Oh, goody! Eric Alterman’s starting a blog! And the nameless collective at TAPPED (wow, chew on that appellation for a bit) is creamy with joy:
Holy crapola! Eric Alterman is joining the so-called ‘blogosphere‘ (though he hates the name) with ‘Altercation’ at MSNBC. Tapped is both surprised and pleased. Alterman has long been one of our favorite writers at The Nation, and he promises to bring top notch media criticism to the ever-growing liberal blogging camp. Just in the past month or so, Tapped, Max Sawicky, and now Alterman have all emerged as bloggers. Not to mention the fact that we currently have a huge backlog of e-mails suggesting the names of numerous other liberal bloggers, many of whose sites we still haven’t gotten the chance to check out. Not to mention that Josh Marshall and Mickey Kaus have been doing this forever. Could the notion of a ‘conservative’ blogosophere be on the verge of becoming passe?
Another important note: Alterman’s blog, he says, will be edited. Why? As he puts it:
‘To tell the truth, as someone who has benefited from editors’ suggestions for more than 20 years, I don’t even get the contrary argument. The biggest problem great writers face is when they think they get to be too big to be edited. Have you read the last book by David Halberstam? I didn’t think so. Have you seen the new Star Wars?’
For the record, Alterman reviewed Halberstam’s lame book for The American Prospect. As for editing, we’d like to remind readers that Tapped, too, is an edited blog. And we don’t see the contrary argument either. We’ve caught one another’s mistakes and over-assertions time and time again, and we’re better for it. Here’s to a new wave of liberal, edited blogging. Welcome, Eric.
“Here’s to a new wave of liberal, edited blogging”…? Did they actually write that? Because they may as well have gone with, “here’s to a piece of whole wheat toast, generously spread with a reduced-sodium butter substitute.”
Snore.
“TAPPED: A month old, and already we’re a parody of ourselves.”
My blog is edited too. By me. Sometimes a few minutes later and sometimes a day later. I doubt I have any more typos than the average newspaper.
I somehow don’t miss the type of editing that tells me to call a terrorist a ‘militant’ or ‘freedom fighter’.
Bah, the only reason I read blogs of any kind because it is up front in your face, unedited commentary. If I wanted edited commentary, I’d watch CNN.
I like how Alterman is praised by these folks when the Blogosphere and others have shown him to be a pompous, dishonest ass.
I predict that it is only a matter of time—once the “liberal” bloggers are online and typing away, there will be “blog wars”, name calling etc. And Alterman will be at the vanguard of the name-calling.
Some of us liberal bloggers have been around a long, long time. The conservatives have actually been the “johnny come-latelies”.
The whole “conservative blogosphere” thing is horseshit. If you want to start a blog, you start a blog. You talk about what you want to talk about. You agree with people you agree with and disagree with people you disagree with, and you explain why to the best of your ability. None of these ideas are difficult or complex. Why are these people having such problems figuring it out?
I’m afraid I have to agree with PW on Alterman. He is a bad bet for Tapped to put their money on. This is one Liberal who is not happy to have him amongst us.
Poor liberals. They just don’t get it. The neo-communist agenda is dead on the internet. The conservatives and libertarians own the internet. Liberal sites die or remain in a perpetual state of dying despite the protestations of their overworked and unappreciated masters.
No, no, no. See, the problem w/ the blogosphere is that it’s not got enough regulation.
Now, the first thing we should have is an “equal time” provision. Blogs need to be required to air both sides of the issue, since they are serving as a source of information. Indeed, they may well have to be governed in the same way the press is after we implement campaign finance reform.
Then, we will issue licenses for blogs. Ideas are at least as dangerous as guns, after all. But, hey, we’ll throw in government-sponsored requirements for what Blogspot, Movable Type, and others are supposed to be able to support, so that’ll make sure that everybody’s on an even playing field.
Oh, all the new regs and rules we’ll promulgate!
Check out all the mealy justifying and the most-probable lying Alterman engages in in his intro to his new blog. He mentions that the first he became aware of blogs was a Kaus signature at the end of some published article where he included the URL to KausFiles, and how there was only a note to say ‘content to come’ or something like that. In other words, Alterman was right there in the beginning of the blog movement even before Kaus had made his first blog. OK. Got it, Eric. Now wait for all the similar inanity when he decides it might be fun to write a note about his personal life, a blogging act he still denounces in his intro. A see-thru non-entity.
If you switch from writing a column to a blog that’s edited, designed and posted on a major news site and still no one reads it, is it really a blog? Does it matter?
Of COURSE liberal blogs are going to be edited blogs! Liberalism is all about the Collective, about how the individual isn’t capable of doing anything meaningful. (Don’t bother to bring up the fact that Alterman is getting into blogging precisely because <i>unedited</i> blogs by individuals have become such—er—<i>meaningful</i> competitors to the Collective…)
“I am Alterman of Blog. Prepare to be assimilated…”