I guess OSM will now become Pajamas Media once again.
I actually kind of like Pajamas Media, and as a matter of fact, do blog in my jammies from time to time. So THERE!
Please Cover Your Eyes as We Change Back Into Our JammiesPost + Comments (29)
by John Cole| 29 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I guess OSM will now become Pajamas Media once again.
I actually kind of like Pajamas Media, and as a matter of fact, do blog in my jammies from time to time. So THERE!
Please Cover Your Eyes as We Change Back Into Our JammiesPost + Comments (29)
by John Cole| 68 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
If anyone knows what exactly happened between Ann Althouse and Charles and Roger at OSM to make her act like a whiny 12 year old school girl who isn’t accepted by the cool kids, please fill me in. After reading her yesterday and today, I wish someone would remind her SHE rejected the offer from Charles and Roger, and not the other way around.I guess she is going for her own market niche as the loyal opposition to OSM. Or something.
So you don’t have to read all of her posts, here is a summary of Ann’s criticisms to date: “I don’t know what it is! I don’t know what it does! I’m blonde! Open sores is a play on open source!”
I have no idea if OSM is going to work, but bitchy post-mortems 24 hours in seem a touch premature. And Ann- if it bothers you so much, don’t read it, and get this- don’t invest any money in the venture. That has worked for me and Pandagon.
At any rate, I don’t get Althouse’s attitude, so fill me in if you know what is bothering her. My attitude is, if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And if it works and you don’t like it, don’t visit them. But I don’t understand the childish desire to kill something or try to kill something that other people have obviously spent a lot of time and money trying to get to work.
*** Update ***
From the comments of her latest post:
OSM is destructive of the blogger ethic, I think. I tried to talk about this when Roger L. Simon called me on the phone after this post comparing the two systems, and that’s the very thing that made him say “Nice talking to you” and then hang up on. That said a lot! He’d been quite intent on telling me how important it was to the venture capitalists to see a return on their investment. I changed the subject and challenged that perspective. He couldn’t talk to me about that and simply hung up on me.
This seems to be more to the heart of the issue than her feigning to not ‘get’ OSM.
And I don’t know what that blogger ethics stuff is, or if it is contagious, but if any of you folks trot any of that stuff around here and it rubs off on me, and I am going to be pissed.
*** Update ***
Max Sawicky has about the exact same take I did when I signed on:
I’m listed here under the Blogroll link in a subdirectory labeled OSMcontributors, though we haven’t finalized a deal yet. The arrangement is that I run their ad strip for a fixed, guaranteed monthly payment. Maybe they run posts from this site, maybe they never do. I see no downside, except the potential for embarrassment, a risk I run every day without any outside assistance.
I am under no obligation to endorse anything on the portal site, nor any of the principals of the enterprise. I don’t care if people I don’t like get rich. That happens every day in any event. Nor am I under any obligation to be nice to the principals and their chief cronies. In fact, I don’t mind saying here and now that a number of them represent the dregs of public discourse in the U.S., and several of them are stark raving lunatics. We’ll get into some fun profiles at a later date.
Pretty much how I felt. Things ain’t changing here, and they can use whatever they want, and if some law professors at Midwestern Universities get their panties in a bunch about the erosion of the ‘blogger ethic,’ I am hardly going to lose any sleep over it. And if you haven’t already, go and check out this ridiculous back and forth between Jeff and Ann. I am starting to think what really pissed Ann off (along with Roger and Charles honking her off) is she thought Jeff was actually liveblogging the event.
by John Cole| 13 Comments
This post is in: Humorous, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
Jeff Goldstein puts up a post pretending to liveblog the new Open Source Media conference (AKA the consortium formerly known as Pajamas Media), and once again, our intrepid media believes it is real. A sample of the post:
Ed, who I’d met once before at a Rocky Mountain Blogger bash, threw me a glance that said, “skip it, he’s Australian,” before sliding me a chair. “Take a seat. How was your flight?”
“Fine, nice,” I said, sitting down and looking around for the waitress. I hadn’t had anything to drink on the plane and was really craving a Guinness.
“So”—this from my left, where Roger Simon, sans his trademark fedora, sat smiling and bleary-eyed, holding aloft a half-empty Gibson glass as if to make a toast. “Protein wisdom is in the hizzouse, as they say! Welcome! Or as my friend Bill Bixby once said to a French prostitute (god rest his soul), ’bonjour, you plump little tart!’”
“Bullshit,” Blair hissed. “The Hulk never said any such thing. Any such thing. You fibbing, wizened bastard.”
“Absolutely he did,” Simon plucked a cocktail onion from his drink with his fingers. “Paris, 1979. Had her eating out of the palm of his hand, too. Literally. Cake and a little salted herring, I think. Christ, do I ever miss him.”
And the Philly Inquirer thinks it is real.
This isn’t the first time, as Salon thought his ‘fake but accurate’ posts from the RNC were legit.
At any rate, Pajamas Media is now Open Source Media, and I am a member. And nothing will change here, other than the advertising. I promise. Here is an AP story on OSM.
*** Update ***
Good on Dan Rubin. He updated his post. Emily Messner– are you reading this?
by John Cole| 20 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
by Tim F| 90 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Is it possible that some may have supported the war in Iraq for political gain?
If anybody used support for the war for political gain, would that make them less patriotic?
Since Glenn Reynolds couched his post in hypotheticals, that is to say if people oppose the war primarily for political gain then these people are unpatriotic, there’s no reason why my hypothetical questions are not equally valid.
by John Cole| 25 Comments
This post is in: Humorous, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Congrats to commenter DougJ, who got this website mentioned in the Washington Post. Of course, virtually everything about the mention is false, and the author ofthe WaPo does not know DougJ just makes things up to try and get a reaction from people, but it is amusing anyway. The mention:
Alan Bostick has a slightly different take on how the abuse mirrors fraternity hazings, and he provides an example of a pledge who was killed by the treatment he received from his would-be brothers. Americans, Bostick says, just do this kind of thing — gross maltreatment should not shock us.
The fraternity comparison was made on Hannity and Colmes as well, and Media Matters for America didn’t let it pass unnoticed.
In this comment on Juan Cole’s blog, the writer says the whole prisoner abuse issue, while serious, has been blown out of proportion by liberals. The comment goes on to state that the McCain Amendment is well-intentioned, but “the solution to doing this without crossing over into torture is to discipline those who step over the line, not to tie the military’s hands behind its back.”
Is it fair to say that McCain and his many supporters are trying to tie the hands of the military? Simply disciplining those “who step over the line” isn’t sufficient, since the line has become so blurry over the last few years. The amendment clarifies the ambiguity by making the Army Field Manual the final word on what is and is not allowed in interrogations. Surely, if the field manual guidelines were impeding effective interrogation, the Army would have changed them.
Of course, I wrote in the comments to Emily’s post that I am not Juan Cole, but John Cole, and he would be just as mortified that she had mixed us up. I also pointed out that the commenter here that she linked to (she linked to a commenter, and not an actual post of mine or Tim’s), ‘The Cavalry,” has the same writing style and IP address as DougJ, ComCon, the Comish, Elinor Dickey, and I am sure others I am forgetting. In other words, she is printing the words of one of DougJ’s obviously fake identities as if it was a real comment.
So congrats, DougJ- today is your day!
This post is in: Politics, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I don’t know what it is with some people that when they discuss certain subjects, their normal, calm demeanor flies out the window and they take on a new personna. Before this thread gets hopelessly queered with catcalls directed at me, I will point out that I am the LAST person on earth to claim a ‘normal, calm demeanor,’ so charges of hypocrisy on my part are unwarranted and will go largely unnoticed.
At any rate, the reason I write this is because of this thoroughly disingenuous post by Kevin Drum:
THE LAST REFUGE….Glenn Reynolds on Democrats who claim that George Bush misled us into war:
And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they’re acting unpatriotically.
Glad we got that out in open.
Of course, the intent is to portray Glenn as stating that anyone who believes that we were misled into war is unpatriotic, and if you were to just look at that statement, it would be a fair interpretation. But in order to get to that little quote, you have to, as Kevin has chosen, selectively and intentionally ignore the rest of Glenn’s comment (conveniently missing the entire point of the statement):
BUSH SLAMS HISTORICAL REVISIONISTS ON THE WAR: About time. Jeff Goldstein has more.
And read earlier posts on this subject here and here. Also here.
The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way — and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it’s deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.
And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they’re acting unpatriotically.
There is, as you can see, a big difference.
Painting as unpatriotic those individuals who change their opinions simply for political reasons is wholly appropriate, and that is what Glenn stated. Reynolds is not, as Kevin Drum would have you believe, simply calling anyone against the war or anyone who believes that the the reasons used to go to war were inaccurate ‘unpatriotic.’
As Jeff Goldstein notes:
The first victory for the anti-war left itook place shortly after 911, when war supporters on the right agreed, however reluctantly, that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” and that we should not question anyone’s patriotism (though the left was of course allowed to question the patriotism of “chickenhawks”; which is only fair, because we’re all just a bunch of cowardly jingoistic scumtonguers, anyhow).
But Glenn touches on an important distinction that we should now be willing to embrace: namely, that though the anti-war position is not inherently unpatriotic, those in the anti-war movement who use lies and misinformation to harm the country are—and political opportunism that relies on revisionist history and the leveling of false charges in order to regain power is indicative of mindset that profoundly cynical and profoundly anti-democratic.
I will loudly point out when I think people are simply smearing those on the left, as I did during the whole Durbin nonsense and during Rove’s attempted summertime smear against all liberals, but this has got to be a two way street if we are ever going to have the type of internal domestic rapprochement that this country desperately needs.
As, it is, though, Kevin appears to run in a crowd that is fond of calling the opposition liars at every opportunity, and it would be a refreshing and welcome change if Kevin himself would practice what he preaches and stop willfully distorting those he disagrees with. If, as Kevin alludes, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, a comple unwillingness to debate honestly and fairly has to be somewhere near the first.
Note to potential commenters- If all you are going to do is launch a vicious or pointed attack at Glenn, Jeff, Kevin, or me, don’t bother. I will just delete it and end comments on this post.
*** Update ***
Glenn elaborates:
WELL, THE HATEMAIL HAS POURED IN after my earlier post on Bush’s speech. For the record, though, I didn’t say that anyone who opposes the war is unpatriotic. (In fact, only antiwar people seem to keep raising this strawman). But the Democratic politicans who are pushing the “Bush Lied” meme are, I think, playing politics with the war in a way that is, in fact, unpatriotic. Having voted for the war, they now want to cozy up to the increasingly powerful MoveOn crowd, which is immensely antiwar. The “Bush Lied” meme is their way of getting cover. This move also suggests that their earlier support for the war may itself have been more opportunistic than sincere, which I suppose is another variety of unpatriotism.
Which is exactly what I thought he meant.
An Unwillingness or Inability to Be HonestPost + Comments (265)