Creek Running North

Tom Tomorrow put it best:

I understand the etymology of “wingnut” — it’s obviously a diminutive of “right wing nut,” but works as an effective piece of slang because it also repurposes a common noun. But what, in god’s name, is a “moonbat”?… I suppose [it] must somehow vaguely have something to do with people being “batty"… Do rightwingers just sit around combining words at random to create new derogatory terms? “You, sir, are a real testicle-antennae! And you, over there — you’re a digestive-tract-picture-frame!”

Of course, I’m not sure why he expects those right-wing dogshirts to actually make sense.

In any event, we’re being called “moonbats” and we might as well revel in it. We like the moon, and bats are cool, and it’s cool to watch bats when the moon is out, and so I kind of take being called “moonbat” the same way I’d take being called “aurora borealis” or “Quadrantid meteor shower” or “chupacabra” or anything else cool that you might see outside after the sun goes down.

In that spirit, I offer my attempt at a proud “creatures of the night” Moonbat Icon. Take it and do with it what you will: gravatars, buttons on your blog, making big silk screens and painting it on Michelle Malkin’s door… whatever. The one visible here is 200 pixels wide. Here’s a 150-pixel version and a 100-pixel version. Larger versions available on request. If you use it, a link back would be nice. But not mandatory. Thank you, and goodnight.

Added later: Looks like the image-processing routines at Gravatar soften the image a bit too much for my liking when they resize the 100 pixel image to 80 by 80. So here’s an 80-pixel Gravatar image.