"Borders on obsessive?" How about obsessed with FR 24-7, to the exclusion of everything else, and that would include serious topics of discussion such as news items, as well as, I suspect, their jobs and families. Most of them were once FReepers, but in large part were never really conservative, but in fact were and are so-called progressives, or out and out leftwingnuts. All are clowns. 
The irony is of course, that without FR, they would cease to exist. Parasites, they are...