Atrios has been getting a lot of support from both sides of the Blogosphere (community does exist here after all, I guess) but one consistent trend that he commented on was the attempts of people like those at Oxblog to complain about his "incivility" while doing it.

Essentially, they don't like him because he's mean.

Thing is, why shouldn't he be? As he rightly points out, "It wasn't the Democrats that had HateRadio-Apalooza on the White House lawn", and the fact that the current President is a Republican doesn't mean that you can argue that only now should there be civility- it's transparently self serving.

Yes, Atrios is forthright about his anger at- and lack of respect for- movementarians and those who protect them. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a point, it doesn't mean that he doesn't write amazingly insightful material on a regular basis, and it doesn't mean that he hasn't earned the prominence that has turned him into, really, the hottest blogger on the internet. (In fact, he earned it the hard way. Pseudonymity means that you can't trade on your profession like the folks at Oxblog and your previous writing like Sully.)

The only thing that could bother me about Atrios is that I only started a few months after he did, and yet somehow he's managed to leave me in the dust, hitwise. Then again, if I updated umpteen zillion times a day that well, I'd probably be in the same position. Right now, though, Atrios deserves nothing but respect.