Mark Kleiman and company is now a group blog with a new location (although the old url should still get you there). Adjust your links/blogroll accordingly.
Same Facts
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Mark Kleiman and company is now a group blog with a new location (although the old url should still get you there). Adjust your links/blogroll accordingly.
by John Cole| 42 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
A Republican blogger is being sued for libel by a Democrat campaign organizer:
dispute between a self-described “Republican operative” and a former Democratic campaign organizer widely quoted in Minnesota media has turned into a libel lawsuit that could help set legal standards for Internet blogs.
The suit pits Blois Olson, a Democratic public relations executive who is a frequent guest on Twin Cities Public Television’s “Almanac” show, against Michael Brodkorb, a former Minnesota Republican Party employee who operates a political blog — or Web journal — called minnesotademocratsexposed.com.
Olson’s lawsuit, which was served to Brodkorb on Tuesday but has not yet been filed in court, seeks damages of more than $50,000 and a court order forcing Brodkorb to remove from the blog a Dec. 28 posting about Olson and his St. Paul-based public relations company.
I don’t know much about libel laws, but after visiting the website in question (“Minnesota Democrats Exposed“), I think the owner should be sued for having a black background with retina burning yellow text. If that ain’t a crime, it should be.
(Via boing boing)
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
A calm way to react to this:
When the wingnuts chant their talking points like a bunch of tambourine-beaters at the airport, they want to be paid for their efforts. And Pajamas Media was set up to do just that. They received by some accounts $7 million dollars to subsidize 70 right wing bloggers, and if you look at their sites there are no ads, many don’t even identify their affiliation with a logo. Look at some full-on loon like the Confederate Yankee who earns his/her 800 hits a day by having seizures over Google’s attempts to mock Christmas with Jesus butt plugs. The General will easily draw twenty times the traffic with his rapier-witted takedown, but the Confederate Yankee probably earns a lot more money than the General. These illiterate zeros are being paid out of principal, not out of any ad revenues. They are all Armstrong Williams.
***In the past year alone many fine voices on the left have stopped blogging because they could no longer spare the time, had to go tend to their lives and finances. You won’t have to worry about that with the Pajamas Media crowd. Even the most dilatory, the most insultingly stupid amongst them will continue to be subsidized and probably make more than Digby. More than Billmon. All that noise about the free market, natural selection and survival of the fittest is just so much racket.
So the next time you hear us bitching about Pajamas Media, the incursion of right wing money into the blogosphere or the compromised voices of the “liberals” they’ve bought, remember that it’s just another attempt to control the message. They’re not our “counterparts on the right,” they’re paid operatives.
If you can come up with a calm, reasoned response for me, let me know, because everything I have to say is just going t0 come out with a snarl.
I am now officially sick and tired of being insulted by people I used to respect for doing nothing but choosing a steadier stream of revenue for my personal website than I had a couple months ago. I’m an ‘illiterate zero.’ I’m on ‘wingnut welfare.’ I’m a ‘paid operative.’ I am being paid to ‘spew lies.’ What the hell is wrong with these people?
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Jay Caruso, who has been blogging for several years, is calling it quits.
Another long-term blog dies.
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Back by Popular Demand– Blog Fights
The background- Weeks of back and forth about torture and bad feelings go public.
Round 1: Sullivan:
And I think that all debate helps flush out the truth. Even if a majority decides to ignore the truth, in the end, it will count. Unlike Kerry, I also believe in fighting back against lies and smears. In fact, I’m delighted that the NRO-Reynolds chorus has finally decided, after months and months of pretending there was nothing to debate, that they have to deal with this question. The trouble is: their long months of denial and evasion have made them lazy and stunningly uninformed. Which is worth flushing out as well.
And Andrew Sullivan — pursuant to his apparent brand differentiation strategy, I guess — is bravely standing up to the “NRO-Reynolds chorus,” whatever that means. I don’t think I really agree with Mark Levin, Rich Lowry, et al. on the specific subject at hand, though I confess that I haven’t followed that particular pissing match very closely. However, I do agree with them that Andrew has been consistently, pompously, and annoyingly moralistic and irritatingly unspecific. So if that’s the chorus, well yes — but it’s a song that has a lot of notes, most of them struck by Andrew himself. And I’m irritated with him, not for the reason you might think — because I disagree with Andrew — but more the contrary, because every time I read one of his preening posts, I find my opposition to torture weakening in response, even though I’ve been consistently in opposition to torture since 2001 (and before). God help me if he ever starts blogging in support of nanotechnology and bans on cloning — I’ll probably start looking at Leon Kass more sympathetically. It’s like listening to Robert Bork talk about original understanding jurisprudence.
Round 2:
Instapundit finds me “consistently, pompously, and annoyingly moralistic and irritatingly unspecific” on the question of torture. I’m sorry about that. But I can promise him my position had nothing to do with “brand differentiation,” as he calls it. Believe it or not, opposing torture was and is a deep principle of mine, sincerely held, and I think the record shows I blog according to what I think, even if it loses me readers and alienates people who would otherwise be allies. I’m sorry that Glenn, over the last year and half, said he opposed torture but did nothing to help stop it. In fact, he did much to excuse and ignore it or look the other way, as well as denigrating or condescending to those of us who fought against it. He even argued that vocally opposing torture would only help legalize it, because most Americans were in favor. Mercifully, the American people, as represented in the Congress, have proven him wrong. He lacked faith in American decency. Some of us didn’t.
ANDREW SULLIVAN says he never called being wrapped in the Israeli flag “torture.” But in this post he listed it under the heading of “Anti-Islamic Torture,” along with a variety of nasty behaviors with nothing to suggest it’s not of the same order. And see this post, too. He says he doesn’t think fake menstrual blood is torture, but he sure has paid a lot of attention to the subject in that context for someone who doesn’t.
Sullivan’s heart has been in the right place on the issue, most of the time, at least, but his head has been sorely absent. Nor do I understand why he’s thought it useful to pick at me regularly, as opposed to, say, the bloggers who actually support torture.
Perhaps he’ll improve. As others have noted, “Tomorrow is always another day at andrewsullivan.com.”
Who is winning? Dunno, although I am praying for more carnage.
I will update as it happens.
The Background: Weeks of a select few individuals obsessing over PJ Media comes to a boiling point when I finally get sick and tired of the relentless bashing (and mostly pointless, although there has been some substantive criticism out there), and refer to two leaders of the bashing as the Axis of Asshole.
Round 1:
ME: In a post on the Iraqi elections, two commenters start up with the Open Sore crap again. I state:
You know- no more links to the Axis of Asshole, aka Althouse, Moxie, etc.
They are just bitter shrews who for some reason have a hard-on towards Roger and Charles. They are free to start their own competing businesses if they know so damned much.
And what makes me pissed off the most is that their commentary is so nasty and childish I feel compelled to defend PJ, even though I think they have made significant missteps.
BTW- I like how all the anti PJ crowd has banded together- presumably to maintain the ‘independence’ of blogging that Althouse is so deadset on protecting.
Think about it for a minute.
Moxie (In post #68675 on PJ):
Okay, so here I am trying to be fair and balanced just like Fox News. I tell it like it like it is (even if I am saying something not quite positive about fellow conservatives) and some guy John Cole has this to say:
“You know- no more links to the Axis of Asshole [sic], aka Althouse, Moxie, etc.
They are just bitter shrews who for some reason have a hard-on towards Roger and Charles. They are free to start their own competing businesses if they know so damned much.
And what makes me pissed off the most is that their commentary is so nasty and childish I feel compelled to defend PJ, even though I think they have made significant missteps.”
No idea who that guy is — he must have started blogging YEARS after I did. But “bitter shrew” is par for the course. I was asked many times to join the Pajama Game. I thought Pajamas Media was an awful idea and said as much.
I’m just darn glad these people don’t get emotional.
For the record, I offered to fix Pajamas Media for them and put a 1 million dollar price tag on it. Still no takers.
Dennis the Peasant (who by every account I have read, is about the only person with a right to be bitter):
More Pajamas Media Blogger Brilliance… … From John Cole of Balloon Juice.
Via Moxie, Cole represents Pajamas Media in a manner that is, well, kinda batshit crazy, insanely bitter, and somewhat deranged:
“You know- no more links to the Axis of Asshole [ sic ], aka Althouse, Moxie, etc.
They are just bitter shrews who for some reason have a hard-on [ ! – ed. ] towards Roger and Charles. They are free to start their own competing businesses if they know so damned much.And what makes me pissed off the most is that their commentary is so nasty and childish I feel compelled to defend PJ, even though I think they have made significant missteps.”
Hum… that’s the Mother of all Mixed Metaphors, John.
But, irrespective of John’s difficulties with basic anatomy… all I can say at this moment is “CONTEST TIME” !!!
Would any of my creative and artistically inclined readers care to design an “Axis of the Assholes” logo I could distribute to people such as Moxie, Ann Althouse, Steven Den Beste, Steve H. and others?
A Fight PJM Doesn’t Want
And they should be careful about making it appear sexist, as well.
“You know- no more links to the Axis of Asshole [sic], aka Althouse, Moxie, etc.
Is it just me, or is John Cole going off the ad hominem deep end?
I pick on the founders of Pajamas Media, true enough, and I love making up names for PJM, like “Rather’s Revenge,” “Pajoompa Loompas,” “Pajamas Mediocrity,” “Mighty Morphin’ Pajama Rangers,” and “Pajamikazes,” but I don’t think you can find an example of me firing off ad hominems at the PJM member bloggers. Saying someone has backed the wrong horse isn’t an ad hominem. Saying they showed a lack of insight by buying into the PJM plan isn’t an ad hominem.
But “Axis of Asshole”? “Bitter shrews”? Those are his terms for Moxie and Ann Althouse.
Dainty souls, those fierce, independent critics. And for the love of everything that is good, will someone please explain to people the difference between a straight up insult and an insult being used as an argument ad hominem?
I doubt there will be a round two, as I have learned that if you ‘sold out to the man’ and ‘sent your independence packing,’ you are supposed to just sit there and take the cat calls from the independent souls who have banded together to offer ‘constructive criticism,’ but I will update as more PJ bashers rush to the self-promotion fest. Easy traffic, being a victim.
Who wins? You choose. I see no clear winners (although that may be because they are not utilizing their full verbal powers), although I do have a newfound appreciation for right-wingers who are willing to play the sexism card, straight from the leftist handbook, when it is to their advantage. By the end of the week, I suspect one of the aggrieved will have changed their name to Anita Hill.
Although if anything, it should be clear I have kept my ‘blogger independence’ and blogging is still ‘Free!’
And do I own the Axis of Asshole TM, or do I have to file for that? (There is now a logo!)
*** Update ***
More logo possibilities here (Although that TO bit is just below the belt). Now these folks can turn their cottage industry of kvetching about every aspect of PJ into a cottage industry of promoting themselves as assholes. Works for me. Poor independent souls- so picked on.
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Ok- Watch a few minutes of this, and tell me if you don’t feel like Mickey Kaus is using his eyebrows to hypnotize you. I felt myself getting woozy when he raised one eyebrow then quickly raised both.
Kind of an interesting idea, though. I will check out more of their arguments later.
by John Cole| 19 Comments
This post is in: Humorous, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Check out the comments to this thread by Brad at Sadly No! (the comments, not the post).
Hehe. Looks like JadeGold has a new nom de guerre.
PS- I cop to the arrogant jackass charge.