Posted on 09/29/2004 3:28:50 PM PDT by swilhelm73
Matthew Klam’s NYT Magazine article on the blogosphere has triggered frenzied discussion in the blog world.
Conservative blogs have complained that the piece is liberal propaganda that unfairly ignores conservative bloggers.
Meanwhile, the left-wing blogs have counter-complained that the piece is establishment propaganda that outrageously belittles them!
And just about everyone with a blogspot seems to be muttering, “Hey! Why didn’t they write about me?!”
Disregard the heckling. The piece is riveting: vivid, remorseless, and deadly. Klam has that magic interviewer's gift for inducing his intended victims to place their lives in his hands. Yes, he dealt with left bloggers only. The right-wing bloggers should be grateful to have been spared. Anyway, why shouldn't Klam focus on left-wing bloggers? They’re an important story - from the point of view of the Times and its constituencies, a supremely important story.
Back when Howard Dean was still running for president, we heard a great deal about the energy and excitement that left-wing blogs were sparking among young voters. Then, after all that energy and excitement blew out Dean’s fuses, the left-wing bloggers went to work for their new hero, John Kerry.
By now, it’s pretty clear that all this energy and enthusiasm has done Kerry nothing but harm. Consider the case of Josh Marshall of www.talkingpointsmemo.com. Marshall is intelligent, learned, politically committed but also imbued with a deep sense of historical perspective. He could have been the Arthur Schlesinger Jr. of his generation. Maybe someday he will be. Right now though he has gone completely off his nut. Here’s his post from Friday:
"A generous way to put it -- the lede of Dana Milbank's piece in tomorrow's Post: 'President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq -- a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.'
"Can we re-check the sprinkler system in the Reichstag?"
The reference, in case you missed it, is to the 1933 fire in the German Parliament that Adolf Hitler used as an excuse to pass an Enabling Act giving him dictatorial control over the German state.
Leave aside for a moment the historical illiteracy and moral outrageousness of the analogy. Concentrate only on its self-destructive political lunacy.
In politics as in retailing, you never argue with the customer. If the polls are accurate, the American people perceive George W. Bush as a upright and honorable man. On the other hand, they don't much like his economic policies, and they worry that he may be too much of a risk-taker in foreign affairs.
A smart political operation would work on those pre-existing weaknesses. It wouldn’t waste time trying to convince an incredulous public that the genial likeable man they see on television is in reality the reincarnation of Hitler.
But the Democratic political operation of 2004 has not been smart. It has in fact been astonishingly, gaspingly, Guinness Book of Records stupid. It has been simultaneously hysterical and harmless, irate and irrelevant, paranoid and purblind.
The left-wing blogs have to take a considerable share of the blame for this disaster. They were a crucial part of the in-group conversation by which the most partisan Democrats convinced each other that the country feared and hated George W. Bush as much as they did. This delusion – combined with the decision to nominate a man to whom haughty disdain came all too naturally – pushed the Democrats to mistake after mistake and blinded them to opportunity after opportunity.
Matthew Klam’s piece pays little attention to the political consequences of left-wing blogging. He amuses himself instead with a brutal evisceration of the ambitions and delusions of three of the best-known left-wing bloggers in his gunsights: the above-mentioned Marshall, Ann Marie Cox of Wonkette.com, and Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com. Klam deftly portrays Marshall’s obsessive hunting of Great White Whale conspiracies, the grungy ideological fanaticism of the Daily Kos, and the desperately flailing attention-seeking of Wonkette. Klam's piece cannot make for pleasant reading for any of his subjects. And I suspect that the unpleasantness must have come as quite a shock.
A post at Daily Kos attacks Klam for exhibiting the allegedly characteristic vices of the New York Times: “contempt and loathing for passionate liberalism, a contrasting and mysterious silence about right-wing excesses, and plenty of old-fashioned class snobbery.” Few others have ever noticed this alleged loathing for liberalism at the Times or the supposedly concomitant silence about the excesses of the right. Class prejudice? Yes, of that the Times is frequently guilty, but not I think in this case.
While Klam certainly does emphasize Marshall’s disheveled clothes, Moulitsas’ boorish loudmouthing, and Cox’s delight in scoring a free meal on Klam’s expense account, he does not do so from the point of view of some being of superior status. Klam is a freelance contributor to the Times. That biography suggests that he is probably not unacquainted with life’s ups and downs himself. If he is unimpressed by the left-wing bloggers, it’s not for failing to uphold the standards of St. Paul’s and the Racquet Club.
So what’s bugging Klam? Let me hazard a guess: Klam is witnessing the failure of a revolution-that-never-was. When liberal pundits began hailing the emergence of left-wing blogging as a counterweight to conservative talk-radio (and for that matter the pro-war blogging of sites like LittleGreenFootballs.com, Instapundit.com, HughHewitt.com, BelmontClubBlogspot.com, AndrewSullivan.com, NRO, and so many others) they did so because they hoped to find in the left blogs a substitute for the fading dominance of the old-line liberal media.
But that was never going to happen. For conservatives, the advent of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and FoxNews and the blogosphere is all good news. But for liberals, the move from a world dominated by three big liberal networks, two big liberal newsmagazines, and two great liberal newspapers to a world in which bloggers can bring down a network anchor and the Times' own executive editor is an absolute and utter catastrophe, even if some of those bloggers happen to be liberal themselves.
American are living now in a world of media diversity. It’s the worst thing to happen to Democratic hopes since the Sunbelt went Republican. It’s understandable that the Times would feel surly. The only wonder is that this time it chose to vent that surliness against bloggers who want nothing more than to contribute their mite to the Times’ own team.
Bump for a fine synopsis of a NYT piece that I wouldn't waste my time reading anyway.
Simply hilarious.
I've got little to add, but glad to bump it. Good reading.
Otherwise -- good article.
This is such a good article there's not much to say in reply. I accept Frum's thesis 100%.
Writing about blogs without mentioning Free Republic is like writing about a class of schoolchildren without mentioning their teacher.
.
I thought diversity was "good"
Thanks for the bump.
I maintain the belief that if the bloggers had existed in 1992 and 1996, Clinton never would have been President. It is the bloggers that will save us from a Hillary Presidency.
They didn't cover EvilDave.com! I'm going to call the ACLU, the ICLU, Johnny Cochrane, John Edwards, and Geraldo Rivera (aka. Jerry Rivers), and I'm going to SUE the New York Times into covering my site ina favorable fashion! WAAAAAAAAAAH! I want my Mommy-State!
But I am anything BUT a liberal sissy-crybaby. In fact, if the NYT was to contact me about doing a piece about my site, I'd look 'em right in the eye and tell them to shove their communist rag right where the sun ain't supposed to shine!
LOL
how do you see # of article views?
Great find!
The moral: liberalism, a philosophy based largely upon narcissism and wishful thinking,cannot exist in an objective world where performance and logic matter.
The big networks and dailies could navel-gaze and parrot each other as long as there wasn't anyone to publicly refute them; this is no longer true. I look for more Rathergates in the near future, simply because the liberal TV and print media have engaged in sloppy reporting, selective ommission, and delusional thinking for so long that they usually don't recognize it for what it is.
History is currently moving to quickly for a network news organization to write or to re-write; look how quickly CBS got caught modifying their anti-draft transcript today. Most of the people committing these kind of deceptions are unaware that they are lying or that they will be caught lying. As a result, they react defensively and with venom at what appears to them to be a personal attack.
The left-wing blogs do nothing to remedy this problem for liberals. They basically act as an echo chamber for leftists angry that reality keeps intervening into their pipe dreams, so they only serve to promote the same kind of self-delusion that the MSM provides the average American liberal. The typical liberal media consumer is a coward as well as an ass, so he retreats to the bigger organizations to defend his many errant positions on current events. The blogs will never be of much use to a person with this mindset.
It shows that stat along with the title and # of comments.
| I accept Frum's thesis 100%.
The legacy media is sufficiently open to liberal pundits that the good ones have homes, with the consequence that the left-wing blogs are populated by writers who can't even make it in a left-wing media. By contrast, there are many very good conservative writers who have been frozen out of the legacy media because their views are not welcome in our "newsrooms." |
call me stupid, but i don't see it... where? at the top of thread?
maybe firefox doesn't read it???
Posted by Admin Moderator
On 09/30/2004 6:50:58 PM EDT · 10 replies · 9+ views
There have been several "live threads" posted today regarding the debate starting early this morning. Let's make this the official thread. Humor: Caption This Kerry Photo!
Posted by TitansAFC
On 09/30/2004 6:48:02 PM EDT · 12 replies · 77+ views
At Large | 9-30-04 | TitansAFC
no i don't....
i see everything except the "· 10 replies · 9+ views"
hmmmm
maybe i'll try IE
i opened IE (for th first time in a few months) to check and yes I see that info in IE.
but before i got to it, i had to download 5 critical security updates from MS.
wonder what's worse, MS security or not being able to see the info in question....
anyway thanks
I wonder how to fix firefox to see it....
Who knows? I'll download it and screw around with it, maybe I'll figure it out. Either way it's something new for me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
I think he missed something. To wit, quality. Frum notes that "Klam is a freelance contributor to the Times," without pausing to recognize that were Klam a conservative, he would be a blogger. That's because there is very little room, at the Times or anywhere else, for conservative free-lancers.