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September 26, 2004

Quote of the Day

Michele Catalano writes about a comically-slanted piece about bloggers in the NYTimes.

That the piece got everything wrong and brought a comical political slant to the contribution of blogs to the arc of the Rathergate story is both obvious and something Michele explains better; read her piece.

But at the end, she cuts to my own motivations for spending so much time and otherwise-productive effort on watching the efforts of the big lefty blogs.

Michele writes

The site stats of Kos, Marshall and Black may be huge, but their heads are larger, looming like three enormous, helium balloons above the blogosphere.

It will be interesting to see how the results of the coming election will effect those balloons. A pin positioned in just the right place will cause a collective pop loud enough to cause an aftershock in the blog world, leaving Matthew Klam with 5,000 words to write and only Wonkette's baby blue eyes and expletives deleted with which to fill the pages.

We at the Northern Alliance - especially the Fraters and I - have been commenting at length on the dearth of good left-wing blogs. I've addressed the local angle...

...but the big, dark, dirty secret of the A-list of the left-wing blogosphere is, there's really no there, there.

Read the big ones: Atrios and Oliver Willis and Pandagon are all giggly fratboys with the intellectual acuity of a TV-addled eight-grader. Matt Yglesias is better, slightly, but still given to long rhetorical trips with not enough logical gas. Josh "ua Micah" Marshall seems to be decaying before our eyes, as the stress of watching the gathering meltdown of the Democrat party seems to be grinding him to a rhetorical pulp as we watch. Kos has gone from being a fairly intelligent blog to a loathsome groupthink forum, as bad as "Democratic Underground". Wonkette, I'm convinced, was never meant to be anything but a yuk; unlike the big guy lefty bloggers, she delivers everything with tongue so firmly in cheek, it verges on readable, and probably doesn't fit into the gallery of swollen noggins Catalano describes.

So what happens if the boom drops - as appears iincreasingly possible - on the morning of November 3? These bloggers have pushed the rhetorical bar so very, very low, I have to wonder where they can go?

Posted by Mitch at September 26, 2004 08:56 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Yuh-huh. And I'd say the same thing about right-wing blogs. There are the researchers who often waste vast amounts of space writing articles laughably wrong on their face, the ranters, the racists, the "gotcha" artists, and, of course, Mr. Heh, Indeed himself, Instapundit.

Personally, I don't believe there's much worth reading on the right side of the blogosphere...but then, I might be biased. Your entire theory is based on the fact that you simply don't like liberals - you have every right to it, but like a lot of bloggers on both sides (myself included), you're totally uncritical of anything you have to say. I'm reading your blog, and there's not a whole lot more to it than "the left will be wrong, I swear!" Not quite the most enthralling or intelligent stuff, but if it floats your boat, go for it. This is not a particularly good righty blog...and in my estimation, there really aren't many particularly good righty blogs. The biggest, Instapundit, is among the absolute worst, which might say something.

Posted by: Jesse Taylor at September 26, 2004 09:57 AM

Below read a typically hard-hitting, well thought out post by atrios. Someone seems to accidentally turned his switch from "vitriol" to "blather". Read this and tell me Soros doesn't pay him by the word.
---------------------------------------

The Case for "Privatizing" Part of Social Security

Actually, I don't think there is one. What would be the point? If you think reducing payroll taxes and/or guaranteed benefits in a way which adds up is a good idea then go ahead and advocate that policy. But, what possible good argument is there for a policy roughly like the ones which are floated by the Bushies (without details of course), which would cut payroll taxes by 2 percentage points, cut guaranteed future benefits, and then mandate that you save/invest that 2 percentage points of income. What's with the mandatory savings? If you want to cut benefits, fine. If you want to having all kinds of tax free savings instruments, which we already do, fine. But why force people to save? The only point of doing so is to ensure that people have a reasonable income base when they're of retirement age, but once you take the "insurance" part out of retirement insurance, then a mandatory saving/investment program doesn't achieve that.

Posted by: Terry at September 26, 2004 10:27 AM

Pretty lame, Jesse. How can you read this blog and not learn anything? (Rhetorical question only, you don't have a clue about the answer.)

Posted by: Todd at September 26, 2004 11:06 AM

When Mitch started calling the likes of Willis and Atrios "giggly fratboys", I thought it was a bit over the top.

Having read both, and now (especially) "Pandagon", I think he may have been a bit charitable.

Jesse - your blog is really lame.

And I'm moderate to left in outlook. Call me a "9/11 Democrat" if you'd like. Keep your stereotypes to yourself (although if you did, you'd have no blog...)

Posted by: Alison at September 26, 2004 12:33 PM

Am I the only one who thinks everyone should just leave their comments about other people's blogs to themselves. If you don't like a blog... don't go there. Otherwise this back and forth criticism is never going to stop.

Posted by: Carson at September 26, 2004 12:46 PM

I don't care about commenting about others' blogs. It's the systems of thought those blogs represent that is the interesting part.

Posted by: meeotch at September 26, 2004 02:12 PM

Pretty lame, Jesse. How can you read this blog and not learn anything? (Rhetorical question only, you don't have a clue about the answer.)

I'm glad you all have this fantastic little superiority complex. Enjoy its futility, particularly given that all you *do* is traffic in stereotypes about the "left".

Nothing funnier than watching a conservative get mad at a liberal for even daring to mimic their normal patterns of interaction. Ah, well. Peace, everyone. Hopefully you enjoy this...great piece of work that Mitch has provided for you.

Heh. Indeed.

Posted by: jesse at September 26, 2004 04:07 PM

Right. And nothing quite as predictable as "Pandagon" reacting to criticism, reality or dissent with a snark.

More tomorrow.

Posted by: mitch at September 26, 2004 05:04 PM

Jesse,

Mitch's blog has some depth.

Pandagon, based on about half a dozen readings, is about as deep as NSync.

Posted by: Erin at September 26, 2004 05:34 PM

Uh-oh, Jesse's getting the vapors over our "anger."

No, wait, he's got nothing to say so he's accusing everybody of getting angry. Yeah, that's more like it.

Transferrence, thy name is, undoubtedly, Jesse.

Posted by: Brian Jones at September 26, 2004 06:21 PM

"Pandagon" is Greek for "Nyah nyah".

Posted by: Alison at September 26, 2004 06:36 PM
hi