A reader writes (yes, really):
Jeff,
I’m a longtime reader of your blog and I’m delurking for a second to see if you’ve seen this article that says conservative blog readership increased in 2007 while liberal blog readership decreased…
Looking at those numbers (even before I picked up the fwd’ed e-mail), I noted that the numbers for the Lefty blogs are less uniform in their decline. However, I also note that Kos recently published traffic numbers that show a larger decline in pageviews at dKos (some of which is tech-based, but mostly not).
Middle Earth Journal attributes these trends to the changed fortunes of Left and Right in 2006. There may be something to that hypothesis, though there is little data to support it. Ceratinly, the comment there about Rush Limbaugh’s show shows a basic ignorance of his ratings over the years . Conversely, Air America was failing long before November 2006. Furthermore, the Lefty blogs with the steepest declines generally peaked in the spring of 2007, so it could just as basely be hypothesized that these declines should be linked to Lefty disappointment with the Democratic Congress.
Excitable Andy claims he had a record year, and wonders why. Me too. At Donklephant, Justin Gardner says traffic is up, up, up, which he attributes in part to Ron Paul-related  traffic. Perhaps that also explains Excitable Andy’s traffic. Liberal Values, another trend-bucker, also seems to have done a fair amount of Paul-blogging.
As for Protein Wisdom, my unchecked math says traffic was down less than 1% from the first half of 2007 to the second half. I suspect the PW results have more to do with our esteemed host’s attendance record than any larger trend.
I know my blog’s traffic is way up.
I think I may have almost half a dozen regular readers now.
I’m gonna stop tonight and pick up a really good dinner using just some of the money I am not giving to Ron Paul. Not giving money to Ron Paul makes food taste better. You try.
And maybe the decreased blogging in the sinistrosphere owes to the results of the surge. The dramatic decline in casualties (and corresponding decrease in MSM attention) took away their primary source of outrage.
Not to mention inducing enough cognitive dissonance to drop a bull elephant in his tracks.
No, my fauxtrage is unaffected by the surge. Stop wearing it around your gyrating necks like some freaky lei. Are things OK? Who knows? What has pissed me off and disaffected me is the crap-happy performance of this loser legislature and the piss-temperature quality of candidates. I can do better lost at a bus stop.
My blog’s readership may have tripled just in the last three months. That’s assuming the Librarian and my mother read it regularly and not just every once in a while.
Diseases that don’t kill sometimes exhibit the phenomenon of “burnout”, in which the patient suffers horribly but survives, perhaps to have a continuing low-level infection with occasional relapses.
Perhaps Bush Derangement Syndrome follows that pattern.
Regards,
Ric
Happy- I too had a fine dinner with the money I’m not giving Uncle Ron. It did taste better. However, I tried out Ron’s foreign & domestic policy at dinner…didn’t work out too well.
Two middle eastern men behind me troubled me for the salt, and I told them to piss off & get their own. When the waiter brought the check, I accused him of being a !jew! and refused to pay. Upon hearing “jew,” the two middle eastern men shot the waiter (but he was likely an Israeli Jew and they can handle their own problems, right Uncle Ron?). The manager demanded I pay, and I told him I didn’t believe in folding money ‘cuz the Federal Reserve & The Treasury are both bullshit. If I couldn’t pay in gold dabloons, he could go shit in his hat.
Alas, I paid with Visa when the cops arrived. Food was excelent though.
Uncle Ron hamburgers taste like steakburgers!
oh. That should be “makes” now that I think about it.
Sorry, Ric, I’ll never recover from BDS. Can I buttkick my fellow skulking travelers? Doubtful. We’ll see who wins round one.
I think you’ll find the ‘B’ is increasingly optional as time goes by. Sort of like the ‘A’ in ‘AGW’ in reverse.
Sorry, I thought Ric was speaking to me. Probably presumptuous.
At any rate, and I have’nt confirmed the scores, it doesn’t surprise me at all that the libs are struck dumb.
It could just be a reflection of the media carrying so much water for them they can’t think of anything to add.
cynn, I’m not really surprised you saw that as pointed your way :-)
I don’t expect a recovery; after all the vector is still around… maybe the symptoms will diminish a bit. You’ll be more comfortable. Perhaps energetic enough to do a little buttkicking.
* * *
The media have to sell things. The way they do that is by tossing up exciting things, preferably disasters. Nothing attracts eyeballs like somebody else’s disaster. Watch when there’s a car crash. If you could sell tickets to slow down and gawk, you’d make a fortune — and you’d have an insight into the business model of the Press. Right now all the real car crashes are on the Democratic side of the aisle, despite strenuous efforts to make mountains of scandal out of molehills of silliness. Ron Paul is nuts, but it isn’t photogenic nuts. Huckabee is just Yet Another Kenneth Copeland, and slimy as he is you just can’t make him look evil. The rest of the Republicans vary between boring and downright soporific. Whatever the predilections of its members may be the Machine must be fed, and the richest grazing is among the Democrats. If they’re going to sell ads for Depends and feminine lingerie, they’ll have to go with what’s available — and the result is the same sort of sinking feeling over there that we felt along about March of 2003.
It’d be easier to be smug if we weren’t discussing a gang of people, one of whom will be the most powerful individual in the Western World a year and eighteen days from now. Alcohol helps a little.
Regards,
Ric
I may have to go to Ron Paul’s official forum and ask “So who’s your second choice?” in a cheerful and familiar way. Like I’m just some normal guy trying to make conversation. And then be shocked, shocked that they don’t distinguish between (for example) Fred and Huckabee.
Campbell’s Soup is now a sponsor of teh NPR. Happyfeet is going grocery shopping this weekend. He will not buy their faggy soup or their poofy Pepperidge Farm cookies or their nasty fey Prego or their gayest-of-the-gay V8 crap.
Just sayin.
Oh. It’s opposed to just be Campbell Soup. Whatever. They’re dead to me.
Happy, you should ask RTO about his veggie soup thing. I forget what magazine it came from. anyhoo, since about Thanksgiving it’s been soup, soup and more soup for dinner and of course he’s losing like five million pounds while I’m like, “well, maybe i’ve lost a pound or two” but then of course Christmas happened and that one pound chocolate Santa isn’t going to eat himself. or the massive Nestle Crunch bar my coworker gave me.
so back to the soup thing, we’re spending less on groceries and it makes it really easy to make dinner.
Oh. For real? Cause I have to drop some weight in the next 3 weeks or buy a suit at a weight I’m not expecting to stay at which would suck. So yeah – I’m all over that recipe if RTO can post it.
“Are things OK? Who knows?”
I do. They are better, for what that is worth. I’ll keep everyone posted when I hit theater in a month…
I think the left is not fired up by hating Bush and Iraq any more so they have nothing to do. That’s all they talked about, all they posted on, all that drove them: rank hate and opposition. They are buying the myth that the GOP and conservatism are dead, that Democrats will sweep 2008 and they’ve won, so there’s no passion or interest.
Sssshhhhhh!!! Don’t wake them up!
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