howe stories.)