It turns out Erick Erickson is more limber than generally suspected, fully capable of bending over and blowing himself on his own blog (hey, somebody has to do it):
As I’ve grown up online, I’m one of the uncommon few who has moved on to both television and radio. I have been blessed. Along the way, I find others who are making the transition too, but still others who have been toiling away in the blogosphere for years who have refused to make the transition, or been unable to despite their hopes, and they may look at me and others like me and think we’ve sold out or decided to go along to get along. But I look at them and think what a waste of talent and energy.
Erickson notes that more wingnut bloggers get “respectable” gigs like CNN analyst spots than lefties:
Though there are a few exceptions, I think more conservatives have moved into television and radio directly from blogs and new media websites than the left.
Hint: It’s not because y’all don’t suck: It’s because Fox News is eating CNN’s lunch with an all-wingnut, all-the-time format. The other media corporations want a piece of that sweet wingnut action, and they found you all tarted up on your street corner. Meritocracy!
But Erickson, having become all respectable, notes that “others” on the right could fuck the dealio up for the lot of them:
But there are others who are dragging those folks down and the rest of us too.
Sadly for them and the rest of us who get invited to nice places to meet nice people off the record, as long as the rest of us keep humoring them and their antics, those invites won’t come for any of us.
I don’t follow the wingnutosphere closely enough to know who pissed in Erickson’s cornflakes. Does anyone know?
BONUS: I hate opening the RedState page, not only because of the suckage contained within — hell, that’s what I’m there for — but because of the stupid newsletter popup that features a graphic of Erickson’s grinning melon rising from the bottom of the page like the Great Pumpkin. But all is forgiven, RedState, because this is the best wingnut website ad ever:
Hahahaha!
[X-posted at Rumproast]
Brian R.
“Mommy always said: life as a Republican is like a bowl of jellybeans. It’ll make you hyperactive and your teeth will rot out and, of course, no one likes the black ones.”
Hill Dweller
I’m too lazy to look for it, but every decent human being should watch Erickson’s appearance on Colbert’s show. He was scared shitless throughout the interview, which made it all the more entertaining.
Rick Massimo
Isn’t this about the time someone’s supposed to say “How come all those people are watching FOX and listening to the talk radio in the middle of the day? Aren’t they supposed to be WORKING, like Real Americans?”
Wait – that’s only for teh libruls, right?
P.S.: Erick Erickson called a Supreme Court Justice a “goat-fucking child molester” and now he’s on CNN. I know everyone here knows that, but I am adamant that any discussion of ErickSquaredSon, or for that matter CNN, recognize that fact.
arguingwithsignposts
@Hill Dweller: Man, Erick son of Erick doesn’t even rate in the top five searches for his own name on TCR. How sad. Here’s the interview.
Also, I’ve never heard E2 speak before. What a douche.
Baud
Since liberal bloggers would be invited on network shows only to help attack the Democratic Party, I’m not too upset at the disparity.
Rafer Janders
That’s really what it’s all about for them, isn’t it? That sweet sweet access. They’d sell their own grandmothers if it would let them think of themselves as players.
Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, and anyone else who ever made a difference were not motivated by the desire to get invited to nice places to meet nice people.
Cacti
Since there’s no open thread to discuss this, it seems the Obama team has floated a trial balloon via Joe Biden on supporting same-sex marriage.
On MTP:
Nellcote
Backstory…The Rmoney campaign had wingnut blogger outreach day and invited a bunch of them to meet with the campaign on the condition of silence about it aka off the record. apparently RS Mcain chose to write about it naming some names of people there. Erick is very dissappointed in him.
Rafer Janders
Man, I don’t think he even realizes what he admitted with that sentence. If I were that craven, I hope I’d at least have the self-knowledge and the wits to lie about it.
eemom
This is the guy Jane Hamsher called “an honest broker.”
[cue TBogg demanding to know why that wasn’t a perfectly accurate statement “considering what was known about Erickson at the time”]
PeakVT
Ronald Gump?
PaminBB
I suspect that Ewick’s definition of the word “nice” differs from mine.
Nutella
@Nellcote:
Robert S McCain? Romney’s going for that all-important racist vote, I see.
Mouse Tolliver
@Rick Massimo:
And, on the flip side, Markos Moulitsas implied there was something strange about the media ignoring the dead intern in Joe Scarborough’s office (which actually happened), and now he’s banned from MSNBC.
Corner Stone
Ahhh, CNN and Erick Erickson. A pairing mismatch the likes of which we haven’t seen around these parts.
Thankfully.
Mike G
It makes sense, Gump and Reagan are both examples that you can be a shallow retard and stumble into success if you are in the right place.
ChrisNYC
Erick is pissed because other conservatives are saying he’s a turncoat for going to meet with Romney.
He buries it in that post but there it is “don’t go along to get along, just be polite and reasonable.” His elaborate hoax of being anything other than a GOP mouthpiece, whose actual job is making sure crazy wingnuts rally to whoever is on the GOP line, is threatened. He’s a poorer version of Dick Armey but he aspires to climb up the ranks, now that actually being elected is no longer a requirement to be a GOP leader.
PeakVT
French election results due in 1 minute.
There are also local elections in parts of Italy starting today, with the voting continues until 3pm tomorrow.
PeakVT
@PeakVT: Grr, can’t edit my comment.
Anyway, Hollande won 52-48 according to Le Monde.
ETA: Turnout is projected to be about 80%.
Ruckus
@Brian R.:
The black ones are the best!
Mouse Tolliver
@Cacti:
Well, that is quite a turnaround considering opposition to gay marriage was the one thing Joe Biden and Sarah Palin agreed about during the VP debates. When Gwen Ifle asked him about it, he emphatically stated NO! he does not support gay marriage.
But Will & Grace? Really?! It was a sitcom for straight women that perpetuated demeaning, negative stereotypes about gay men. I bet he’s never even watched a single episode. That comment makes him sound as hollow and insincere as Mitt Romney.
Calouste
@Rick Massimo: Nazi-apologist Pat Buchanan was on MSNBC for years. Saying that it was the fault of Poland that they got invaded didn’t get him kicked off the air.
Jennifer
@Mouse Tolliver: Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Who gives a shit whether Biden ever watched a single episode of Will & Grace? He’s saying essentially what all the purer-than-the-rest-of-us liberals have been demanding they want to hear from the administration for the past couple of years now, and instead of “good, this is a step in the right direction,” you want to go back and complain about something he said 3 years ago and how he cited the wrong TV show?
This kind of nit-picking on the left drives me crazy.
Jennifer
I don’t know who pissed in Erik Son of Erik’s Wheaties, but perhaps it was Dana Louche, confessed afficianado of peeing on corpses.
I was going to guess that Erik Son of Erik’s jab was intended for the BreitBrats, since he’s having to share the glory of a CNN gig with the aforementioned Breitbart protege and fan of corpse-pissing, and since, of course, what everyone considered to be impossible has actually come to pass – the BreitBrats are an even bigger embarrassment to all sentient beings than they were before Breitbart died…and Louche, presumably, peed on his clammy dead body, because she’s into that kind of thing, you know.
(Some of you think Erik Son of Erik’s porn fantasy involving goats and SC justices should be mentioned every time Erik Son of Erik or CNN’s name is mentioned…I feel the same way about Dana Louche’s penchant for necrophiliac golden showers.)
Ruckus
@Mouse Tolliver:
Could Biden have changed his mind? I hope that he is smart enough to learn something new and adjust his view. It seems he may just be. That he experienced an absolutely flawed TV show and got a positive message from it, that’s bad?
And BTW I have experienced gay people with the range of (I can’t find the right word. Wanted to use stereotypical but that doesn’t seem correct.) shown on W&G. From people you would never guess without knowing them to full flaming. Of course the full flaming was an act to see how others would react but still, there was no doubt.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
WTF???
I’m now undefined? I can’t afford a shrink right now, please don’t tell me I’m undefined.
WTF word press?
I tried to edit and it posts with no edit and changed my name to undefined. I posted this and presto my original post is there with my name and no edit.
Villago Delenda Est
Fucker Fuckerson is respectable in the very same sense that Julius Streicher was respectable.
Cacti
@Mouse Tolliver:
Your concern is duly noted.
Persia
@Jennifer: Same. OH MY GOD, BIDEN WAS FURTHER TO THE RIGHT THREE YEARS AGO. Let me get my tar and feathers!
EDITED to be a bit more on target: I wonder if it’s occurred to Erik that fewer and fewer people watch the teevee every year.
Steve
@Cacti: If you look up what Dick Cheney said about gay marriage in 2004 you won’t find a big difference from Biden’s comments. Not that it isn’t a nice thing for him to say, but the media will give this more hype than it deserves.
MikeJ
@Mouse Tolliver:
Even if what you say is true, it doesn’t mean that:
isn’t also true.
You may not like the show, and you may be completely accurate about it, and it still may be the best PR gay people have had.
gaz
@MikeJ: When Gay Politics grows the fuck up and stops marginalizing the T’s I’ll start giving a fuck about them.
Until then, they are just a cheap fuck to me. Since I don’t care about fucking, they are more useless to me than an icebox in an igloo.
Will&Grace can go fuck themselves, also too.
Mino
OT, but no open thread since last night, so…
The Greeks have gotten a clue, that is for sure. Last election the two mainstream parties combined for 77% of teh vote. This go-round, they got 37%! Guess the electorate figured out the Janus gambit.
Anti-austerity parties, including Communists, Neo-Nazi and Pirates!, were the choices folks picked this time. I thought the ones voting for Pirates were redundant, though.
FlipYrWhig
@Mouse Tolliver: Anecdotes, data, etc., but my most militant gay friend (think Queer Nation/ACT UP) was a big defender of Will And Grace in its heyday because, he said, the way the show was invested in camp, kitsch, and “gay humor” made it different from the Stepin Fetchit-esque gay-face minstrelsy with which it was being charged from the left. IOW its structure as a “gay show” was more than the way it showcased gay characters. And he’s the first one who would be organizing actions against anything objectionable, so I trusted his judgment and politics. YMMV of course.
Mino
@Mino: Correction, the Pirate Party was in a province of Germany. Redundancy stands, though.
Patricia Kayden
Good for Biden. Outside of religious ones, there are no sensible arguments against marriage equality.
Don’t watch CNN, so I am spared Mr. Erickson’s brilliance.
FlipYrWhig
Has any liberal made the jump from the blogosphere to a “contributor” gig or anything even higher profile on cable news? The only one I can think of is Cenk Uygur, but he was more of a radio to blog to cable net case, IIRC.
FlipYrWhig
I’ve seen Jane Hamsher and Adam Green on TV, but I don’t think they were billed as being on the payroll of the network, as Erickson and Loesch are.
Mouse Tolliver
@Patricia Kayden: The White House has already walked back Biden’s statement, so that was a big sack of nothing. They should’ve just left well enough alone.
MaryRC
@Nellcote: I don’t think McCain was the one who broke the news to the Huffington Post that same day, though. If he had, he would have surely been mentioned in the HuffPost article since that was presumably the quid pro quo. MCain’s post was the next day and while he is pretending to be facetious, he just really, really wants you to know that he was there too. I suspect Erick is pointing the finger at some of the lesser-known bloggers on HuffPost’s list of attendees. Either that or he just likes reminding his fellow bloggers from time to time that he has a CNN gig and you don’t, so don’t for a moment think that just because you got invited to a meeting with Romney, you’re as important as he is.
Mouse Tolliver
@Persia:
David Axelrod and the VP’s own office made it clear that his position HASN’T changed from three years ago.
Kenneth Almquist
Because being a reporter is all about getting people to invite you to “nice places” in exchange for favorable coverage.
Mnemosyne
@Mouse Tolliver:
Because when your allies signal that they will start supporting your position after having previously opposed it, the best possible strategy is to immediately attack and disparage them for not doing it sooner.
No wonder we keep losing elections.
Mouse Tolliver
@Mnemosyne:
Whatever.
By the time I posted my comment, David Axelrod and the Vice President’s own spokesman had already issued statements to make it clear that Biden’s position is the same as before — still evolving. Meaning he DOES NOT support full equality. The White House started backtracking as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Too many people had interpreted the VP’s comments as being supportive of gay marriage, and the White House couldn’t let that stand.
The reason we keep losing elections is because Democrats in Washington are afraid to take their own side in an argument. They’re too chickenshit to make a clear, unequivical statement in support of the causes their base believes in.
middlewest
@Mouse Tolliver: Right, we keep losing elections to anti-gay repubs because the president hasn’t supported gay marriage enough. Because the Dem’s voter base of aging blue-collar union workers and minorities are 100% enthusiastic marriage equality supporters. Yeah, that makes sense.
Deb T
@Mouse Tolliver:
Mouse wrote :But Will & Grace? Really?! It was a sitcom for straight women that perpetuated demeaning, negative stereotypes about gay men. I bet he’s never even watched a single episode. That comment makes him sound as hollow and insincere as Mitt Romney.”
It’s TV and W&G was a comedy not a fcking documentary. Did it use broad strokes to make its points? Sure did and you’ll see the same thing on comedies about straight people. None of the strive for realism and the ones that try hard to make relevant points just become preachy and self congratulating, i.e.”a very special episode”. There were a few exception – All in the Family comes to mind, but shows like that are rare. These broad comedies can break the ice for other, more serious shows. I’m a straight woman who was not a W&G fan for many of the reasons you point out. Just was not my cup of tea. Then neither are most of those kind of ‘relationship’ comedies, but I did understand how it eased the fear of some folks about gay culture. That demographic may have been mostly straight women. Nothing wrong with that, but I had a lot of gay friends who watched it religiously too even if they didn’t like to admit it.
Mouse Tolliver
@middlewest:
My comment about Democrats not taking their own side of the argument isn’t limited to gay rights. It goes across the board on a host of issues supported by traditional Democrats. Examples. The anti-union rhetoric Bill Clinton used while he was campaigning for Blanche Lincoln. Or the JOBS Act, which piles deregulation on top of more deregution. Or the Democrats rejection of popular single payer hcr in favor of the unpopular Republican insurance mandate. Or the Democrats adoption of the Republican austerity message. Or signals from some Democrats that they’re willing to put Social Security cuts on the table or raise the retirement age. They keep stepping on their own message.
Just reminder. As soon as people started talking about Biden’s support for gay marriage, his office issued a statement saying he didn’t support gay marriage.
Mouse Tolliver
@Deb T:
Which is exactly why his patronizing comment about the educational value of Will and Grace was stupid.
Chrisd
@Mouse Tolliver:
Nice try, but you can’t win this. The administration is to be praised whether they come out in favor of marriage equality or they don’t. What Biden actually meant to say is irrelevant.