Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / It’s all in the game

It’s all in the game

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In my earlier incarnation as a local and state blogger, I used to email Ben Smith when he was at the Daily Politics (which is now run by the excellent Liz Benjamin). He struck me as an excellent political journalist, hard-working, sharp as a tack, and a nice guy. And, for what it’s worth, I think he did a great job with on-the-ground reader emails during the run-up to last November’s election.

It’s no secret that the Politico’s business model is to get lots of links from Drudge. It’s why they push the stories that they do — Edwardian hair cuts, ACORN, global warming denialism, and so on. Try reading the comments there on any story and you’ll see teh tell-tale misspelled, ALL-CAPS rants; there’s not much doubt that most of the commenters migrated over from the Drudge Report. I don’t think that anyone from the Politico would dispute anything that I just said.

I know that for journalists today, it’s cold out there, and rough. There aren’t a lot of ways for an outlet to make money, and, in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably more honorable to whore yourself out for Drudge links than to work for Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies.

So I don’t blame the people at the Politico for doing what they do, anymore than I blame the kids on “The Wire” for getting involved with the drug trade. People need to get paid. But when you read the Drudgite comments on Smith’s piece about Elie Wiesel, it’s a lot like watching Michael Lee shoot someone or Duquan shoot up.

Reader Interactions

70Comments

  1. 1.

    Sam Wilkinson

    You were shocked to see Michael kill somebody? Or to see DuQuan get high? Really? If anything, the shock is more akin to Rawls hanging out in the same sorts of places that Omar did.

  2. 2.

    DougJ

    You were shocked to see Michael kill somebody? Or to see DuQuan get high? Really?

    No, not at all. It was all too predictable. And it was sad.

  4. 4.

    licensed to kill time

    This is a pithy statement:

    This hollowcost thing is totally overblown by the jewish.

    So much fail.

  6. 6.

    Betsy

    You know, I wish I hadn’t read that. I couldn’t even laugh at it – it just made me feel so sick. I just have to remind myself that those folks really ARE the fringe, and that most Americans, even Republicans, wouldn’t support that kind of hate.

  7. 7.

    licensed to kill time

    @calipygian: It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, the hits just keep on coming! The one that starts out:

    I sometimes wonder what has happened to the Jewish people?. The Bible says that they are GODs’ people and Israel is their home land. I see so many Jews seem to have abandoned their faith and I think this has to sadden our Father in Heaven. I see many Jews that are homosexual-actively promoting it as a “normal” lifestyle.

    is full of goodies – “homosexual-actively”, priceless!

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    … in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably more honorable to whore yourself out for Drudge links than to work for Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies.

    No. It’s not.

  9. 9.

    Midnight Marauder

    @calipygian:

    That and the not uncommon misconception that Mr. Wiesel is a girl.

    Exactly. That is by far the most egregious/sadly hilarious mistake over there. I mean, if you cannot get this most basic fact right, I think your interwebs privileges should be curtailed for just a bit.

  10. 10.

    calipygian

    You know, I wish I hadn’t read that. I couldn’t even laugh at it – it just made me feel so sick. I just have to remind myself that those folks really ARE the fringe, and that most Americans, even Republicans, wouldn’t support that kind of hate.

    These are the people that Bachman, Boehner and the only Republican Jew in Congress, Eric Cantor, are casting their lots with. They need to firmly denounce this kind of talk and they aren’t doing it. Even Cantor couldn’t muster a condemnation, just some weak tea about how comparing Obama to Hitler isn’t helpful.

    They are sowing a wind and I don’t want to be around for the whirlwind.

  13. 13.

    calipygian

    @licensed to kill time: Reminds me of that Woody Allen line from Annie Hall:

    Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.

  16. 16.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    I know that for journalists today, it’s cold out there, and rough.

    Yeah, yeah. It’s hard out there for a pimp.

    So I don’t blame the people at the Politico for doing what they do, anymore than I blame the kids on “The Wire” for getting involved with the drug trade.

    No fair trolling the blog from the driver’s seat.

  18. 18.

    Will

    For me, it’s more like watching Stringer Bell get outplayed by his own ambitions. Smartest guy in the room will always lose.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    @licensed to kill time: So, so, so much fail.

    When I was a teenager, my family took a vacation to Poland, sort of a “get in touch with your roots” kind of thing, a couple of years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While staying in Krakow, we took a side trip to see what was left of Auschwitz. Horrible, horrible place. Part of what made it so terrible was how bloody *normal* it looked from the outside; a bunch of buildings that looked for all the world like military barracks or something. Then you went inside and saw the photographs and the surviving artifacts and so forth.

    I’m glad, in a way, that I went once to see it. I wouldn’t willingly go back, except under one circumstance. In the unlikely event that I ever have children, I would want to bring them there once they were old enough. It’s an important lesson, of just how evil some people can be.

    And those who deny the Holocaust, or try to minimize it because of some perceived contemporary political gain, can go to Hell.

    -dms

  20. 20.

    Liz Phair

    I know that for journalists today, it’s cold out there, and rough.

    I see what you did there.

  21. 21.

    Max

    Now I want to watch The Wire.

    Ben could speak out, they could moderate the offensive ones, but he/they don’t want to.

    Need to sell click to advertisers.

    I’m interested to see the approach the new DC Politico venture thing takes. I suspect it will be no different.

  22. 22.

    gbear

    So DougJ, do you think that Ben Smith or any of their other writers feel any sense of shame or embarassment when they read the comments to their stories? You’d think they might wonder WTF. At some point it must be hard to feel like one of the cool kids when everyone shouting in agreement behind you is a complete dickhead.

  23. 23.

    Marc

    The Politico writers don’t actually need Drudge to feed their families. The Politico has a print version, distributed for free on Capitol Hill and chock full of advertising. You can be sure that lobbyists and trade associations will pay top dollar for those eyeballs.

    So if they post Drudge-bait… it’s because they like/envy Drudge and they want his readers to come read their site and befoul their comment threads.

    So no, it’s not like watching Michael or Dukie. It’s more like watching Whiting, Klebanow, and Scott Templeton drag a once-great profession down.

  24. 24.

    licensed to kill time

    @dmsilev: Yes, the banality of evil, as per Hannah Arendt. All those Holocaust deniers should be made to visit Auschwitz although they probably would still make up some rationalization for why it was “so overblown by the jewish”.

    I just re-read Elie Wiesel’s Night last week and it was wrenching. I do not understand the people who think the Holocaust is all made up or exaggerated. I do not want to understand them.

    I can point and mock, though.

  25. 25.

    KWEB

    I went to Dachau in September. Everyone should go and have that horrible feeling in their guts for 3-4 hours.

    I got the same horrible feeling when I saw the sign being held up at the Bachmann/Teabagger convention that republican leadership participated in.

    Fuck Bipartisanship. These people have no shame.

  29. 29.

    charles johnson

    I can’t stand dumb he-said/she-said journalism. When I’m reading an article about global warming, for instance, and for ‘balance’ the journalist interrupts the informative article to quote Republican Senator Dirk Shitbrains telling us all how it’s a big hoax, I roll my eyes. I want the most informative stuff I can find. So I can’t read Newsweek, watch Hardball, or the Sunday shows, etc. I get most of my news from MSNBC, the NYT, and a few blogs like ScienceBlogs, Washington Monthly, Ezra Klein, Salon, and TPM. Does anybody have any suggestions for other good places I can get good journalism?

  30. 30.

    cleek

    fuck Politico. fuck Drudge.

    why anyone would waste a millisecond worrying about what those twats write or think is so far beyond we that i sometimes wonder if we’re even members of the same species.

    on the other hand, Abbaye-Abdij Val-Dieu Brown is totally fucking awesome.

    shit piss fuck c#nt cocksucker motherfucker. tits.

  31. 31.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably more honorable to whore yourself out for Drudge links than to work for Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies.

    No, it’s not.

    These people are fucking scum. What they do is evil. E-V-I-L. To pick one from amongst many possible metaphors: they piss in the public water supply for money. Our so-called news media and the infotainment environment they have created are a set of infected wells waiting for a latter day Dr. Snow to come and remove the pump handles. And Politico is right up there with the rest of them – might as well rename it the Broad Street Report. There is nothing honorable about that, no matter how you slice it.

  32. 32.

    calling all toasters

    it’s cold out there, and rough.

    OK, I caught the Liz Phair reference. But how many other references did I miss?? I GOTS TO KNOW!

  33. 33.

    Nellcote

    it’s probably more honorable to whore yourself out for Drudge links than to work for Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies

    .

    What’s the difference?

    Ben was pretty good during the campaign but since then he’s been absorbed by the PoliticoBorg.

    I guess, like huff-poo, they need to churn crap for the money. But as a reader, I’ve given up on having to wade through the tabloid/anonymous faux leaks/ginned up conflicts to get to anything resembling reporting.

  35. 35.

    cleek

    @calipygian:

    unfortunately, “hollowcost” is a denier-approved term.

    you can Google it to see it in action (use “+hollowcost” to get past Google’s typically-helpful automatic spelling correction).

  36. 36.

    Jeff Fecke

    These are, incidentally, the people who consider themselves Israel’s best friends, because they want to back Israel in the coming war against Islam over Tel Meggido, right up until all the Jews get slaughtered, at which point Jesus comes back and saves all the Christians. The idea of peace in Israel bugs them, because that totally doesn’t get us to Armageddon. Of course, Obama is not a friend of Israel, because he foolishly thinks it’s a bad idea for war to break out between Israel and the Muslim world, and that’s anti-Israeli, because, well, it just is.

    Also, Democrats are the real anti-Semites.

  37. 37.

    tavella

    @Max: Now I want to watch The Wire.

    Do. I was a little wary of it myself, since I’m not a big fan of grim-dark fictives. And it’s deeply dark and heartbreaking at times, but it is also funny and moving and unbelievably brilliant. And you will find yourself reaching for metaphors from it to explain a great deal of modern politics, the War on (anything), and more.

    It’s cliche to call it the finest TV series ever made. It’s also the truth.

  38. 38.

    Apsaras

    This also explains why Camille Paglia writes for Salon. She may be a self-absorbed dimwit, but she gets Joan Walsh a monthly link from Drudge.

  42. 42.

    Demo Woman

    @cleek: This was on the google page
    Hatefacts of the Hollowcost | Spirit/Water/BloodJan 29, 2009 … No one goes to jail for denying the Resurrection, but questioning gas chamber mythology can send you off to prison for many years

  44. 44.

    Ash

    Elie Wiesel is a professor at my alma mater, I was extremely lucky to attend several of his lectures and meet him in person a few times. He’s 80-something, but I have no doubt that if any of these fuckers said this to his face, he’d have to trouble beating them down.

  45. 45.

    Christine

    I used to email Ben Smith when he was at the Daily Politics (which is now run by the excellent Liz Benjamin). He struck me as an excellent political journalist, hard-working, sharp as a tack, and a nice guy.

    Actually, he is not. He lives on my street in Brooklyn and is a pain in the ass for a neighbor.

  46. 46.

    Anne Laurie

    So I don’t blame the people at the Politico for doing what they do, anymore than I blame the kids on “The Wire” for getting involved with the drug trade. People need to get paid…

    Except, y’know, “The Wire” was fiction, and the Politico claims it’s not. Their Drudge-trolling attempts, deliberate or not, to move the Overton window even further right by normalizing the jingoism, paranoia and general craziness of the Bachman-Teabagger-Overdrive mindset. All the congressional assistants and administrative underlings reading Ben Smith’s puke-funnel from Drudge are encouraged to believe that “everybody”, all the Real Americans(tm), are nodding in agreement with the far-right authoritarian crazies. It magnifies the breadth and depth of Teh Crazy. Which is great news for the Banana Republicans, but very bad news for the rest of us.

    When Davis X. Machina says that the tombstone of the American Experiment will read “Killed by A Story Arc”, the Politico’s shameless whoring is exactly what he’s predicting.

  49. 49.

    Upper West

    Irony Watch:

    Just last week, Elie Wiesel spoke at John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Convention.

    How many of the people there are not that distant from the commenters to Smith’s article?

  50. 50.

    Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle

    @Marc: I hope DougJ knows that Drudgico is owned by the Albrittons. And Greenwald once did a whole piece on that and why it explains perfectly that Politico is worthy of the name Drudgico. The Albrittons are like the Koch’s. They just choose to fund different methods to the same ends.

  52. 52.

    Maus

    in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably more honorable to whore yourself out for Drudge links than to work for Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies

    In all seriousness, what’s the difference? Cultish slimeballs are cultish slimeballs. Each of those mentioned contributes to the malfunction/destruction of the American political system, I can’t see how any is better or worse than the other, aside from scale.

  57. 57.

    mistersnrub

    I imagine Michael Goldfarb’s response to the sort of ugliness displayed by these teabaggers would be: “Rev. Wright is the real Anti-semite, and Obama listened to his sermons for 20 years!”

  58. 58.

    mistersnrub

    @ajr22:

    Simon pretty much nailed the intellectual laziness and fame-whoring that is so prevalent in the the modern pundit/journalist class with his Templeton character.

    Wish there were more McNulty’s to put them in their place.

  59. 59.

    mclaren

    Ouch. A hit. A palpable hit.

    So that makes Broder into Snoop, and Tom Friedman into Chris Partlow…?

  61. 61.

    BigSwami

    This has no relation to the analogy, but the look on Chris Partlow’s face when he realized what was going on in Michael’s house was unforgettable. And the show handled it with such grace and dignity – it was never mentioned out loud, but you knew that both of those guys had been victims at some point in their lives. Horrible people, killers, but it made me feel so sorry for them anyway.

    That was an amazing show. Carry on.

  62. 62.

    DougJ

    OK, I caught the Liz Phair reference. But how many other references did I miss??

    Only that one reference in this post!

  63. 63.

    DougJ

    So DougJ, do you think that Ben Smith or any of their other writers feel any sense of shame or embarassment when they read the comments to their stories?

    Yes, I think they sometimes do.

  66. 66.

    R-Jud

    The Guardian, like the BBC, is fine for world news, but their American coverage is only marginally less fatuous than what you get from most US sources, and, sadly, their Westminster coverage is going in the same direction. I guess whatever’s in the water in DC finally got to their local reporters.

    McClatchy is the best US source.

  67. 67.

    batgirl

    @Upper West: Yes, and this saddened me tremendously, and I even lost a little respect for Wiesel. Look at this quote from Hagee:

    It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced in Canaan and continuing to this very day. In no way does this lessen or excuse the mistreatment and sinful atrocities the Jews have endured at the hands of their enemies, but it gives us a framework for understanding what has happened. [emphasis mine]

    From Jerusalem Countdown, p. 56

    This is who Wiesel agreed to stand up with because of his support for Israel.

  68. 68.

    licensed to kill time

    I’m fixin’ a hole where my reply arrow fell in, to stop my mind from wanderin’, where it will go, oh

    hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm

  69. 69.

    bobbo

    Love how they practically cite chapter and verse from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then say, “I’m not anti-Semitic.” What would it take?

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    What would it take?

    That’s like asking “What would it take?” for Limbaugh to realize he’s a racist, lying pedophile.

    “You can’t get theah from heah”

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