Reader JK sent me a link to an Atlantic Wire article about what various VSPs say they read (the link is for what Bobo reads because I can’t figure out how to link to the whole list). I was depressed to learn that Frank Rich loves reading McArdle and that Michael Lewis loves reading Bobo, but what bothered me most was the fixation with official publications. Everyone read the Atlantic bloggers, for example. And Instapundit and Drudge seem to count as official publications now, while TPM and Steve Benen (the best two sources of online political news/commentary, IMHO) are still just for unhinged hippies.
I found the feature oddly fascinating, though.
Yutsano
I guess you could be optimistic and consider it opposition research, then again all these people have to deal with each other and that could also be a contributing factor in all this.
gbear
Benen/TWM is my first and favorite choice for mild-snark to no snark political news coverage. I wish that TPM had less of an ‘OMG!!’ look to it. It’s visually way too loud.
Does VSP stand for Very Special People? Haven’t seem that one before.
ajr22
I assume he left out TPM and went with official publications because he sees TPM as some sort of threat. Josh Marshall would do a better job with Bobo’s Op-ed slot even if he had to take 14 shots of Jamo before he wrote each week.
Xecky Gilchrist
@gbear: Does VSP stand for Very Special People?
Very Serious People, I assume.
El Cid
Senator Scott “I DRIVE A TRUCK” Brown, soooper geeeeenius:
schrodinger's cat
@Xecky Gilchrist: Or Very Stupid People?
Morbo
@El Cid: Bloody hell. Exactly how awful was Marth Coakley’s campaign…
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Around here, isn’t it Very SociaIistic Posters?
El Cid
@Morbo: If anyone remembers so far back, this was pretty much Ross Perot’s answer to any complicated yet specific question not answerable by his folksy homilies.
Comrade Luke
I love Benen, but WM doesn’t publish full rss feeds, so I never read him.
I only make an exception to that rule for Krugman. :)
PeakVT
Everyone read the Atlantic bloggers, for example.
In fairness, that does include Fallows. But it also includes the likes of Crook, McAddled, Goldberg, and Ambinder.
Electronic-Sibley
Circle Jerk is a perfect analogy. It really does sound like an orgy of suck (or squirt). LOL.
Lisa
@PeakVT: And Ta’Nehisi, who is the motherfucking shizznit.
Mike Kay
Maybe they’re afraid they’ll get kicked off the cocktail party circuit if they say they read GOS out loud.
Peer pressure is a powerful factor in the corporate media.
Quicksand
@Comrade Luke:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/rss2full_author.xml
You’re welcome.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@PeakVT:
This sounds like the name of a firm taken straight from a Dickens story.
thomas Levenson
@Morbo: Epically awful. Sixteen car pile-up awful. Hole-punched-in-the desert awful. So awful it makes Megan McArdle look like the “really smart economics blogger” of Frank Rich’s fantasy.
Yup. That awful.
PeakVT
@Lisa: I didn’t mean to slight Coates, but he’s also probably the least likely of the Atlantic bloggers to be read by the interviewees.
debbie
I can’t imagine what kind of insights a person could come up with if they only read those whose views correspond to their own. There’ve been a number of polls showing that most people only read analyses which support their already-established world view. Isn’t that the real circle jerk?
The more Frank Rich reads of the likes of McArdle, the sharper his observations. I say more of that!
zhak
I was thinking about conventional media and blogs & such today, and it dawned on me that left-leaning blogs are the only unbiased source for politics & governance information. There are exceptions, of course — there are plenty of lefty blogs that are openly partisan, and there’s McClatchy (however it’s spelled) for decent reportage in the press — but by and large it’s left-leaning blogs that get things right. They’re not afraid to criticize Democrats (heh) and they’re not afraid to criticize Republicans & big business and they’re reality-based (mostly).
I’ve been very disappointed by conventional media for a long time, and they’re getting worse by the second, and sakes alive, righty blogs are astonishing cesspools of inchoate rage and delusion. It’s kind of become left-leaning blogs because there isn’t anything else better.
John O
It just The Man Club, some women allowed.
McCardle? As an object of scorn, maybe. Maybe. I got tired of her let them eat wedding gifts schtick about a year ago. Now I just read people making fun of her.
What a depressing post.
schrodinger's cat
What I read (not that anyone cares, I is just a cat not a VSP)
Balloon Juice : mainly for Tunch escapades
ICHC: For the kittehs
Cute Overload: For the cute
NYT: To make fun of Bobo, Chunky Bobo, MoW and MoDo
TPM: For political news
Huffpo: For gossip
for the rest
I trust Cole and DougJ to read the rest so that I don’t have to.
Tecumseh
This probably explains why the seemingly endless supply of scandals TPM digs up– you know the ones where real people do real bad and illegal things that actually effect our country– never breaks through to the MSM. Maybe he should start wearing a hat or just start insulting people more
gwangung
@PeakVT:
Hmph. I think he’s the one that they SHOULD read the most, if only to break out of their echo chamber.
Turgidson
Frank Rich said he reads Rolfe Winkler. I went to junior high and high school with Rolfe. Had no idea he was a widely read finance pundit. Funny stuff.
gwangung
Wonder if these idjits would get a clue and expand their circle of reading….
schrodinger's cat
@gwangung: He is very good, his posts about the civil war make me want to learn more about the history of that era.
Ash Can
Frank Rich thinks Megan McArdle is “really smart?” Crimeny.
@El Cid: Shorter Scott Brown: “I have no idea what any of this stuff is about, so I’m hoping I can trick you into giving me a free clue.”
mclaren
What the hell does anyone see in Instapundit? What the hell did anyone *ever* see in that crackpot Glenn Reynolds?
The guy’s been spouting goofy bullshit since day 1. He ginned up a bizarrely incoherent legal defense of Clinton’s impeachment, if memory serves, even though it was clearly and obviously not a crime or a misdemeanor to lie about having sex.
Reynolds has been gibbering abject lunacy for years now…and everyone seems to fawn over this crank, he utters demented proclamations like “We need to invade the Saudis and force them to pump more oil,” and everyone nods at the supposed wisdom and deep insight of this crap. Not a single person in media establishment seems to understand that the Saudis are already pumping as much oil as they can, and the problem is demand, not supply.
Recently Glenn Reynolds announced that the “answer” to the current economic downturn was for consumers to get deeper in debt by shopping on their credit cards. That’s unhinged. We’ve already got record high consumer debt levels. Glenn Reynolds doesn’t seem to inhabit the real world. And all the “serious people” out there don’t realize it.
It’s like a rerun of the Reagan years. Ronnie spewed insane crap day and night (“Forest fires have caused more pollution than all the smokestacks in history”) and the establishment fell all over themselves praising him for his “genius” and his “profound insight.”
It’s hallucinogenic. You have to wonder if the entire beltway punditry is on LSD.
schrodinger's cat
@mclaren: I have never read him, from your description seems like I haven’t missed much.
tc125231
@Yutsano:
Alan
OT: This is a very interesting discussion. Pretty much underpins everything that’s wrong with the Right and it’s media talking heads.
sven
Surprisingly, villagers interviewed by a village publication tend to report reading village publications….
I would be willing to bet that if precisely the same people were interviewed by FDL (or B-Juice) they would report a much wider range of sources.
I can think of two reasons but there are probably a lot more:
1) The interviewer matters. When asked about the new crop of interns I tell my boss, my wife, and my best friend different things. (What is the relationship between The Atlantic and each of the people being interviewed?)
2) The readership matters. The Atlantic is an important online publication, especially among the villagers. It is not implausible that an offhand remark could lead to widespread gossip or blacklisting among the Atlantic/Politico/WaPo set. The responses aren’t only focused within the village, they are excruciatingly safe. Very few villagers read B-Juice (no offense taken I assume) so the risk of an odd answer is much lower.
I find TNC and Tyler Cowen to be the most interesting writers they interviewed and that their lists were the most interesting FWIW.
drew42
@ajr22: That’s what I was wondering. I can’t imagine they’re not aware of The Washington Monthly and TPM and their contributions.
But I can certainly imagine a situation where one of these circle jerk pundits said something nasty and/or condescending about Josh Marshall, and the word spread throughout that all the cool kids ignore TPM.
Or someone said something nasty about Kevin Drum years ago, and so they all ignore The Washington Monthly.
John O
@mclaren:
This.
Another blog-hit phenomenon I can’t get my arms around.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I like reading McArdle in the same sense that I like watching disaster movies and blooper videos. I do find it unfortunate that there are not a lot of wonky liberal female blogs in my reading list, because there seems to be a shortage of them (or maybe it’s just my male bias speaking? I’m willing to be proven wrong). Other than that, it’s the feminist bloggers (Marcotte and Valenti), Digby, and the women at Wonkette and io9.
Fern
@zhak:
First of all – nobody is unbiased.
Second – blogs tend to do opinion stuff, not straight reporting. And where do they tend to get the news that they comment on? The dreaded MSM. (There are some exceptions, but precious few do their own reporting, and when they do, they tend to have a fairly narrow focus. Original reporting is, you know, expensive.)
Mark S.
For some reason, I didn’t care what any of those people read but I was curious what escaped mental patient Andrew Breitbart had to say:
And right on cue, he goes after somebody in the comments.
williamc
@mclaren:
Gonna pop in from self-imposed lurking before the binge drinking starts for the weekend by co-signing this.
This is why I got into politics as a 5yo in 1984 (coincidence?). I was raised on an AFB and the airmen and their families all LOVED the fuck out of Ronnie. “He’s sticking it to those commies man!”, I must have heard a thousand times back then, and all I could think was “this man is as dumb as peanut butter in grits, wtf does the stuff he says mean? ketchup is a fruit? who on welfare has a Cadillac? certainly no one is my hood on welfare (a fare number of people in the service now and then recieve gov’t benefits because they’re paid for shit).
Having grown up in a fundamentalist/Pentecostal home and being from South Georgia, I feel like I’ve been fighting conservative hallucination for years. The entire movement makes no sense from a loving christian standpoint, a common-sense we’re-all-in-this-together national standpoint, or a learned standpoint. All they know how to do is bs and make shit up and make you really hate old people who fall for their crap.
sven
@tc125231: I really liked “A Distant Mirror”. I also highly recommend “The Guns of August” by Tuchmann which is horrifying but interesting (like so many things).
jl
Well, most of the VSP spend considerable time reading crud. We knew that.
But, you oughtta see the hadopelagic benthic slime that DougJ reads. Have you seen the dude’s links on this here politically correct miserable lefty blog? He had intravenous feedings of Politico for awhile.
I think Cole arranged an intervention and had Tunch slap him out of it.
sven
@Mark S.: Now that he has conceded employing this strategy I have no choice but to exploit it. He can expect LOTS of specious comments on irrelevant topics in the next few weeks.
jl
@williamc: No wonder he is so bitter. With Bush-Cheney gone, far fewer at the top see the opportunities to be found in advancing a man with that talent and that moxie.
ciotog
@Turgidson: I went to high school with Jeffrey Goldberg. He used to be a really cool guy. Not sure what happened.
Just Some Fuckhead
Damn, saw the post title and thought Balloon Juice was finally having a get-together.
williamc
While I love Sully (we share a predilection for facial hair, Catholic guilt, and men’s anuses), TNC is one of the most talented writers of his generation (my generation). I think Big Media Matt is swell and all, but replacing him with TNC was one of the best moves the Atlantic ever made. He writes with a clear voice, his prose is fluid and evocative, and when he has a point to make, he can stick the shiv in and twist it like no other. I also enjoy the fact that his cultural references are my cultural references, he lets his readers know about his personal travails, and his preoccupation with the Civil War is worth the price of admission. To those of you who don’t read him regularly, you should, its totally worth it.
Later folks, have a good weekend…gone drinking…
Garrigus Carraig
“I used to agree with Andrew [Sullivan] quite a lot but he went on this transition from right to left.” — David Brooks.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@jl:
I think this is a more appropriate term for publications like WorldNetDaily, Human Events, Townhall.com, and the Washington Times. Politico is more bathyal- or abyssalpelagic.
eemom
Somerby must be loving this. Unlike the vast majority of lefties who are not frozen in a perpetual state of apoplexy over the travesty of 2000, he HATES Frank Rich.
Mike Kay
isn’t weird to hear Michael Lewis say “I’m entranced with David Brooks”?
I could care less that Bobo is a conservative, but his ridiculous prattle about the Applebee’s salad bar is drivel.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Ugh, just heard McArdle on NPR’s marketplace.
I narrowly avoided vehicular homicide.
Mike Kay
@eemom: Why does he hate Frank Rich? Did Rich say something bad about Al Gore – that’s usually Bob’s flashpoint.
mclaren
You know, I wouldn’t mind so much if all the pundits read the same stuff as long as it was even marginally informed stuff, or simply sane.
For example, if all the pundits said they pay close attention to whatever David Broder writes, okay, Broder is hard to take seriously, but he’s not outright batshit insane. Broder maunders on about “bipartisanship” too much and he doesn’t seem to recognize that the Republican party has gotten taken over by extremists and obstructionists…but Broder doesn’t offer stark staring bonkers suggestions, like Glenn Reynolds’ recent suggestion that the way we solve our current global financial crisis is “for a start, we could cut taxes and deregulate.”
I mean, that’s crazy. I can’t find another word that fits. It’s absolutely crazy. It’s the same bizarre ideology that caused the world financial meltdown in the first place, fer cripes sake.
So if the pundits were saying they only read right-wing or centrist commentators who made sense but with whom I disagreed, well, okay, that would be disappointing…but I could understand it. That wouldn’t be completely, inexplicably bizarre.
But the pundits are saying they read mainly kooks. I mean, what else can you call Glenn Reynolds but a kook? He’s out there with the Unarius flying saucer cultists. I have not read a single post by Reynolds that came anywhere near the real world. Not one. Same with Drudge. Drudge is constantly touting goofy conspiracy theories and insane long-debunked rumors, Drudge was Johnny-on-the-spot with all those crackpot birther rumors, Drudge was all over the claim that Obama “pals around with terrorists” because the preacher at Obama’s church got pissed and made some intemperate remarks.
Drudge has been purveying a cesspool of unconfirmed slander and bogus hate speech and wild rumors since day one. And this is the crank the pundits read??? This sleazoid lowball hypester????
It’s mind-boggling.
Look, some folks have gotten up on their high horse and proclaimed “I don’t see how anyone can read only people who agree with you.” Well, I do. Hey! I used to read Red State once in a while. I used to follow Commentary magazine. I used to read Reason. Once upon a time, I would glance through National Review every now and again. Those sources used to feature people I disagreed with, back in the 90s, before the Newt Gingrich “teaching evolution in our schools caused the Columbine shootings” dementia took hold. And you know what? Back in the day, the people who wrote for those right-wing outlets had something to say. Sure, I disagreed with ’em, but they weren’t drooling lunatics.
But ever since, oh, around the year 2000, Reason and National Review and Commentary, they’ve all become unhinged. I don’t know any other way to put it. These people have lost their moorings. They sound like the homeless guy on the corner who mutters about martians beaming mind-control rays into his skull. Red State went right over the edge during the Iraq invasion in 2003 and they’ve never come back to reality.
I can’t read anything by conservatives anymore because they’re all spouting insane crap. I mean, literally crazy stuff. Back in 2005 they were telling us how great we were doing in Iraq and how we were winning the war and how everything was great. Mountains of corpses were piling up and American troops had to wall themselves up inside giant concrete barriers in the Green Zone, and these publications were trumpeting this as a huge “victory” for America.
In 2006 the conservatives writing for Reason and NR and Commentary were all telling us what a great president the drunk-driving C student was, and how he would be honored by history. George Will proclaimed his rhetoric “Lincolian.” Chimpy was babbling shit like “Most of our imports come from overseas” and “We must ask the question: is our children educated?” and George Will was telling us this guy’s public speaking skills were “Lincolnian.”
In 2007 the conservatives writing for Reason and NR and Commentary were all screaming hysterically that Al Qaeda was an “existential threat” to America and that if the Democrats won the 2008 elections, it was literally and factually going to be a jihadist takeover of the White House. They were telling us America would end. They were saying that Al Qaeda would declare an Islamic caliphate in the United States if Obama won the 2008 election.
In mid-2008 the conservatives writing for Reason and NR and Commentary were all telling us that the housing market collapse was “just a blip” and the economy was strong as a rock. These were the people who assured us there was nothing to worry about and investment banks like Lehman Brothers could never go under, because mortgage derivatives only accounted for 4% of the total market value of Lehman Brothers’ assets.
I can’t read the conservatives anymore because it makes me feel like I’ve taken some kind of mind-altering drug. It’s too bizarre, after a couple of pages of their stuff I feel like I have to smack myself with a fist upside my head because the room starts whirling and I get dizzy and start to worry somebody slipped me some acid without telling me. I mean, you read this stuff, and up is down and black is white and the economy is doing great and our military is all-powerful, and you look around and reality is just the opposite. It makes you light-headed. You blink your eyes and shake your head after reading Commentary magazine nowadays, it’s like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat…you lose your moorings, you can’t tell if you’re awake or dreaming.
So I have to read only left-wing and centrist blogs and newspapers and magazines because the right-wing stuff is absolutely nuts. It has no connection to reality. The right-wing blogs are raving around FEMA death camps and nonexistent death panels that will slaughter old people when health care reform becomes law. The right-wing newspapers and radio and Fox News and right-wing blogs are almost incomprehsible because they gone so far off the edge they’re talking their own secret language about they’re talking about a gigantic evil plot by ACORN and they’re mutting about the “Cloward-Piven strategy” that somehow involves a “New World Order” global conspiracy theories and black helicopters and alleged left-wing death squads that have supposedly drawn up lists of conservatives they’re going to imprison, and none of it has any goddamn relationship to reality.
How can you read stuff like that? I just can’t. It’s nuts. The right wing has gone gaga for this “Cloward-Piven” stuff and it’s absolutely unhinged. So I’m forced to read only the left-wing or centrist newspapers and TV news and blogs and magazines. I may not agree with CNN’s reporting or the New York Times’ take on things or NEWSWEEK’s Fareed Zakaria…but at least these people aren’t howling around hippy death squads and secret black helicopters run by a Zionist conspiracy that’s in league with the Kenyan Manchurian candidate Maoist conspirator Obama.
Xenos
Anybody else here immediately thinking of Repo Man?
I must be dating myself…
‘Five pound blocks of cheese!’
burnspbesq
No no no no no, Doug.
Circle Jerks is the incorrect punk-band reference here.
These people are TSOL (True Sons of Liberty).
If you don’t believe me, ask them.
I just want a Pepsi.
Mark S.
@mclaren:
I agree. I was conservative in the late 90’s, and rags like NR would have some nonsense but most of the articles would have some basis in reality. By the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War, they abandoned any journalistic integrity and really started believing their bullshit of creating their own reality. I wouldn’t say it was a huge loss (since they were never that great to begin with), but conservatives aren’t doing themselves any favors by simply brainwashing their hardcore followers and saying everyone else isn’t a real American.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@mclaren: Just thank the lard you have yourself to read.
Shalimar
@Mark S.: I clicked through to read because I was sure that Breitbart quote had to be parody. Nobody could be that much of an insecure asshole. I stand corrected.
Mark S.
@Shalimar:
He’s had some epic meltdowns on Twitter. Shit, he’s probably having one right now.
BruceFromOhio
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
Cokie Roberts on Monday mornings and McMegan on Friday evenings makes perfect bookends of stoopid for the week.
And thus even NPR is now off-limits due to toxic assholery. Stone the fucking crows, I’m with williamc to crawl into the fog.
And Fridays used to be David Johnson from Dallas for some sweet Marketplace loving to make all the badness less bad.
sigh
BruceFromOhio
@mclaren:
I suggest you join williamc and myself at the bar, and take a load off. You’re giving me a hernia, and I’m not even lifting anything.
BTW, well-said. You’ve just surveyed the descent of most of my in-laws into the sulphurous pits of hell.
Comrade Kevin
@Mark S.: It’s weird to see someone just come right out and admit that he is a bully.
Comrade Kevin
Okay, that Breitbart thing was even funnier than I guessed. He may be the most easily-trolled person on the Internet.
ed
Rich (“Gush and Bore–Lulz”) and McArdle go together like Phillies baseball and puking on girls.
Hearing that good guy Lewis lurves Bobo breaks my heart.
gwangung
@Comrade Kevin: Total sign that He Does Not Get It.
You punch in the direction you want to go.
People who punch down are toadies; they’re easily recognized by the people in power, and thus, are avoided. Or used as tools (in all senses of the term).
Jon Rogers (successful screenwriter and TV show runner, which makes him an instant enemy) always made sure to punch UP (and his entire TV show is about that).
DougJ
@mclaren:
I agree with this completely.
Cain
@Mark S.:
So he’s just like the Candyman, you say his name three time and he shows up to kick your ass. Especially if it is some kind of small blog with a small number of readers so he can just beat them up.
He should show his ass here so that we can give him a bruising.
cain
Mark S.
@Cain:
That would be awesome.
Anne Laurie
@gwangung:
To use a sports metaphor, since that’s the only kind some people will pay attention to: Picking fights with a weaker opponent makes one lazy and sloppy. Bouts with a stronger opponent improve one’s skills. As I understand it, betting on the guy who’ll only fight mopes is betting this won’t be the night he finally runs out of suckers.
PeakVT
@gwangung: I agree.
I think it would be interesting to challenge Rich to read ONLY non-journalist bloggers for a month. I bet it would change his perspective dramatically.
Pseudonym
Tyler Cowen is reading a book by Bill Ayers? Interesting. And why the hell do so many people spend their time following self-evident moron Megan McArdle? She strikes me as nothing more than an overgrown version of the Randroids I saw way too frequently in my undergraduate days. How the hell did she end up at the same place as James Fallows? (TNC is also a consistently good read of course.)