Annoy a liberal: work hard. Annoy a conservative: tweet?

The new Freakonomics book from Levitt and Dubner has caused controversy. Critics have accused them of wilful contradictarianism, and moved on to question why their controversialism is anti-liberal, and thence to ask why it seems to be so much more fun to contradict liberals than conservatives.

Andrew Gelman asks:

why is it that "pissing off liberals" is delightfully transgressive and oh-so-fun, whereas "pissing off conservatives" is boring and earnest?

He mentions Nate Silver and Michael Moore as people who successfully piss off conservatives, but they're in the minority of all the counterintuitive argumentation in the world.

Kieran Healy complains that it's impossible to get a liberal equivalent of the rightwing bumper sticker "Annoy a Liberal. Work hard. Succeed. Be happy." Commenter Anthony (referencing a remark of LBJ's) relates this to the apologetic nature of liberals:

American liberals have a problem because it's altogether too easy to force them to deny that they're pig-fuckers, and they have no clue why.

Another commenter, Bad Jim, may get closer to the problem

It's a waste of time to piss off conservatives. They're already as angry as can be.

John Quiggin continues the debate by questioning the idea of whether it's really so wonderful to be contrarian (even though it does sell books.

Contrarianism is a cheap way of allowing ideological hacks to think of themselves as fearless, independent thinkers, while never thinking (in fact reinforcing) the status quo. [...] To sum up my current view: "contrarianism" is mostly contrary to reality, the "conventional wisdom" is probably wiser than the typical unconventional alternative, and "politically incorrect" views are almost always incorrect in every way: literally, scientifically and morally.

Mark Liberman, in a blog post called "Freakonomics: the intellectual's Glenn Beck?" is suspicious of the contrarian economists, referencing Barbara Ehrenreich's recent critique of their claim that statistics show women are more miserable now than pre-feminism. He points out that contrarianism of whatever stripe sells books. And J Bradford Delong offers advice on how Levitt and Dubner could rewrite their own book.

Disputes about global warming are hardly novel, and nor is worrying over the lack of left-wing polemic, particularly in an America where Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck call the shots. In Britain the more common complaint is that all satirists are left-wing (except Ian Hislop). But the right still have Jeremy Clarkson, Jeremy Kyle, possibly James Whale. The left may have jokes and sandals, but they're not ranting, with even civil liberties being as likely to be defended by crazy hate-filled right-libertarians as by bleeding heart liberals.

Despite this, Twitter's British membership (which sometimes seems to be the entire Guardian readership and their electronic devices) seems quite adept at conducting nice witch-hunts with liberal ideals, with the last few days seeing agitated action against Carter-Ruck and Trafigura injuncting newspapers and Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir being homophobic following Stephen Gately's death, following the more benign welovetheNHS Twitter campaign.

But is it the left shouting here? Much of the antipathy to Carter-Ruck came from right-wing bloggers: Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, and the Spectator. It's fun having a go at judges and shady multinationals, playing the game of figuring out what's being injuncted; your politics isn't important. Likewise, based on most people's uninterest in the Mail's past transgressions it seems to be mainly Boyzone fans who're really upset with the coverage of Gately's death. Sometimes you need to join a crowd and shout against conservatives and capitalists, but that doesn't make you a socialist. Though maybe Gately did more for gay rights than Peter Tatchell.