Wonkette really makes me laugh sometimes, but this made me throw up in my mouth a little:
A staff blog — possible names include “Caller ID” and “The Daily Trawler” — will indulge in more humor, some of it written by long-time conservative blogger Jim Treacher (real name Sean Medlock) who moved to Washington from Indianapolis after Carlson gave him a call. And an iPhone app is on the way.
“Tucker is one of the most talented journalists I know,” said Ana Marie Cox….
The competition is stiff for right-wing blog start-up money:
“We were very lucky to get the amount of money we did [$3 million] based, basically, on a PowerPoint.”
norbizness
$12 was for the power point, $17.50 was for the spinning light-up bow tie, and $2,999,970.50 was for being a smarmy little GOP cockstain on wingnut welfare.
Phoenix Woman
I’ll never forget David Brock’s describing how nervous he was the first time any of his work appeared in a major non-wingnut-welfare publication: See, the piece was being held for fact-checking, and he’d never, in all his time working the right-wing smearjob circuit, ever had his work fact-checked. Facts are not their stock in trade.
By the way — It’s beginning to look like the Dems should have opted for the 50-vote reconciliation process and spared conservative Democrats like Blanche Lincoln from having to vote for a bill that currently pleases no one aside from the insurance lobby:
And yes, reconcilation could have been used.
blahblahblah
Tucker is a journalist? An opinion hack, maybe. But I have never seen his name on a by-line at any major daily. Nor have I seen him cover straight news on television – anywhere.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
I semi-respect what AMC was doing back in the day, but the day she decided to jump in bed with that cockstain Tucker Carlson was a sad one.
Hopefully Treacher is done unpacking his razor cocks, chloroform and digital camera, and has time to post something more substantive than “Hi guys!”
Zuzu's Petals
Countdown to some Treacher trolling …
drew42
I would have built and maintained the site for half that price.
Bill
I’d send my congratulations to Treacher, but he wouldn’t be able to read it, since he bravely blocked my email after I kept politely pointing out to him that his defenses of Bobby Jindal for the whole Katrina deal were probably misguided.
He’s a real catch, that Treacher.
Brick Oven Bill
$3 million is a lot of money. I think I’m going to get with Daniel Wood and put together a Power Point proposal-presentation.
ruemara
I’ll be happy to ignore this vanity project like I ignore the current Shrillington Post.
McGeorge Bundy
Tucker is a decent writer but not really a journalist. That said, I look forward to the official launch of The Daily Carlsonington (thanks, Wonkette) and will read it, well, daily, if only for laughs. Until it shuts down anyway. I give it three months.
Jim
Yeesh. And she’s the most prominent voice on what used to be Air America? She actually wasn’t all bad back on the Time/Swampland blog, which is probably why she had her cocktail party invitation revoked and given to that tiresome god-botherer Amy Sullivan.
Who’d he make the presentation to? Mama Birdseye?
Ash Can
What’s the over-under on how long it takes for that 3 mil to run out and for Carlson to have to shut down his little vanity project, blaming its failure on sabotage from the left?
ETA @McGeorge Bundy: Great minds, etc.
Ripley
Finally, Republicans will have an outlet for their opinions and policy details!
Take that, old-fashioned liberal media squares!
Balconesfault
how many stenographers can you buy for 3 mil?
DougJ
Tucker is a decent writer but not really a journalist.
I agree.
I give him credit for the piece he did on GWB and the woman whose pleas for life GWB mocked. That was gutsy. But that was just an interview.
He’s not a journalist.
Zandar
$3 million will go far when all you have to do is recycle “Obama: worst President ever or just merely of the 21st century?” and “Really, how long will it take before the Hillary/Evan Bayh ticket sweeps the nation?” as your two basic posts, alternated daily.
Joshua Norton
It would appear that AMC is just waiting for Lady Peggy Noonington to shuffle off this mortal coil so she can assume her mantle.
Why it seems like just yesterday when little Annie Marie was saying “Mommie, I want to be a corporate sell out and full time hack when I grow up”.
The Grand Panjandrum
AMC peaked at Wonkette. Tucker hasn’t been the same since Jon Stewart hurt his feelings. Rachel Maddow didn’t do him any favors by slapping him around like a school boy. Poor Tucker, he was born with a silver spoon instead of courage.
El Cid
Maybe AMC doesn’t know too many journalists.
licensed to kill time
This line from Wonkette is golden:
Dork
I dont think anna marry cocks does Wonkette no mo
Betty Cracker
I predict it will be every bit as lucrative as that other profit-generating wingnut juggernaut, Pajamas Media.
RSR
Watching the conservatives attempt to recreate or hijack areas where Democrats have legitimately had successes and achieved some momentum over the past few years (#tcot, this ‘answer’ to HuffPo, special elections) just betrays their lack of originality. Or at least their inability to develop original inspiration for what they’re doing.
So much of it seems to be ‘the right’s answer’ to this or that.
The Left’s success in these areas wasn’t simply a matter of showing up in vast numbers; ask Howard Dean how that worked out in Iowa for him. Our special election victories in 2005-2008 wasn’t simply about numbers; there were underlying elements or circumstances that made those elections inflection points.
Showing up in Upstate NY or Massachusetts means nothing if the fundementals aren’t in place.
Maybe the Daily Caller has more going for it than simply being the right’s answer to HuffPo. But if I were them, I would be trying to quash the message that we’re the ‘right’s answer’ to anything.
aimai
Yes, I liked ” millions of news” and also the part about saving the front page. I also loved the fact that they went into detail about the formatting: there will be lots of stories on the front, and a sidebar! Without those important innovations I daresay they couldn’t have gotten the whole three mil.
aimai
Mnemosyne
OT, but it sounds like Peter Orszag learned the same lesson that Tom Brady did: if you’re going to have break-up sex, wear a condom, dumbass.
Jim Newell
The things we still get blamed for, five years later!
Mike Kay
@Phoenix Woman:
fuck lincoln. She hurt herself by grandstanding. Tim Johnson is in a red state (south dakota) and he didn’t catch any hell, simply because he didn’t make a scene.
by the way, if this is such an industry giveaway, why is Pelosi’s hand picked lieutenant, industry asset, Bart Stupak, still desperately trying to scuttle the bill?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/us/politics/07stupak.html?pagewanted=2&hp
why can’t nancy control her own aides.
Zandar
@licensed to kill time:
…I’m stealing that millions of news line.
mcc
I was an avid reader of Suck for almost all of its run. I started reading Wonkette only at some point after Cox left. It is confusing because I cannot see a resemblance between anything I read at Suck or anything I ever read at Wonkette, to anything I see Cox say now that she’s got a “real” job.
AhabTRuler
Oh, god, that’s right…him. A kitten getting hit by a car is literally funnier than Jim Treacher.
Napoleon
@Phoenix Woman:
Lincoln doesn’t need to vote for it. The Dems can loose 10 votes on the vote for the bill (as long as Biden is there to vote) and still pass the bill.
arguingwithsignposts
I think from here on out, he should be referred to by his full given name: Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson
Mark
Since they have a couple of writers from the Moonie Times maybe the second coming of Christ himself gifted them the $3 million.
Joshua Norton
Gad. That pic of Tucker with the scowl and bow-tie just shrieks “Pushy Bottom”.
Hey Tucks, use some of that 3 mil to buy a clue. There’s a reason the networks have all canned your ass at one time or another.
licensed to kill time
@Zandar:
I had dibs on it first but I guess we can share. (How many dibs? millions of dibs!)
AhabTRuler
@arguingwithsignposts: Nope, just “Tucker S&M Carlson”.
Macsenmifune
Gee I can’t wait to see the trolls at that site, knowing conservatives and there abilities with the web or technology in general.
The Populist
Couldn’t he come up with a better name than Jim Treacher?
Mike Kay
at what point do corporate masters realize/accept that wingnuts don’t read?
mcc
When the blogosphere was first starting the right wingers as good as ran it. It was like one giant e-mail forward
Joshua Norton
Now that I think of it, this sounds strangely like the plot of “The Producers”. Get millions of dollars. Produce a cheap flop. Keep the bulk of the money for yourself.
Amirite?
AhabTRuler
Ok, first, are those roosters on his bow-tie ?
And second, that can’t be his real hair, is it?
Bill E Pilgrim
Maybe he and Rich Lowry can write a column together, they can call it “Dancin with the Starbursts”.
Hey here’s an idea: They should get dressed up in smoking jackets, and make fun of political figures, with that famous Beltway wit. Never lose with that.
Mike Kay
Poor Tucker, he’s in such need for attention, he once tried to host a game show, but it so bad, it never aired.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson#CBS_game_show
robertdsc
Voting for cloture and not voting for the entire bill are two separate things. She and all the other conservatives could have voted for cloture and against the bill.
Besides, it’s the conservatives who opposed popular measures like the public option and large subsidies and had it removed from and/or weakened the bill. They made their bed. Now they have to lie in it.
ZachPruckowski
Their financial plans sound like a total disaster. Yeah, they’ve got $3 million. But with 21 people on staff (some of them “big name”), they think that will last a year. It takes 4 months to close these kinds of deals, so 8 months from now they’ll be searching for some B Round funding, and they’ll need at least another $2-3 million. Kind of a tight schedule to go from nothingness to having something viable to sell investors. I bet their “quality journalism over sensationalism” and their “heavy research” will fall apart around June, when they realize they have 2 months to hit a home run before they’re fund-raising again. They should have made that $3 million last at least 18-24 months. Hire 10 people, not 20. Pinch pennies to buy yourself enough runway to hit the big-time. Sites like HuffPost and DailyKos get piles and piles of hits now, but they took years to get to that point. Google started out in a garage. They’re building it for the assumption that it’ll be a near-over-night success. Unless Carlson has pics of Obama and Tiger in a three-way with some blonde, that’s not a bet they should be taking.
Mr Furious
Three million dollars and you were able to confine it to your mouth? I’ve got vomit all over my screen.
Mike Kay
Cocksie doesn’t even have a job as a journalist. She currently hosts a one hour chat weekend show on air america. Yet she acts like she’s the DC chief of the New Yorker.
ZachPruckowski
@Mike Kay:
Yeah, he’s sort of the Beltway poster-child for failing upwards. I’m torn between hoping the poor guy catches a break and hoping people realize there’s a reason all his stuff flops.
McGeorge Bundy
Ana Marie Cox: Future editor of the New York Review of Books, bet on it.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: Sullivan puts a damn fine beat down on Cheney today. But this pimp slapping of Mike Allen is fucking Epic:
Ouch!
Bill E Pilgrim
Good God.
You really don’t have to be anything except famous anymore. Even if you’re famous and despised. Fame and infamy pay equally well.
Like, well like Tucker Carlson.
Violet
@Joshua Norton:
Ain’t that the truth. Lady Peggy should watch her back. AMC really wants to Be Someone.
@Bill E Pilgrim: That’s why there are laws so that prisoners can’t profit off selling the rights to the story of their wrongdoing. Because it doesn’t matter what you’re famous for. Fame is the currency.
Mike Kay
@McGeorge Bundy:
If AMC wasn’t cute, she’d be stacking books at the library. Really, her last “job” was for US Weekly derivative, Radar magazine. Which ironically, never made it on to anyone’s radar before folding.
Mike Kay
Hey, Ana Marie, show us your tits!
http://techlawadvisor.com/blog/images/Wonkette-Washingtonienne-1.jpg
McGeorge Bundy
@Mike Kay: Too true. Of course I don’t really think Cox will be editor of NYRB, or have any connection to it at all aside from as a reader. And even that may be a stretch.
geg6
Ana Marie Cox is such a whore for the Village (and especially for McCain during the campaign), I have to wonder if she’s blowing ol’ Bow Tie Tucker. Otherwise, why say something so demonstrably false and stupid?
If there are two people on this earth who immediately get me to change the channel or turn the page, it’s gotta be Ana Marie and her boy toy, Tucker.
Jim Treacher
Hey, fellers!
The Populist
@geg6:
Isn’t Anna Marie the one who goes on Rachel Maddow’s show to rip on the tea baggers?
Violet
Oh, look! Tucker’s going to be paying Cheney for stories:
Politico is going to be ticked off that Tucker is outing their source.
El Cid
I’m not the most uptight sort on blog commenting, I’m generally about letting it fly, but it’s a bit too creepy the sex-based criticisms of AMC…
arguingwithsignposts
@Violet:
fixed that for ya.
BTW, that quote sure smells of some wacky ethics. Is he going to fact-check Satan’s story?
maus
It’s all well and good to joke about Tucker’s new crap site that’s supposed to do what the Daily Beast was supposed to, but does anyone actually think that the Huffington Post is a GOOD resource for liberals anymore? There’s so much misinformation being peddled there, I think we’d be better off without it.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
AMC wouldn’t know a good journalist if it came up and butt fucked her (to use one of her favorite sayings from her Drunkette days).
The fact she’s even in a position to opine on stuff like this tells us all we need to know about corporate media and who it hires.
bemused
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’m going to have to watch Rachel smack down Tucker in stages. Just a minute into that video listening to little mister disingenuous made my teeth ache. I am so grateful I have not seen the twerp on the tv since he was dumped.
Violet
@arguingwithsignposts:
I meant to say “outing their ethics” since they are so eager to publish anything Cheney sends them. I prefer “steal” in that context for sure.
I’m curious how he’s going to fact check Satan. South Park should do an episode showing how it’s gonna work.
arguingwithsignposts
@maus:
Funny, I actually thought that when Arianna first started publishing that site. She talked a bunch of celebrity friends into writing blog posts about whatever, and the celebrity of the site was what pushed it to the top initially. Then, she became some sort of beacon for journalism (with the help of Jay Rosen and a few others). It was a bastard site from the beginning, and now it’s pushing out wire service content and a little original reporting here and there, but … meh. overrated.
AhabTRuler
@Mike Kay: Oh, look, a prostitute and Jessica Cutler.
tigrismus
3 MILLION dollars? For a “the newest thing in journalism is to copy HuffPo’s 5-year old formula but with CONSERVATIVES!!!” PP slide show?!
Violet
@maus:
A few months ago I read that the entertainment stuff on HuffPo still gets the most page views. I think it’s a small subset of people that care about the rest of it.
I can’t stand it these days. Occasionally I click a link to a story there, but I don’t ever go on my own just to see what they’ve got.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
You have to admit, championing Washingtonienne was not one of Ana Maria’s finest hours and, unfortunately, left her open to a lot of sex-based criticism. It’s hard to promote a blog that features a blogger who takes money for sex and then claim that people can’t talk about sex.
Joshua Norton
Oh good lord, no. It’s become the lefty version of FReeper-ville as far as I’m concerned. Except they don’t kick out people who disagree with them. Their main audience now seems to be people who check in between Facebook updates.
Who in the hell wants to drill down through 3,000 responses that are all variations of
“You’re an asshole”,
“No, YOU’RE an asshole”,
Eeeesh!
El Cid
@Mnemosyne: Okay, it’s obviously really important here for people to use extra helpings of it with AMC.
mistersnrub
The Village is like some warped, macabre version of high school as conjured up by that kid from that Twilight Zone episode. And David Broder is in the corner quivering, “And tomorrow’s gonna be a real good day!”
ruemara
@mcc:
I think she wrote about liking the anal sex and thusly, a starhack was born.
nepat
Isn’t the Huffington Post its own right-wing answer to the Huffington Post?
les
C’mon, Huffpo has tits. What else do they need.
AhabTRuler
At BJ, we prefer hummers.
maus
@mistersnrub: “The Village is like some warped, macabre version of high school as conjured up by that kid from that Twilight Zone episode.”
[said in an affectless monotone]
That’s a real good thing you did, GOP! A real. good. thing.
maus
@Mnemosyne:
In the context of Wonkette, it was great. But it does make it harder to pretend that she’s not just vomiting this shit forth to pay the rent.
Ann Coulter and her ilk are obviously doing this for similar reasons, but their personas are better hidden from the idiots they pander to. Not that it’s particularly hard to pull one on them, considering the success of the astroturf teaparties.
Mike Kay
@El Cid:
When she was running wonkette, that’s all AMC did – engage in sexual commentary. It was basically a political version of sex-in-the-city.
JohnEWilliams
There is no reason to think Tucker Carlson’s great new venture will be anything less than a huge, stunning success. After all, just look at the man’s track record. Did you look? See? Boy, I’ll bet you’re all sorry now.
What makes me laff about Mr. Jim Treacher Sean Medlock is that thing he does where he like makes fun of someone and they get all mad, like “ooooh how dare you make fun of me you are really a jerk you know that” and Jim Sean is all shrug, well what’re ya gonna do and winks at us all on Twitter and the world laffs uproariously.
If Jim Sean knows about anything, it’s people who react badly to being made fun of.
DougJ
When she was running wonkette, that’s all AMC did – engage in sexual commentary. It was basically a political version of sex-in-the-city.
Yeah, her whole “I’m a cute chick who talks about sex a lot” shtick becomes annoying after a while.
BruceFromOhio
@DougJ:
And the soulless bow-tied ratfuck sonofabitch signed on with this lot anyway. There’s a noun for people who sell themselves for money.. can’t quite think of it… tip of my tongue …
I hope he’s got the Organ Donor box checked on his fucking drivers license, because that’s about all he’s good for anymore. Cox, also.
BruceFromOhio
@JohnEWilliams:
Jim Sean makes fun of cats? He better check his pillow case before he goes nighty-night.
Jim Treacher
@JohnEWilliams:
In future, I will strive to follow your example.
FMguru
@ZachPruckowski: Yeah, going from zero to 20 full-time employees, office space, and promotional costs is a good way to make that $3million disappear in less than a year. And given the way ad sales are behaving and the likely overall state of the economy in 2010, I can’t imagine they’ll be sitting on a solid revenue stream when the $3m runs out.
The history of the internet is chock-full of well-funded conservative efforts to try and replicate ActBlue/DailyKos/HuffPo that flamed out and sank without a trace. I seriously doubt that repeated failure and all-around punching bag Carlson Tucker will be the one to succeed.
JohnEWilliams
@Jim Sean: No, no, you’re doing fine, awfully.
Boney Baloney
@Jim Newell: Anal Marie Cox is responsible for the fact that you guys run an unholy butthole-baby of FuckedCompany.com and Fark, with at least one pissy, semi-official hall monitor for each oppressed identity that ever had a newsgroup on Usenet? Who knew?
Word to the wise: the hall monitors will never leave and the Heathers will never surrender, but the unpaid content providers who lay the golden eggs WILL split if they get tired of all the crap. Just ask Mr. Cole. He seems to be wrestling with this difficulty just lately.