Patterico apparently find this Ann Althouse statement as amusing as I did:
Jeff Goldstein and John Cole have no idea what I would say if I actually used my full verbal powers to cut them down to size.
As I noted at Patterico’s, clearly Ann has no idea the things you guys say about me in the comments section HERE, or she would not worry about hurting my delicate sensibilities.
Perry Como
Ms. Althouse is no doubt a cunning linguist who would use her superior verbal acumen to wage an onslaught of Ficus elastica versus Equus collagen.
rilkefan
Uhh, John, we’re not using our full verbal powers on you either.
Cyrus
rilkefan Says:
That’s true, most of us reserve it for each other.
RSA
Ann sounds like a villain in superhero cartoons: Soon the world will feel the wrath of my full verbal powers! Tremble in your insignificance!
ppGaz
Down to size. What are you, John? About a 44 medium in a suit?
Sorry, that’s the best I can do with this kind of material.
But she’s funny, I must say. Woooooooooh …. and all that.
playah grrl
She won’t let me criticise her on her blog, so i’ll mock her on mine.
Mr. Cole, it is an honor and a priviledge to have my comments deleted alongside yours.
;-)
rachel
She can kill you with her brain. :-)
SomeCallMeTim
Althouse increasingly appears to be insane. Recall that she was roundly chided by Democrats and (some) Libertarians for suggesting that the wrongful shooting death in London was OK because people would learn to dress like non-terrorists. She then said she was misunderstood and that all of the facts surrounding the incident hadn’t been known at the time she posted. Now, some few months later, she is outraged that people weren’t more circumspect about a float that fell to the ground and injured two people. IIRC, you pointed out that the existence and extent of the injuries weren’t known at the time of the initial comments. Apparently that excuse is only relevant when someone dies by human intentional action.
It’s almost sad to see this. But mostly, it’s bizarre.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Yeah, she only missed calling you two “foolish mortals.”
Mac Buckets
This Ann person is clearly punching above her weight…and missing.
Jeff G
SomeCallMeTim —
You have citations? Otherwise you are being engaging in cheap and tawdry innuendo. And that makes you just as bad as the terrorists.
yet another jeff
Yes, yes…after all, snark is a chemical weapon, melting the brains of civilians.
BumperStickerist
Be careful, John,
I’ve seen Ann pop a bag of Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Theatre Microwaveable Popcorn using nothing but the powers of her mind.
Well, I didn’t so much *see* that as *read* about it on a blog.
…
Obviously, the only *responsible* thing to do is take up a collection among the commentors at Protein Wisdom and Balloon-Juice and have Jeff and John send Ann a bouquet of balloons at her work.
http://www.law.wisc.edu/facstaff/biog.php?ID=222
.
Jeff G
By the way, in case wasn’t clear to some people (*coughJOHNcough*), I was just joking with SomeCallMeTim.
Still, it would be helpful if he could dig up the appropriate Althouse links.
SoCalJustice
Umm, she’s a law professor?
I don’t remember any of mine being quite so juvenile. Of course, some classes might have been a bit more fun with the occassional disengenuous implosion or two.
SomeCallMeTim
Jeff:
I knew your prior comment was a joke. But, then, I’m a Democrat; we’re all about nuances.
For cites, I’d point you to Henley and suggest that you track back and forward from there. Since her initial posting on the London shooting, I feel unclean after visiting her site; I try to avoid it, though I occassionally end up there by accident.
NB: clicking the link takes you to Henley’s main page for some reason. Don’t know why. You should be able to find the post by searching his blog for “Althouse.”
Sal
What the fuck is wrong with that woman? I’ve read her blog maybe three times, including the link referenced here, so maybe she deserves the benefit of my doubt.
But I don’t think so. I haven’t gotten into her politics, commentary, etc, but in the links I have read, she’s a nutcase. Not a right wing or leftwing nutcase, just a nutcase. But I could be wrong. Is someone impersonating her? Or is she just malkinizing?
Ancient Purple
She may have “full verbal powers,” but that pales in comparison to the fact that John Cole can balance a wine box on his stomach.
Ann is toast.
OCSteve
I’d agree that John gets more abuse right here than she is likely to be up to.
But pissing off Jeff is just a dumb thing to do. I seem to remember that the last blogger that got him riled was mocked ruthlessly on PW for about a week. Obviously he is showing some restraint here.
von
Y’know, Ann may be completely out to lunch on this one, but her substantive criticisms of OSM/PJM have been pretty much on target thus far. (As have Professor Bainbridge’s. And Wizbang’s.)
As for me: The only way that OSM/PJM makes sense as a business model to me — i.e., the kind that might generate a VC some return on his/her/its investment — is if it’s premised on an portal theory. Here’s the requisite blogospheric rank speculation:
1. OSM/PJM reportedly offers it’s low- and mid-tier less than BlogAds in ad revenue. (Althouse reports that she was offered a sum much less than her current BlogAd’s revenue; the current rank speculation assumes that this single data point indicates a trend. Hey, whattaya want for free?)
2. OSM/PJM’s early targets were top-tier bloggers.
3. Assume that point 1 is a feature of the OSM/PJM model as sold to the VC, and not just another amateurish mistake.
4. Why would a blogger nonetheless choose to sign up with OSM/PJM?
5. Well, because they perceive that OSM/PJM has some value that it not apparent in its payment rates. In this case, that non-monetary value seems to be (a) the value of being associated with certain top-tier bloggers and (b) the expected (but not yet realized) future value of a portal that will drive up blog traffic. (These two are related, because the lower-tier blogger hopes that being associated with a Charles Johnson or Glenn Reynolds or Jeff Go. will lead to more links from the same.)
6. If that was the model — and I have no idea whether it was or wasn’t — I think there was a fair chance of it working. Most profits from BlogAds are relatively low to the lower-tier blogger, and thus the absolute value of the difference in payment rates between BlogAds and OSM/PJM are also relatively low. A lower-tier blogger may rationally accept a $10 (or less) loss in profit for the possibility of greater traffic and a guaranteed return during the contractual term — or even for the mere pleasure of being associated with a CJ, Reynolds, or JG.
7. But for such a model to work, it has to be executed properly — which means that it has to recognize who the customers of the service are. In this case, the customers are the lower-tier bloggers. It’s not clear to me that the OSM/PJM folks get that and, given the state of their adverts/promotional materials (amateurish is one descriptive term; litigation-inviting is a better one), it’s not clear to me that they are capable of executing it.
8. Is my rank speculation true at all? Well, here’s a testable hypothesis: I predict that, within two months, J&S will retire from active management of the enterprise, but not the enterprise itself. They’ll say that they are refocusing on providing content, which is a plausible explanation. OSM/PJM will be relaunched as a portal enterprise, seeking to combine something along the lines of TPM Cafe (which has proven that such a model can work) with the “plus” of a guaranteed advertising budget for participants. “By bloggers for bloggers” will be the operative catchphrase (if not the enunciated one).
9. Alternatively, OSM/PJM will simply shut down.
10. But my money is on #8. If my wild guesses are correct, the model is sound. It’s the execution that’s lacking.
von
Louise
Rachel, usually I’m happy to see someone bring the Serenity references, but since we’re probably not going to get any more (:::sob:::), let’s not waste them on Ann.
Although some of the show’s Chinese phrases would be appropriate (“explosive diarrhea of an elephant!”).
von
I should clarify that my aforementioned rank speculation assumes that top-tier bloggers are being offered above-market rates for their participation; an assumption that I’m pretty sure is correct, regardless of whether OSM/PJM’s original business model was as I posit above or completely different. Glenn Reynolds, for instance, presumably has enough experience (and bargaining power) to negotiate a favorable deal from OSM/PJM. I can’t expect that he’d take a pay cut to participate in a new (and inherently risky) enterprise.
John Cole
Von- it isn’t the criticism that rankles- I have taken no exception to stuff from Jarvis and others, and I have participated in the Bulletin Board at Laurence Simon’s. I have also ignored the left, in general, who just want to see this fail for general dislike of CJ and RS.
What rankles about Ann is the petty mean-spiritedness, the distortions, the lying, the unwillingness to correct the record, the personal nature of it all, and the fact that when people respond, she plays the victim- we are all extremists, we hate women, etc.
Add to that the idiotic assertions that we have ‘lost our independence,’ a charge that makes me hopping mad, the notion that she is somehow a defender of the ‘spirit of blogging’ (blow it out your ass, Ann, I have been doing this for going on five years now), and the idea that any criticism against her statements is ‘an organized and coordinated OSM smear.’
I don’t know about you, but ‘organization’ and ‘coordination’ are not charges I would level at OSM, at least not right now.
Then, put all this together with the fact that she was asked to join but declined, and that this is REALLY all about her personal animus towards Roger Simon (Did you know he hung up on her? The horror!) and that she is just trying to, in her words, extract a ‘pound of flesh,’ and my general attitude is that the woman is insane, vindictive, and dishonest.
Or, as I stated the other day, ‘a self-serving, dishonest, preening, egotistical nutter.’ Which is a shame, because two weeks ago if you asked me what I thought of her, I would have said she was a pretty level-headed center-right lawyer-blogger from U. of Wisconsin.
I would submit that the person who has changed the past two weeks is Ann.
Having said all that, there is some merit to what you have said. I have no idea what is going to happen.
von
John:
Don’t get me wrong: I really don’t give two shits about the current pissing match, save for the fact that I think it’s pretty silly that some of the piss seems to have landed on you. (I read Balloon Juice because I like the shoot-from-the-hip attitude, and it doesn’t hurt that I mostly agree with your politics.) Well, I take that back: I find Dennis the Peasant’s dispute with Simon intellectually interesting in a pedantic lawyer kinda way, because DtP might actually have had a viable cause of action again Simon under California law (before, that is, DtP summarily stated that he wasn’t interested in suing).
My main interest is trying to figure out the motivations of the folks who actually put up the cash for PJM. My limited experience with VCs has suggested that they’re willing to take a risk or two, but they do not invest without a viable plan to make money.
John Cole
Like water off a duck’s back. If she is going to top some of the things Andrei, Davebo, PPGAZ, and Slide say to each other, she has her work cut out.
At any rate, I have a clear business model for this venture:
Which is one of the main reasons I do not understand this whole ‘lost their independence schtick’ Ann is peddling. Am I now beholden to the Larry the Cable Guy lobby because I am runnning that blogad?
von
Which is one of the main reasons I do not understand this whole ‘lost their independence schtick’ Ann is peddling. Am I now beholden to the Larry the Cable Guy lobby because I am runnning that blogad?
No argument there.
ppGaz
I dunno, I might put the video games ahead of the loose women.
Just from an ROI standpoint, I mean.
Anderson
Althouse’s determination to embarrass Althouse is a case study in abnormal psychology.
I can’t imagine a professor posting such whiny rubbish on the internet, under her own name, where her students can read it & see how pathetic she is.
Though, I dunno, maybe they were already picking up on that.
ppGaz
God, I REALLY need a new hobby.
Andrei
Each other? Don’t you mean you? I don’t recall ever implying that Slide was some part of the human anatomy that lacked an X chromosome pair coupling. Especially one where the invocation of that label was perceived as obscene given the drivel you allow to be spewed in the comments of your blog. Obscene isn’t a word: it’s the thoughts and intentions behind the formation of the words. That’s where obscenity lives.
You have yet to see my verbal powers, and I doubt you care for anyone else’s given the way you prefer to lazily participate in the rightwiing sport of demeaning others “just because” anyway. Besides, I try not to waste them on people who refuse to openly castigate obvious “intellectually challenged” contributors, people like say Stormy or Darrell.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go read the pomposity that is Salon.com.
Jeff G
The funny thing to me is, the first thing I ever wrote about PJM featured a drunk Roger L Simon and Tim Blair an angry, miserable dwarf.
Then I joked about the “exciting new direction!” of PJM — “Pajamas Media After Dark,” a live webcast that featured Michael Barone and David Corn in their sleepwear interviewing C-list celebs.
I’m not bothered by honest criticism, either. I’ve been arguing since day one that PJM was going to have to find its niche and form organically based on what is working and what isn’t.
Ultimately, I think you’ll see lots of original “reporting” (or at least, obscure but important local stories) from the blogging equivalent of stringers. I think you’ll hear live streamed audiocasts of debates. I think you’ll see original content on the humor side of things.
But in the meantime, I signed on to have them place ads on my site and use my content on their page if they so choose. How that effects my independence I have no idea.
Louise
I’m old, or I’m an economics dunce, or both. Everytime von used “VC” I kept thinking, “the VietCong are involved in PJM?”
Also:
A lower-tier blogger may rationally accept a $10 (or less) loss in profit for…the mere pleasure of being associated with a CJ…
Is this possible? I visited LGF once. I would never go back. Is it generally accepted that CJ’s commenters are the vile, full-of-hatred bigots, but that CJ is respectable/respected — or just taking a position to be provocative? This is what really has mystified me about some of the people who have joined PJM.
ppGaz
You’re not?
Ah, the subtle rubato of your work! Or is it merely castrato?
playah grrl
hey louise, umm…i’m a lgfer.
most likely thass why ann is preemptively deleting my comments.
since i’m also a grrl, and she can’t be afraid i’m going to mobilize an attack penis on her.
;)
Brian
I used to like Ann, and would read her blog daily. It had a good mix of topics, and I’d especially seek out her posts on legal opinions or SCOTUS nominations. But lately she has become a turn-off thanks to her arrogance and haughtiness. She reminds me of someone else.
There’s a guy who does a Sunday political humor radio show here in Los Angeles named Harry Shearer. He also does voices for The Simpsons, is the bass player in Spinal Tap, and wrote for and appeared in Sat. Night Live. He’s a smart commentator on politics, sort of like Al Franken. But with Harry, he always has come off as one who believes he is more sophisticated than other people, especially those who disagree with him. There is a strong lack of humility about him that also is present in Ann Althouse, and this fact comes across more and more in her blog.
Harry does well via his voice work, but his unique voice is heard via a radio program with a sparse audience. Channels with larger distribution want nothing to do with him (maybe he’s just too sophisticated!!). With Ann, she’s a law professor at Univ. of Wisconsin, and will likely remain there. No larger institution like Harvard seems to want her (they’re surely too institutionalized and male-dominated to appreciate her brilliance!!!).
von
Louise:
VC is shorthand for von is insanely lazy. As for CJ: No, he has the reputation you describe. That is, an extremely motivated fan base; an extremely motivated anti-fan base; a lot of folks who have no opinion of him whatsoever; a lot of folks who visit LGF occasionally/not at all and are aware of him only as a blogging heavyweight from his press in RatherGate; and a number of folks who, like me, regard the man as a moral idiot but have grudgingly come to accept that he’s a blogging heavyweight, has decent programming skills, and occasionally hits on a good point. CJ’s involvement is probably a mixed blessing for PJM, but I don’t sense that PJM is really targetting the vons of the world for it’s initial forays. (That is, liberal Republican lawyers.) So it’s probably not a problem for PJM’s business model — at least in the opening stages.
As for Jeff G.’s point: you’re suggesting a content-driven model, and maybe that really is what J&S are going for. Their public statements sometimes suggest it. Considering that the profit rate for online content providers is somewhere between negative a zillion and zero, however, I don’t think that’s what the VCs are thinking. And the guy who pays the piper calls the tune (to resort, as I so fequently do, to cliche).
Were it my money, I’d want a portal with an network of advertisers and a nucleus of blogs under my banner. The content of the portal would exist to drive individuals to specific blogs to see targeted paid adverts. (Think of MSN.com as the model, which uses teasers to seed Slate and other MS-affiliated content providers with readers. Now, have the teasers be for blog entries on individual blogs.) This seems to be exactly what PJM/OSM is trying to do. Albeit incompently, and without (so far as I can tell) a sustainable advertising network.
Now, again, my experiences with VCs (whether Venture Capitalists or Viet Cong) are very, very limited. And my involvement with PJM/OSM is nonexistent. But I do run into the odd financial-minded guy in my line of work, and I refuse to assume that someone plunks down $3.5 million after the dot-com burst without any clue what the hell it’s gonna buy. Right now, my wild speculation seems a reasonable guess.
Midshipman Enfield
You have yet to see my verbal powers, and I doubt you care for anyone else’s given the way you prefer to lazily participate in the rightwiing sport of demeaning others “just because” anyway.
Yeah, wow, that’s top shelf writing right there. What a fucking prat.
Louise
Thanks for the response, von.
What seems to be most lacking in the PJM site, for a casual visitor, is something that ties things together. It seems to me that they’d want to give the visitor a reason to click through to the blogs; something like “here are the people talking about this story (a reason for the newsfeeds)” and “here are two contrary views on this topic — essays at the sites, teasers in this “blogjam” below…”)
Armando
John:
What is it with Prof. Althouse? Obviously she is a smart and educated person. She seems to have made some factual errors. Is it difficult to acknowledge them?
Now gawd knows I have no political sympathy and in the case of some of the others involved on the squabble, little personal sympathy for her adversaries. They are, some of them, pretty nasty.
But this episode is baffling, at least to me.
John Cole
Armando- I am BAFFLED.
Krista
Bwah-ha-ha!
Carpbasman
A rather minor point, but isn’t Dennis the Peasant the “pound of flesh” person rather than Althouse.
But yeah, her behavior over the whole thing has been petty and troublesome. She did the same thing over an Atrios comment thread, misrepresenting statements offered ironically (having made a similar statement in the past on her own blog) or that didn’t say anything close to what she was implying (that they were misogynist). She refused to say that she got things wrong and went so far to suggest that they were worse than what she got from LGF.
She’s pretty much killed whatever credibility she had with a wide swath of the blogosphere.
John Cole
Thanks. I stand corrected. Telling that I attributed it to Ann, who has no reason to be angry, than the one person who has, I guess, a right to be angry.
Maggie45
Here is a comment I made on her post “Breakthrough of the Week” and her response. She really is delusional.
Maggie said:
Ann said:
“Johnson surgically cut one little thing from a post of mine, destroying all context, all possibility of understanding the joke, and I infer that he meant to make me look as weird as possible (snip)”
That’s exactly what you did to Jeff Goldstein. You still cannot admit that. Instead you accuse him of smears and harrassment, while all he was doing was trying to correct the record.
6:06 PM, November 27, 2005
Ann Althouse said…
Maggie: That is not so. I provided the context, and I participated at length with him in the comments and discussed his objections, even as he was abusing me at my own place. I also did several updates on the post discussing the issue in detail. The two things are NOT comparable.
Steve S
Armando – It’s an odd thing. John and Jeff(aka Al Sharpton of the right) and a large number of rightwing bloggers are obsessed with feminists.
They don’t grok the pie fight.
demimondian
Steve S — I’m assuming you’re being ironic. I mean, seeing as how Armando didn’t grok the pie fight, I don’t quite blame John or Jeff for not getting it either.
Geek, Esq.
Is Ann Althouse a sock puppet for Victor Von Doom?
Vlad
“the VietCong are involved in PJM?”
What color did you think the pajamas in question were, exactly? Black!