There’s been a lot of talk in the navel-gazing media about the fact that the New York Times is partnering with Buzzfeed to cover the conventions later this summer. Here’s what I don’t get with all the condescension towards Buzzfeed and Gawker: in what world is having your work featured beside Honey Badger mash-ups and side-boob shots more damaging to your journalistic reputation than kissing up to Joe Scarborough and Hugh Hewitt and Laura Ingraham? All these serious journalist motherfuckers (Tapper, Fineman, Halperin, Allen, etc.) are chuckling along with all manner of radio and morning tv scumbags in order to promote their “work”. A little LOL cat page-view whoring between stories seems pretty harmless in comparison, no?
And it’s probably one or the other. People watch Morning Joe because there’s not much else on at that time of day. Same for reading the WaPo and non-Krugman NYT editorials. No one goes looking for that shit, it just shows up on their tv or on their doorstep because of some failure of the so-called free market. If you don’t have the luxury of having your babble shoved down the throat of the public by fiat media, you have to attract attention somehow. People like LOL cats and soft-core porn and cute pet pictures and profanity. Honestly, enjoying those things is a lot more healthy than enjoying an episode of “Meet The Press”.
In a similar vein, mistermix and freddie recently pointed out that paid opinion writing will go away partly because “there’s an army of people who will do it for free, and honestly some of the ones who do it for free are better than any who do it for pay”. Part of what makes most paid pundits so bad is that they are so constricted in what they can do and say: they can’t post pictures, they can’t really tell jokes, they can’t use profanity, they can’t criticize their Galtian pay-masters. So what do they to stay “interesting”? A lot of it is facile contrarianism along the lines of “Everyone thinks recycling is better than throwing all our shit in the river, but if you look beyond the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords, you may be surprised to learn…”
Wouldn’t it be less intellectually compromising to use profanity or LOL cat every now and then?
redshirt
People hate BuzzFeed? That site is awesome! Best source for Kate Upton gifs around.
Steeplejack
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/copyedit
Christie
If you’re lucky enough to get Current; Bill Press is a refreshing antidote to the nonsense rightwing muffin-face sprouts off. (And his sycophants nod seriously to). There is NO HALPERIN.
MattF
Better Buzzfeed than, e.g., Politico. Srsly.
Southern Beale
This is totally OT but since there isn’t an open thread and I know there are so many animal lovers over here, thought people would be interested in seeing the latest scandal from TN House Republican Julia Hurley, in her first term of office and already facing scandal number three — the second one to involve her dog, too. She’s being accused of animal abuse for this video SHE posted of her dog “air surfing,” (being held outside the window of a moving car). She claims it’s all a liberal plot.
What a fucking psycho.
DougJ
@Steeplejack:
Thanks.
middlewest
Well, Gawker’s regular practice of malicious outing would certainly make coverage of the GOP more interesting.
4tehlulz
The conventions should be covered by /b/tards submitting image macros.
Anything else would be compromising quality.
Hunter Gathers
You could also just leave ESPN on all morning. Even an non-sports fan would rather watch SportsCenter for 6 hours than listen to Joe “I didn’t kill that intern, but I was fucking her’ The Scar bitch and moan about how Obama hurt his fee-fees by not fellating Paul Ryan on a daily basis. And I’d rather watch grass grow than put up with Mike Barnicle demanding that that mean bitch Elizabeth Warren leave Senator Cosmo Von Truck Nutz alone. He’s just a regular guy!
schrodinger's cat
Which idiot disses Lolcats, Lolcats rule, it is Tunch’s world we are just living in it.
redshirt
@Hunter Gathers: There used to be a channel called HD and it used to show a program from 6-8 that was just HD nature scenes and sounds – the beach, the forest, the jungle, etc. It was wonderful in the morning. Then it got replaced by car shows. Alas!
Litlebritdifrnt
I used to be a regular GMA watcher but got sick of all the celebrity stuff which I have absolutely no interest in. Add that to the endless insert person who is accused of something “speaking out for the first time” bullshit and I ended up switching to MJ which I still enjoy, particularly when they have Mika’s dad on like this morning.
StringonaStick
Hulu plus = no need to be assaulted by The Scar, the punditerati, or any other crap you don’t want to bother with. Comcast can kiss my sweet, white, now-unsubscribed ass.
arguingwithsignposts
I can’t stand Nick Denton. Buzzfeed is, imho, too much of a firehose.
But I do agree that the newspapers should ditch their op-ed pages. Anything that puts Fred Hiatt out of a job would be a good thing.
burnspbesq
You’re babbling, dude. Go back to bed, and try this again when you’re fully awake and in possession of your senses.
lamh35
“joes before hoes”…hahahaha
I do love your titles DougJ
BGinCHI
This is why I read this blog.
JGabriel
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DougJ @ Top:
But then who would we mock? Would it be a better world without contrarians to target? Would we really want to live in a world where all dishonest contrarianism was repiaced with honest idiocy?
Now that I think about it, that sounds like it might be a pretty good trade-off.
Decisions, decisions …
.
flukebucket
I just cannot watch Morning Joe. I have tried and I can’t. And GMA is as shitty as it gets with their constant bombshells and breaking news about how some guy who killed his girlfriend is raising hell now because the insurance company won’t pay up. Maybe ESPN is the best idea.
Female on the Beach
I’ll take “A little LOL cat page-view whoring between stories” over “kissing up to Joe Scarborough and Hugh Hewitt and Laura Ingraham” any day, any time. However, you left out Erick Erickson.
Ben Cisco
@Hunter Gathers:
Sounds like a really inappropriate Fairly OddParent character.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Nothing quite sums up the moral bankruptcy of our society than the fact that Murdering Joe is not only NOT in jail, but has a TV show.
Female on the Beach
@flukebucket: Strap me to a chair with Morning Ho on teevee, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know within 5 minutes
fraught
Dougj writes for free while Maureen Dowd swans around with the Bushes and pediphilic football coaches on full salary and a lush expense account. The future looms over her sorry, expensive ass like a tornado over Dorothy Gale. Quick, Modo, into the cellar. And yr little dog too.
Hunter Gathers
@Ben Cisco: If you were to put Cosmo, Timmy’s dad, Patrick Star and Homer Simpson in the same room, the amount of Stupid contained in said room would rip a hole in the space-time continuum.
Rosalita
@Southern Beale:
some liberal made her hold her dog out the window?
Punchy
How is liberal bedrock Mass going to re-elect a Republican when a kick-ass liberal is up for running? How is Warren not eleventy-thrice billion percent ahead of Code Brown?
Dave
Yes. Thanx, DougJ.
Some of the writing on Gawker is really great. BuzzFeed, I dunno, it’s busy. But there’s good stuff if you look there, too.
Face
This seems like contradictory babbling.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Punchy: It’s been a while since I double-checked the exact numbers, but IIANM since ’92, when they all went solid blue in presidential campaigns, MA, NY, CA, and IL have had more years under Republican govs than Dems. Go figure people. As Charlie Pierce keeps pointing out, people like Scott Brown, and for a lot of people who would be otherwise disposed to vote Democratic, that counts for at least as much as the issues. THere also seems to be a strong feeling among those voters that incumbents have a right to the benefit of the doubt (not quite the right phrase) unless they’re actually found with a dead hooker or a freezer full of cash (see Lieberman, Walker).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
. Quote of the day
Forum Transmitted Disease
People keep calling Massachusetts liberal. It really isn’t nearly so liberal as you might think.
Felinious Wench
DougJ, you’ve been on a roll the past two days, an excellent mix between posts on our failure of a media establishment and some very fine blog trolling.
Let all recognize this man!
Punchy
Then liberals are indeed too damn stupid for their own good. If the last 2-3 years hasn’t shown enough evidence of the destruction the Republicans can bring–in the minority!–then “benefit of the doubt” of them doing the right thing in a slim majority is beyond foolish.
Most times, I simply cannot understand the average American voter.
Roger Moore
@Hunter Gathers:
I guess suggesting turning the TV off and doing something more productive with your time is just too far out there to bring up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Punchy: definitions are fuzzy, but I’m not talking about just liberals, though I bet a whole bunch of tote-baggers who would no more vote for Romney than for Huckabee, and who give to Greenpeace and Planned Parenthood and HRC will vote for Scott Brown be he’s not one of those, and voting for a ‘moderate’ Republican proves to them that they’re thoughtful, independent thinkers (and of course, they’re not basing their vote on those tax cuts, but really, they already pay so much….). A whole lot of working class people who hate Wall St and will need SS and medicare and who’s kids would benefit from ACA and Pell grants and student loan relief are going to vote to cut the taxes of John Kerry, the Kennedys and probably Elizabeth Warren because Howie Carr (I think I’m getting that reference right) told them that Obama wants to
raise their taxestake YOUR money and give it to them.mclaren
Yes, because mainstream new outlets like the New York Times are soooooooooooooooooooooo much more classy than scummy sleazy blogs.
I seem to recall the New York Times running front-page adverts for a sugar daddy classfied service touted as “the premier source for connections between young college girls and wealthy older men” or words to that effect.
In other words, front-page advertisements for middle-class girls whoring themselves out.
Ben Cisco
@Hunter Gathers: And yet, as a group they would STILL make more sense than anything Bobo Brooks has written in, like, EVAR.
LanceThruster
I watch Morning Joe because they have the time more or less continuously displayed and it helps prevent me from missing my vanpool. The good Adult Swim cartoons stop playing before 5am and the damn weather channel doesn’t give me the report that I need until 5 minutes before the hour.
For the record I hate soft-core porn (which is what I consider most TV shows), though soft is better than none where real porn is concerned (but just barely).
Mika Brzezinski is fairly easy on the eyes and I like the faces she makes when Joe Scarbo sez something really dumb.
DougJ
@Punchy:
Brown is a good politician. I think that once Warren finds her sea legs — remember she’s quite new to this and Brown’s not — she will beat him.
DougJ
@Felinious Wench:
Thank you.
It it amazing how easy it is to troll people into talking about Glenn Greenwald for 250 comments…without even mentioning him by name. Just a hint in his direction is all it takes.
Ash Can
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can’t speak for any of the other states, but in the case of Illinois, the Republican governors of the last few decades have been quite moderate and not at all like the Republican governors who have been making news recently. They didn’t try to wipe out unions, legislate Talibangelism, or outlaw science and the middle class the way the GOP governors do nowadays. Two of them, Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar, have even been squeaky clean from a legal standpoint. The third, George Ryan, was sent up the river for financial cronyism, which doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the blatant racism, misogyny, classism, and overall moral turpitude of the current crop of GOP governors. The closest we’ve come to that was that Brady teatard who ran against Pat Quinn in 2010. If he had won, he would have been just like Scott Walker — or would have tried to be, until the Democratic state legislature kicked the shit out of him.
Ben Cisco
@LanceThruster: Your non de plume makes this comment seriously hilarious.
Brachiator
No, what makes any pundit bad is laziness, stupidity, and stubbornness.
And it don’t matter whether the pundit is paid or doing it for free.
And what may kill paid pundits is the same thing that is killing all kinds of professionalism, the typical (and mainly) American distrust of education and erudition. And the fact that most people love hackery that conforms with their own world view.
Strangely, sports is almost the only remaining arena in which dumbass Americans recognize that pros are better than amateurs.
And by the way,
Cause prediction ain’t the same thing as fact, even on the InterTubes.
Hunter Gathers
@DougJ: Brown’s a deeply weird individual. Remember his ‘who wants to fuck my daughters?’ proclamation during his acceptance speech in January of 2010? What kind of creepy fucker does that sort of thing? He does weird shit like that all the time.
DougJ
@Hunter Gathers:
As someone who worked on Eric Massa’s campaign, I can tell you that being weird probably helps when it comes to being a good politician.
Another Halocene Human
@Punchy: a) it’s not that liberal (ie, non-authoritarian)
b) she’s an outsider
c) Native Americans have no land in Massachusetts, but despite imported diseases and deliberate genocide, there are Native Americans living all over Massachusetts. The Rethugs have cleverly tapped into what one might (even ironically) dub nativist fear of NA descendants reasserting their land claims. Thus the need to extinguish all claims to NA ancestry. Don’t you know that all of the Indians in Massachusetts were killt, dead, there are no more and anyone who says otherwise is lying? Fear knows no rationality and Brown’s people are playing the rubes like a violin.
d) The Boston Irish have a chip on their shoulder because of the history of discrimination against them, and a need to punish following their subsequent seizing of political power. Any other downtrodden ethnic group who gets any kind of preference/advantage (read: a shot, ie all the slots aren’t locked up by Irish) results in massive butthurt and whining, DADDY DADDY NO FAIR YOU SAID YOU’D PICK MEEEEEE, PIIIIICK MEEEEEEEEE!!! (while flailing and kicking downwards)
Another Halocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Howie Carr is a phoney.
Hunter Gathers
@DougJ: Certainly isn’t hurting him, I’ll give you that.
redshirt
There’s a reason politicians do things like buy a used truck to drive around in, or a “ranch” to clear brush at: with the media’s assistance, the stupid folk will believe it.
See, that Scotty Brown is just like you and me! He drives an old pickup.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I don’t think it’s an either/or. There are lots of ways that pundits can be bad, and there’s no guarantee that any individual is only bad in one way. I suspect that if you looked carefully, though, you’d discover that a big part of the problem with paid pundits is that they’re expected to fill a specific role. They’re the thoughtful centrist, cultural conservative, voice of their minority group, non-scary liberal, or what have you. They got hired because that was what they were writing, but once they’ve been hired into that role they’re stuck with it. Being told to stick with their designated role through thick and thin is going to make them act lazy and stubborn even if they weren’t lazy and stubborn to start with.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Actually, no.
I simply dispute the fantasy that the rise of the Internets will result in a rise of gifted amateurs displacing paid hacks. The only thing that will happen is that a tsunami of ignorant amateurs will displace often ignorant professionals along with the few who actually know something.
We have seen this sort of thing already where film critics, restaurant reviewers and music critics have been fired from newspapers and online sites. Film critic Stephanie Zacharek is the most recent example.
you can’t compete with the horde of often talented and passionate, but ignorant amateurs who want to talk about music, food and film. I listened to a podcast on the movie “Prometheus”, and was appalled when one of the passionate fans wondered why the android David was watching clips from the tv show “Mash.” He was watching “Lawrence of Arabia,” and his fascination with the themes of the film was woven into the plot of the movie.
The same is true of political punditry. That they were hired to fill a designated role (centrist, conservative, liberal) is largely beside the point. Those who are lazy and stupid (think McMegan) would be lazy and stupid no matter what. The rising amateur propaganda punditry market is often even more militantly stupid than the pros, and just as eager to play to a partisan crowd.
By the way, much of this has been noted by many historians as the return to 18th century pamphleterring, which was often just as wild a market as the InterTubes. And you had the same kinds of problems, filtering the junk from the worthy. But since the Net allows each person to be his or her own printing press, the challenge is magnified a gazillionfold. With no editors.
And the political parties will try to game the system by planting hacks and using other methods to try to shape the political conversation.
gocart mozart
LOL Cat Fight!
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/06/pussyweight-battle-1937
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Wait, Movieline still exists? I thought they had become Hollywood Life ages ago and dropped anything having to do with actual movie reviewing or criticism.
Ah, the golden age of Joe Queenan, Stephen Rubello, and David Thomson (before he went insane). I miss it.