Read it. It isn’t the same thing over and over. It spells out how not to be a hack. It spells out what it means to have some sort of integrity and not argue like you are a 14 year old flaming your enemy on Usenet, or perhaps writing a column for the HuffPo, or just blathering to fill up airtime, or happy to be on TV. Do the work.
The Daily Howler
- Greg Sargent (and others) are playing us rubes! May 21, 2013
- Breaking: CBS News is officially crazy! May 21, 2013
Sadly, No! Batphone
- Gendermorphs, a new series from Scholastic May 19, 2013
- Benghazi Bites May 16, 2013
Befouled
- Enlightenment May 22, 2013
Oakland Dilettante
- ALL SHALL READ THIS AND DESPAIR May 21, 2013
Saying Yes
- Heed the Orb!!! May 13, 2013
Empire of the Senseless
- That’s AllDid I have a dream last night that woke me up in fear? Or was it a dream that I had a dream that woke me up in fear? Such is my life. Filed under: Fridge Note, Shovels, the Self-pity goes to 11 […]
Blue Girl in a Technicolor Dream State
- Empathy Sustains Us April 20, 2013
Really Small Fish
- Jack Crow January 8, 2013
The Hollow Man (teh l4m3)
- OMG May 22, 2013
On Friday nights, younger people go out and get drunk. Older people tend to fall asleep—sometimes right in their seats, out in public.
Why does Bob hate Murka?
~
It does seem like they are going for the smallest audience possible.
If that were wholly true PP, Bill-O would be the moderator.
Nah, Hannity.
you’re missing the point. Young people can get drunk and old people can fall asleep while watching the debate!!! as if any one has ever done anything else.
Ok, but I don’t have the tolerance to call “My Friends”.
that’s the debate drinking game. we’ll all die.
I have to say that Atrios is spot on this morning regarding Somerby. (http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_09_28_archive.html#1541266845948074249). It’s ironic because this is the type of mind reading that Somerby loves to attribute (criticize) to (in) others.
There’s no doubt Somerby is a very smart and tenacious dude. And there’s also no doubt that the vast majority of his critiques are spot on. Unfortunately, his condescending shtick and Al Gore (whom I like a lot and whom by reading Somerby I discovered just how screwed he was) Tourettes are tiresome. I also think that his criticism is much less effective because of his personal attacks and also because (and I hesitate to say it) of his lack of appreciation for the game of politics. It appears that what he wants is unattainable purity in politics and journalism, which quite simply isn’t going to happen no matter how often he criticizes it. It’s not a bad goal just an unrealistic goal. Job security I guess….
Yeah, well Bob is entirely right about Josh Marshall, and he was wrong about Atrios. But did Atrios try to engage? No, he can’t even be bothered to deal with it. And again, did Atrios deal with any of those implications of “bad faith” in real time? No, he just decided he didn’t want his medicine anymore, and goes with the “the reason I stopped reading Somerby long ago…” argument.
Constantly Bob attacks hack behavior from lazy pundits who are behaving lazily. He also goes after lazy blog-style thinking. Be a big boy and take care of the problem. Somerby is ignored at our peril. Atrios didn’t even bother to cover any of the primaries- that’s fine, but he also didn’t even mention that a whole bunch of “allies” essentially lost their fucking minds during the primaries, including some shady, lazy behavior at TPM. But just mention Atrios’ lazy coverage of the debate, and noting how it fits with a theme of likely hackery, wow, that’s over the line. I happen to think Atrios is pretty smart and he doesn’t usually play the Politico style game so I would give him a pass.
When I watched the debate and I followed most people in real time, they indeed thought Obama wasn’t strong in that he didn’t go for the jugular. I felt I could perceive what he was doing, and my perceptions were borne out by polls. And then many people likely began to understood what had happened, and then they began to agree. The issue here is the nature of what happens with these debates and how they can be packaged and solidified into received wisdom. This is something to be careful about, and be explicitly cognizant of.
I think Atrios is being a cobag here. Seriously, he’s playing delicate flower and it is sad.
Atrios got busted and he got pouty about it. We only have his word that no really he was thinking it in the car with his wife, honest. May be true, may not, but the first post he does on the debate is commentary about McCain’s arrogance?
Srsly?
Atrios spends a lot of time critiquing media narratives and then goes about creating one and gets mad when he’s called on it.
Thing is, I would give A credit, even though he didn’t show his work this time, but to piss on a tree while ignoring the forest is pretty sad. Very typical of the “prefer to be offended in this one case” instead of “huh, there are a lot of cases that seem to fit.” I find when people start using the word “allies” when talking about criticism they usually are trying to avoid it.
Bob stopped trying to play nice when people continued to be gigantically dense blocks of wood. I’m fine with it.
He’s just that much more right.
I find when people start using the word “allies” when talking about criticism they usually are trying to avoid it.
Bingo.
In essence Bob is using the same mind reading tactics that he criticises in others. How does he know the thought processes of J,J&A? If a journalist/pundit made a similar statement about Al Gore based on mind reading there would be endless bytes spewed on the subject.
And even if he is correct, what’s the actual crime? That a blogger/pundit took some time to think about the debate over night? Took a look at the opinion polls and the opinions of others and revised their analysis of the debate? Is this necessarily the “village” or the “herd” mentality that we should all fear? Should we imagine that J, J&A all go take a money bath together a la Scrooge McDuck after playing the “rubes?” Should all analysis/opinion remain static? Should all opinion/analysis not be put in context?
I guess that I’m suspicious of punditry/analysis that doesn’t include externalities. I’m suspicious of purity.
I really don’t think this is similar to the Al Gore sighing debacle. The Al Gore ‘sighing’ was something that took a wee while to gin up; whereas, the McCain ‘contempt’ analysis was pretty much instantaneous (read some of the live blogging on Kos/Hilzoy/JMM). Based on polling (I know – I know) most people thought AG “won” that debate but public opinion changed after the pundits spun themselves into a hurricane. With this debate the comments and analysis from J,J&A were consistent both with the initial and follow up polling.
Should this stuff matter? Maybe it means something. Maybe it doesn’t. I just don’t know. Yes there are many, many, many, many more important thing to discuss. But how do we bring these to the forefront? And this leads to Someby’s ultimate failing – he doesn’t change a damn thing – he a smart dude – he’s probably right most (but not all) of the time – but he’s tactless and grating – to the point where a lot of people don’t enjoy reading him (me included). Who has done more to change media reporting for the better (granted it still ain’t great) Atrios/JMM/Kos or Somerby? The three amigos aren’t perfect but they get stuff done.
I thought it was funny that Somerby highlighted teh portions of JMM’s later posts that said “Now that I’ve thought about it more” and “I’ve read and listened to others’ opinions on the debate” and had some changed thoughts about the debate and was like “GOTCHA!”
How is it mindreading? Somerby’s entire MO is trying to get at the heard of how media narratives are created and how they distort reality. He has convincingly shown that people that claim to have felt one way about particular debates, say Bush-Gore, either didn’t feel that way at the time, or claim actual events that aren’t true (“I was at the debate and this happened”- oops that happened in the third debate).
He has clearly the existence of a large pattern of behavior concerning debate coverage from the past. Listen, I watched the debate and followed threads about the debates, and you could clearly see different reactions to the debate in real time. Several people were disappointed about a lack of “apparent” Obama KO of McCain. Their preconceived notions of what the debate was about was likely different than the general populace (perhaps those with lower information or less steeped in politics) saw an entirely different debate.
Our new media is partisan. Because they are on the left they are in generally much much much less craven than the right. This does not mean that they are rigorous or unhackish. They may be equally lazy and somewhat hackish. Somerby has constantly warned against this. TPM turned in the Politico Jr during the elections, I say Jr. because a lot of their content was straight from Politico. This is what people want as entertainment- the horse race. This is not necessarily effective reporting.
The point about the herd mentality is the fact that it seemed that much of our progressive media didn’t want to go out on a limb and say what they thought of the debate. The reality is to someone steeped in the horserace without outside perspective it was neither here nor there. Once the tide started to swing, we had a pile on. In this case I think the pile on was correct and appropriate, and certainly helped the Obama camp. Somerby’s point is constantly to be wary of this and to be transparent and honest. If there is behavior across the board the looks like bets are hedged, it certainly is fine to call it.
Somerby constantly brings externalities to the debate, because the narratives are almost always beltway driven. The initial poll responses to the debate were driven by externals to the beltway. Our insiders are so distanced from those people they couldn’t and don’t have their thumb on the pulse, so they have to wait for it to be apparent to craft their arguments. With a debate I am fine with it, because there really is nothing but tea leaves there, the best possibility is to understand where the visceral reactions are coming from and be explicit about the more cerebral reactions.
Atrios critiques those in the media with “Wanker of the Day”, yet he constantly acts as if he is not a prominent voice who is a part of “new media” and therefore he can be criticised to. He goes to the well of “i’m just a humble blogger” a little bit too much. Sorry, Uriah Heep, no go. He played on the sidelines during the primaries (because he likely stayed sane) but in doing so he seems exhibit the stance of a fence-sitter. If someone wants to characterize his behavior as such, that is legit. If he wants to say “no, here’s how it really went down, with my real time response, but I understand how the narratives get made, and in this case it wasn’t true.” Atrios got props from me for staying out of the primary bullshit, but he lost props by not calling bad behavior when it existed. Maybe this was the “nominal ally” thing. Because everyone is a pantscrapper, none of the big babies can be called out on bad blogging, so we all stay silent. Would Atrios ever say word one about Emuvosis? What would the guy have to do to get called out for being an emu? Is Drum the only one it is OK to disagree with? Is this because Drum won’t have a shit fit if you disagree with him, so it’s OK? And Josh Marshall constantly legitimizing Andrew Sullivan. Not helpful.
Instead A was snide (yeah, Somerby is snide, but he brings the evidence of the media MO with him) and played swing-a-dick. Not cool.
Also, here’s some examples of being on record substantively about the debate:
Here and here.
Yeah, I know K. The problem is if you were fence sitting- “I don’t know what to think until the breeze blows me away.”
I put it this way: just trying to be cognizant that one is not the center of the universe, and to be as transparent as possible in one’s thinking is always a plus. If Bob missed this one, the greater truth shall still set us free. It is better to be as careful as possible about getting bitten by the pundit disease.
Mind reading:
“As for me, the more I think about it, the more McCain’s performance annoys me. He seemed condescending and small throughout.”
What Klein actually meant:
“As for me, the more I see what others have written, the more McCain’s performance annoys me. He seemed condescending and small throughout.”
I’ve pasted an excerpt of some of the DH post below….“On Saturday afternoon, Josh reinvented his real-time reactions” Now did JMM reinvent his real-time reactions or did he think about it over night and revise his analysis? Where exactly is JMM trying to reinvent his initial analysis? Somerby apparently knows the reason. How? I don’t know!
Also below how “upset” does JMM sound to you? Again only the wise sage Somerby knows that Marshall is upset and that JMM didn’t have the nads to post what he really felt initially ….. or gasp (!) that he looked at the tapes again and the polling data and read other analyses and thought wow they have a point. What a hack!
“After Josh slept on it: Josh Marshall was also upset by McCain’s vile conduct–one he had a chance to learn that this was his cohort’s Official Approved Story. On Saturday afternoon, Josh reinvented his real-time reactions, just as Klein had done:
MARSHALL (9/27/08): HAVING SLEPT ON IT
In my initial reaction last night, I wrote that while I thought the debate was basically a draw, that amounted to a narrow win for Obama since foreign policy is supposed to be John McCain’s forte. Now, after half a day, with more time to think about it and the benefit of seeing initial polling data and surveying other people’s reactions, I’m only confirmed in that view.
In fact, I think it was a much bigger win for Obama than I was ready to figure last night. And there’s two basic reasons.
Just like Klein, Josh now found himself upset by McCain’s contempt or condescension–the contempt or condescension which had made McCain look small and angry. But how weird! In real time, Josh live-blogged the entire debate–and he completely forgot to mention these outrages as they were actually happening! His first mention of this troubling phenomenon came late in the debate, in response to an e-mail. This is what he wrote. Sorry–Josh’s archives have been down, so we can’t seem to recover a link:
MARSHALL (9/26/08): 10:26 PM. I haven’t focused on this myself. But a number of readers are writing in to say that McCain has not looked at or made eye contact with Sen. Obama once this evening. Have you seen that?
“I haven’t focused on this myself,” he reported. It isn’t clear that he’d even noticed. But so what? By the next day, Josh was very upset about this vile misconduct. It made McCain look small and angry, he wrote, long after the fact.
In essence the whole gist of Somerby’s post as it relates to A and JMM is unsubstantiated (I haven’t read the Joe Klein stuff so forgive me if he nails Klein). Again this is the type of analysis that just drives Somerby batty.
I love how I can bait Gregor into posting comments that even involve cutting and pasting, yet he won’t post on the blog. Gregor hates 3B.
in today’s economy we have to hoarde our resources Pinko.
I, for example, am hoarding string cheese. Delicious, delicious string cheese.
Bob goes after Atrios today for his completely disingenuous response. Even if Bob was over the line, Atrios played offended bloggy blogger and I agree mostly with Bob. Is Somerby going to be the wedge that drives Gregor and I to opposite sides of the Earth???
We have no idea who said what to whom about what topic, in what vehicle.
Professor Plum, with the candlestick, in the ballroom!!!!!
I happen to think Atrios is pretty smart and he doesn’t usually play the Politico style game so I would give him a pass.
Slightly OT, but I think Atrios is pretty smart too, and since he’s a freakin’ ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, I had hoped he might shed a little light on this whole banking crisis for those of us who, you know, aren’t economists. But of course, he didn’t.
Yeah, he wants to get points for not showing his work. It never worked for me. A wants to get a lot of credit for being on top of the shit/fan situation, but he doesn’t even have a peep about what to do. He doesn’t even link to someone who might be interesting or informative. We just get a WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Seriously.
1) Deep thought
2) ????????????
3) Reputation, Respect and A
The Atrios plan.
yeah, the really low point was this week when he linked to a Samuelson column at the WaPo and said, in toto, “I have a PhD in economics and Samuelson has no idea what he is talking about.” That’s it. What the fuck is that?
Argument from authoritah?
Insert Cartman clip and rimshot.
“A wants to get a lot of credit for being on top of the shit/fan situation, but he doesn’t even have a peep about what to do.”
Substitute “shit/fan” for “media rubes” and this reminds me of another blog I know….what’s it called again?
Atrios is a boob.
I declare victory.
Gregor that is not true- that’s about as false an equivalence as I can imagine. Bob does craft a response. He in general shows how to be more rigorous and to ask what things really happen. Before one can even have a solution, one needs to correctly describe the problem. If the press is lazy or pathetic the way to counter it is via rigor and fact. You could make a large case that Somerby paved the way for Media Matters. And the hilarious irony is that Media Matters gave us Atrios. Truly a never ending wheel.
Gregor that is not true- that’s about as false an equivalence as I can imagine. Bob does craft a response. He in general shows how to be more rigorous and to ask what things really happen. Before one can even have a solution, one needs to correctly describe the problem. If the press is lazy or pathetic the way to counter it is via rigor and fact. You could make a large case that Somerby paved the way for Media Matters. And the hilarious irony is that Media Matters gave us Atrios. Truly a never ending wheel.
Somersby responded to Atrios, vigorously.
And Bob’s basic point is still unsubstantiated.
PP, how can you say it’s a false equivalence? Bob does shitloads of research and identifies a problem. And he seldom offers a solution that’s beyond basic common-sense type stuff (do better research, consider the source, beware of herd mentality). This is sort of the equivalent of Atrios responding to the economic situation by saying that we need better regulation of the financial industry.
The point is that Bob doesn’t have to offer a solution to a problem and neither does A.
In the end who has been more successful in changing the way media reports news and politics for the better (still a long way to go)? TPM, Eschaton or DH?
Bob Somerby, because if our nominal allies are lazy hacks, we lose in the end. Media Matters is incredibly useful but Media Matters is partisan in that they don’t correct or criticize lazy narratives of the Left. The entire point of The Howler is to show how we lose when we are lazy, because the other side will never fight fairly. They will always stoop lower, so to pretend this is a Usenet flamewar is ridiculous.
Nobody has the guts to say “Josh Marshall seems to be lazily propagating anti-Clinton rhetoric here” because we’ve always thought TPM was awesome. They were awesome and can be awesome in the future, but when they went away from Muck Muck Muck to the horserace, they got lazy and insulated. The only solution to that is to do it right, to show how the research is done and demonstrate how to ask the right questions and to be rigorous. That is the solution. That is the only solution. To hold rigor above playing shirts and skins.
The reality is that if we eventually slide into a completely hyper partisan news media where we have Olbermann vs. O’Reilly, with one being the more extreme version of the other, we lose. Instead of just there being one cancelled show called “Crossfire” all news will be red said/blue said. Nothing could be worse. We legitimize the other side while delegitimizing the side of truth and honesty. If lazy, gotcha, crowd-pleasing talking points are good enough for us, than we will lose in the end.
This sort of magically objectivity ain’t going to happen in the media. And it doesn’t even happen on DH. .
Bob’s original post is a perfect example of the impossibility of pure unbiased discussion of politics. And his response to A’s post is another example. I would add that if you’re going to base your whole blog raison d’être on analysis of the way that political words and ideas are manipulated, going into excruciating detail, then I think that you have a special burden not to use those same tactics yourself.
If Atrios’ behavior is so opaque that it is a Shroedinger’s cat of being on the fence, how is that useful? It is fine to say these posts could lead to the appearance of fence sitting. Somerby’s only problem then would be to say “here’s how the game IS played (fence sitting, wind checking)” instead of “here’s how the game IS played, and this is a POSSIBLE example.” Regardless of what he has gone over the line with in this one post, he has thousands of posts that suggest transparency is a critical part of punditry. It is fine to have an opinion, but if your opinions are based on game playing and wind blowing, how can you do anyone any favors. It is also fine to be convinced one way or the other after the fact. However, if there is a trend of having no opinion and then coming around to the group opinion, then you are open to accusations.
In fact, Atrios looks worse than Josh Marshall on this, because Josh was careful to say he didn’t have an opinion, and then mulled it, whereas Atrios was pretty careful to not express an opinion and then he protested way too much that he actually did.
I can admit that Somerby could be prone to fitting this debate into his narrative of how all debates are reported, and how the community response comes about, but the reality is he’s a lot more right than wrong. I’m not gonna budge on this.
I will continue to read and learn from Bob Somerby. Because I am not without my own mind, I’ll try to realize when he’s not proving his point, but merely expressing it.
I can admit that Somerby could be prone to fitting this debate into his narrative of how all debates are reported, and how the community response comes about, but the reality is he’s a lot more right than wrong.
I’m confused by this clause: “but the reality is he’s a lot more right than wrong.”
Are you saying this in response to Somerby’s original post? If so I certainly don’t think that Bob has shown his “work” in a manner anything close to proving his point. Bob may be absolutely 100000% correct but his “proof” is very tenuous.
If you’re saying this about Somerby in general. I agree. But I also think that this same statement could be made about both JMM and A too. And this is the type of judgement (or perhaps ‘discretion’ is a better word) that Somerby lacks.
Are Atrios and JMM hacks? Are they playing us for rubes? Well they’ve made mistakes in the past and will continue to make mistakes in the future. They’re certainly not unbiased. They certainly allow their own egos to influence their work. They’re certainly human. So if that’s the standard, yup they’re HACKS. And by that standard Bob is hack too. We’re all HACKS, except Yosef who is perfect and darling in every way.
But if the standard is that more often than not they get things right. More often than not they add value. More often than not they bring honesty and integrity to their work. Then I woud say that they’re not HACKS.
Which is not to say that your “nominal allies” are beyond reproach. It’s just that if you want to be effective, in particular with people like JMM or Atrios, you should probably think about the tone, frequency and direction of your criticism. Perhaps making it a wee bit more constructive might also make it a wee bit more effective?
After reading DH for years now I suspect that Somerby has a huge ego that needs sating. I started off thinking that it’s a cute shtick but I’m at a point where I can’t distinguish between the shtick and the ‘reality.’ To me it’s a personality defect that overwhelms his ideas/points making him pretty much unreadable. I think that it also fogs his criticism, and in particular his choice of subjects for criticism.
And for me that’s the bottom line. Bob is a smart guy. He’s insightful. He has integrity. But he lacks judgement and he doesn’t have the skill (or is it an art?) that would allow him to convey his message effectively.
Have you ever e-mailed Bob? I have. I don’t think he has a giant ego. i think he’s pretty pissed off, and has a mind like a laser.
I also read JMM and Atrios. Atrios isn’t a hack, but he doesn’t believe he has to do anything differently, that he can just phone in his blog (but it’s so much work), or if he’s not phoning it in, he has such a finely honed defensive complex about anyone telling him what to do, that this is the only single fact about his blog that can be counted on. Atrios isn’t a journalist, he’s a blogger who refuses to do anything but what he wants. If you want me to answer whether Atrios is an effective arbiter of left wing blog knowledge and argument, then the answer is no. He’s not effective at all. He can shape peoples thoughts with pronouncements, sometimes featuring links, but on the left, he very rarely posts a thoughtful yet critical link. What I mean is that it isn’t his job to tell the world that Matt Yglesias is sometimes full of a ton of shit, and that its best not to get in the habit of just wolfing down what he says (this should be common sense), but Atrios posts tons of approving links to Matt, yet never a disapproving one. I don’t think he’s an effective advocate for rigorous or critical arguments, even thought he’s definitely brighter than the average bear.
Is JMM a hack? I wouldn’t say that. I feel a certain affection for him, though I am truly disappointed in him. I think he’s become a player. He kind of came up with the DLC crowd that we never hear about anymore. His blogroll is tiny and has Kaus and Andrew Sullivan on it. He plays the game with the oily Steve Clemons. TPM’s coverage of the primary was incredibly disappointing and while somewhat more fair than other places, pretty much descended into Drudge and Politico driven rumor mongering at the end. It certainly wasn’t rigor. I will probably never get over his post that TPM did not exist to cover policy, because everyone knows about policy- they were in the election for horse race coverage. Sure that got them the hits, but the level of unseriousness was very damaging to the discourse and I thought at the time beneath what they had accomplished. I think Josh is what he wants to be, and I think he’s in essence selling out. I really liked David Kurtz when he was DK, but during the primary he really left a bad taste in my mouth- his post about how he was so sick of the debates because they were boring- this is the press driving the campaign and playing the public for- wait for it- rubes. Greg Sargent was really good at the Horse’s Mouth, and he was covering important stuff. Then they shut that down. I think he’s been busier since but I feel he’s been less rigorous. So I can’t use the word hack yet, but they’re not on any sort of pedestal anymore.
No I’ve never e-mailed Bob. But I have emailed JMM! So you’re only one degree of separation from Josh.
My feelings about Bob’s ego arise more than from just his style – when I saw his Atrios post I knew the floodgates had been opened – and when Atrios responded – I feared that Atrios was going to occupy a fair amount of Bob’s blog over the next 6 months or maybe forever. I actually pitied Bob when he started to go after JMM and didn’t get the direct response that I felt like he craved.
It’s funny, I never notice any of the defensiveness that you associate with Atrios. I’m not saying that it’s not there it just never really registers with me. Occasionally he says something dickish that registers but it never lingers for long.
Is Atrios a lazy blogger? Hell if I know. At times it doesn’t seem like much work. But I suspect that it’s a fair bit more work than we realise. And I don’t pretend to know what type of obligations he has outside of his blog gig. If Atrios isn’t giving you an in-depth analysis of the financial crisis then go read Krugman or DeLong or Roubani (sorry I can never remember his name). Atrios isn’t GG and if you’ve been to Eschaton a few dozen times you shouldn’t expect GG-type posts.
I’m also not sure that it’s Atrios’ job to provide criticism of lefty blogs or thought. That may be something that we’re interested in or value but I’m afraid that we may have forgotten to include that in our contract with Mr. Black. Personally when I read DH, I wish that Somerby spent more time criticising Al Gore … you know, to keep it real.
PS I’m not mad. I just like to argue!
So Hilzoy has a post up about the latest Palin NEWSPAPER-GATE GAFFEE!!!11. It’s a cute post but as far as ‘mistakes’ go it’s pretty weak tea. I still digs me some Hilzoy. She’s human so I forgive her lack of purity.
For TPM and the big A, let’s not forget that this is their job. Much like the newspapers and TV, there is a patina that gets placed over the actual function of their online presence, which is to generate income. They get more hits (=income) if they play to their crowd than if they are genuine in their criticism. That Atrios uses the phrase “nominal allies” implies that sides must be chosen. He has chosen his tribe, as has Marshall and they shape their messages to conform to the needs of their tribe. This may not be consciously done, in fact I doubt it is, but it is certainly happening. Atrios heard snippets on the radio, said he needed to see the visuals, yet posts that McCain had an eye contact problem. He obviously couldn’t have known that by listening, so he must have either read it on another blog or in an email. With however many tens of thousands of visits he gets a day, he sticks up the eye contact comment without knowing whether it was really true or not. Never follows up with a confirmation or negation of the post (he had no intention of ever doing that). He knew it would play well with the tribe and that was all that mattered. This is really what Somersby is complaining about and I think he tagged A pretty well, even if A was unaware of what he was doing.
On the other hand, Atrios has never made any pretense about being a journalist or a pundit, he has said numerous times he blogs about what he likes and because he likes blogging. He is really just a liberal Instapundit. This is in stark contrast to JMM who claims to be a new media journalist with investigative functions. He has lovely corporate sponsors and there is no doubt he will not leave the very narrow definitions of acceptable behavior for the “in” crowd. I am more critical of his efforts even as I knew it was less likely to really be something different.
Somersby is doing this gratis and without fear of losing his audience. With that freedom, I can trust he is walking his own path, regardless of whether I agree with him or not. (His Al Gore defense ignores some huge problems with Gore’s performance as a politician and is quite revisionist at times).
Somerby would claim his writings aren’t a defense of Gore but a media critique.
I don’t care if Atrios is lazy or not, he is clearly trying to have it both ways. He may do a ton of work, and a ton of reading, and go to a ton of blogger panels. He just doesn’t show the work, period.
Atrios’ entire blog is almost crafted as a sarcastic response against criticism that “his blog sucks”- I would have thought it was impossible to miss. Whether A wants the heat or not, he’s a big voice in a certain crowd, so what he says matters, even if he wants it not to matter. Cue Spiderman.
I would also say that if JMM had replied to the Howler earlier maybe we wouldn’t see what we see now, yes it seems like Bob is on a little bit of a jihad, but he’s almost always right.
TPM is pretty responsive to e-mails- I’ve e-mailed JMM, DK, and Sargent. They’ve been responsive yet non-responsive. They’ll e-mail you back, but they don’t really like saying “yes, you are right, this post isn’t clear” they usually just say what they meant in e-mail. THis doesn’t solve the problem.
Somerby would claim his writings aren’t a defense of Gore but a media critique.
Some of this is true, other parts are just Gore hagiography.
I love Gore. I have a deep deep respect for him. I saw him drive by me in a limo once in the back of HMS. I imagine that he waved and thoughtfully gazed upon my unaware countenance.
Did you know that Biden must not be aggressive or he will lose the debate?
I thought I saw Shaq once in a Cadillac Escalade.
Yeah, Biden better be careful because if he shows up he might lose the debate if he only wins by 70%.
You have to wonder if A is trying to bait Somersby now.
He might be. Then he played good cop with a crap on Kit Seelye.
I like Somerby a lot. I could tell how good he was in 2004, because his writing on the Swift Boat idiocy got me more infuriated about politics than at any time in my life. He can be shrill and condescending, and I agree with Fish on the Gore revisionism (and I like Gore). But that mofo can ball. Atrios may or may not do much work, but you know Somerby does.
At the same time, I think Atrios gets a pass. He is the Charles Barkley of A-list bloggers. He has a lot of pull but doesn’t give a Frist! about being some role model or being some new media rainbow sparkle unicorn. That’s the kind of maverick attitude that’s GOP presidential material.
TPM, on the other hand, seems hellbent on becoming the new online New Republic, or maybe the newer (cleaner) Slate. I used to love it, but I had to kill it.
Finally, in closing, Pinko gets 1000 gold stars for that Uriah Heep link. The world could use more guitarist nipples, Indian-faced bellbottoms, and Doug Henning hair.
Sigh, if only Atrios were as pure as the driven Somerby.
DH really needs comments.
Bob is much more self-aware than you give him credit for, GH. And that was the first comment where I ever though you went for a cheap one. I hope PupH brings you home a skunk for that!
I love PupH.
I would like to point out that from my perspective, and irrespective of all the arguing back and forth that Evil A has good instincts and is consistently supportive of intelligent development and transportation policies…
Most times, those are his most expository posts, in fact.
Back to your regularly scheduled haranguery.
Nobody ever said Big A was a McArdle. I love it when he talks about mass transit etc., except the SUPERTRAIN gambit is repetitive and meh.
agreed