From the “anti-Pajamas Media / meet your presumptuous cornholing bloghost” series.
(Co-sponsored by the ubiquitous Steve Graham, whose work on battering and then deep-frying bacon-wrapped hot dog tips affords him the opportunity to dodge that dreaded existential charge of being a miserable nobody. Similarly, don’t believe this self-congratulatory garbage; what started as an anonymous parody site—Huffington’s Toast—that I was happy to contribute to took a turn for the worse precisely when Steve put up a special “Steve” section in order to pluck from anonymity his own posts—an oddly egotistical move that to my mind robbed the site of its charming mystery; the site further petered out, at least my involvement with it did, when Steve began editing my posts —changing punchlines, altering “saucy” language, questioning the thrust of my satires—none of which, I should mention, has ever happened since I agreed to let the soul-stealing Pajamas Media mafia syndicate my posts and place advertising on my site. Apparently, part of the “spirit of blogging” Steve and his crew of purists is at pains to protect is his own special control over how exactly the medium should work, and how he can assert his own importance—even as he self-effacingly denies that individual bloggers have any value whatsoever outside of their own ego-driven fantasies.)
So yeah, I guess we’re all holding a few things back. But I’ll be rolled in lard and roasted with a sweet rosemary glaze if I’m going to let Steve—who has spent almost 3 solid months trying to bring down an enterprise that he simply doesn’t agree with (and doing so in the most vicious and petty manner imaginable)—assume the high ground here. Hence this response.
Now. Time for me to step away for a bit and have some wine. The blogosphere has become so ego-soaked with prostate drip that I can barely stand the smell.
****
updated: Looks like Steve and I have different memories of Huffington’s Toast. I’ll just put it this way: I stopped writing for him because I wasn’t looking for an editor—nor was I interested in having my posts put in a queu and uploaded for consumption at “strategic intervals” so that we might “maximize exposure” for particular posts. That struck me as the very kind of micromanaging bloggers are at great pains to avoid.
No biggie, though. I simply stopped writing for HT and thought nothing more of it.
As for this:
I now think some of the other bloggers were reluctant to identify their posts because they were insecure. I suspect that it made them nervous, because people would compare their work to everyone else’s. I know the feeling; sometimes people put things up that were so good, they made me realize I was going to have to work hard in order to keep up. And I suppose some contributors were reluctant because they were afraid for people they had lampooned to find out their true identities. Glenn Reynolds got reamed out constantly, and I wrote almost none of that stuff. I have to wonder if some contributors preferred that he not learn who was dumping on him.
I can’t speak for the other contributors, but I’m certainly not reluctant to put my name to things, nor do I feel cowed by the output of others.
However, it was a parody site. We posted in character. And so removing the mask destroyed the joke. At least, from my point of view. And that’s that.
Except for like, everyday when I spew my shit on this here blog of mine.
(this is what I would have posted on his blog, but I am too lazy to register)
HOUSE NEGRO!
Also, when I was looking at Drumwaster’s site, I noticed this on the sidebar:
Do they need a warrant for that?
tw: what?
If you’re quoting an authority to buttress your argument lambasting “no names,” shouldn’t your authority also not be a no name?
…but, you know, like Leon Dubinsky once said….
who!?
exactly.
From Steve H’s amen corner, here’s Jim, providing his analysis of the situation:
More horseshit that Steve let go uncorrected. My comment made clear it wasn’t even ABOUT PJM—but rather about the fact that my nomination for some stupid Jewish Israeli award (which, incidentally, I was nominated for before, a year before PJM existed) was part of some “conspiracy” by the Pajamas cabal to stuff the ballot boxes and write the narrative of the blogosphere.
In short, I was calling bullshit on paranoid lunacy being passed off by those who keep falling back on the “dissent is patriotism” trope that they would be howling at each time the left trotted it out.
Also “telling” is Steve’s decision to “moderate” my comments. Profanity, you see, is an excuse to leave the record uncorrected. Truth is important, sure. But not where POTTY MOUTHS are involved.
I’m going to take some time and count up the number of PJM mentions I’ve since joining and how many Steve H and his coterie of Blog fodderers who are simply doing some honest reporting on a legitimate issue that could very well DESTROY online personal publishing (forget the numbers—THEY LIE, LIKE GEORGE BUSH) and reduce already unimportant nobodies to unimportant nobodies.
I hate this. I hate this so much that it makes me sick. But the point is, I don’t even know this “helo” fucker at drumwaster’s site—or this Jim commenter—and yet they each feel perfectly comfortable pronouncing on me as if I’m the very public figure they pointedly and repeatedly claim I’m not.
They are blind to irony, and dumb as an Oliver Willis Scrabble move, to boot.
I’m just not going to take it any more. This is not about PJM. It’s about people trying to use me as some object lesson.
And I’m particularly disappointed that this “helo” post took place on Drumwaster’s site, which is a site I’ve always spoken highly of, and whose authors I’ve never been anything but friendly and gracious to.
Well, if’n ya ask me (which, admittedly, nobody did), everybody’s gettin way too serious about this shit. Fun, people – remember fun?
This despite the fact that Steve once disparaged my personal preferences in the costitution of a cornbread mix.
I mean, if I can put THAT sort of egregious behaviour aside, well…
SB: act
like adults
My response was:
Hmmm…. you think maybe Orville ranted at Wilbur, and had a few moments of angst. I mean if men were supposed to fly G_d would have given us alirons right. Sorry dude. you’re pissing in the blog cornflakes, with an equipment malfunction, and no one knows who the fuck you are or where the bowl is.
You have to assume a rather pompus portion of self-importance to try any enterprise in life. Maybe you’re right and this is a clown car false start. But the net form of news gathering and distribution is going to evolve, in spite of all our best efforts, and those that do the spade work, even the sellouts that seem to terrify you so much, will drive the stakes that anchor the tent. Howl away if you must, but its just another squeek in the noise of rumble from the approaching frieght train of progress.
Regards – Big Bang
– Jeff…. did you let the ‘dillo out….. his cage doors open and the ipod is missing again….
Who is this PJM of which you speak?
BECAUSE OF THE BATTERED DEEP-FRIED BACON-WRAPPED HOT DOGS!!!!
I read the link to Steve, and the post sounds like low-rent Ann Althouse, back when she was carping about PJM (maybe she still is…..I stopped reading her site around that time).
Stay the course, man. Stay the course. The marginalized can sneer from the sideline, where risk is unnecessary.
Well aimed, Jeff.
Add Sortapundit to the list of those I’ve driven into the waiting, beef-tallow flecked arms of Steve the straight-talking truth teller with all my constant discussion of pajamas media!
More the fool am I! BE THE FLAKY BISCUIT!
How interesting.
I appear to be blacklisted at Drumwaster’s.
Jeff, tell the Doc you need your meds adjusted; you don’t usually react this strongly to this kind of shit.
I enjoy Steve’s blog until he starts wailing about PJM, then I just skip ‘til I find something interesting, and he usually delivers.
I have no opinion on the legality, morality, ethical basis, coercivity, conductivity, or fine structure constant of Pajamas Media. Some of the blogs I enjoy are members. Some are not. I have not yet seen any significant difference between the two groups. This does not indicate venality. If everybody who ever took money from a VC and delivered nothing was dispossessed, at least one of them would get rich again selling WILL WORK FOR FOOD signs to the others.
Get over it, both bunches of you. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, try the next thing. If you’re jealous because you ain’t gettin’ the big bucks, get over it. If you’re indignant on somebody else’s behalf, well, the guy you’re fussing at is Hollywood and has always been Hollywood. You might as well criticize elephants for rugosity. And nobody, but nobody, outside the system gives a flying damn one way or the other about the “controversy”, dig?
Regards,
Ric
– Ok…. this is some long lost episode of Twilight Zone, recently found in a carboard filing box on a shelf in an ABC studios warehouse in LA right… ‘Cause if not I’m going to need a full quart of Tequila and some of that Kolonopin stuff if any of this suddenly starts making sense……
….This isn’t some sort of essoteric new form of link whoring is it?….I mean because if thats it I think I’m going to be ill….First Hoffbugler videos – now this…. really baaaaaadddd weekend….
Hmmmm…. I’m reading
when there on the left sidebar is the site’s TTLB ecosystem ranking…
Do I have to say it…?
Another point:
The snarky “no name” business plus the inaweofcelebrityhood “when Bill Gates talks” shit is just another variation of the theme “Who do you think YOU are?” Fuck, I know who I am and my fucking opinions are as, if not more, legit than any celeb.
And I don’t know this “Helo” from a wad of used chewing gum spit out the window unto the #1 lane of the 210 freeway, but I can well do without the “look at me I’m and ‘independent’ and therefore more worthy than all of you” preening. I’m not a Drier fan in the world be he is MY congresscritter and sometimes one has little choice but to dance with the one who brought you…and maybe I missed some posts but I haven’t seen Jeff or some of others mentioned by “Helo” as dryhumping Drier’s leg. Certainly Michelle Malkin who has only mentioned Drier in passing TWICE on her blog and not in a flattering manner whatsoever.
“Helo” has issues.
Serious issues.
Jaysus… please excuse the serious grammar errors above…
need.more.vodka.
Paradoxical reaction to benzodiazepine sedation? I recommend vodka, as in “Darleen’s vodka”.
TW english: second language when boozed up.
Jeff,
All I know about any of this is that I really enjoy and appreciate your blog. You provide more analysis and thought-provoking commentary than almost anybody else out there.
You are intelligent, hilarious, fiesty, and a gracious host to all of us.
I hope I wrote this without sounding too much like Harriet Miers.
I honestly don’t get all the venom directed toward PJM. I would think tht bloggers everywhere would be rooting for these guys because if they do accomplish what they set out to accomplish, they make things better for bloggers anywhere. If they fail, bloggers are certainly in no worse a situation than we are right now.
What I smell as I read these anti-PJM posts is the pungent whiff of jealousy. That may or may not be true, but it’s sure as hell the vibe I get from these folks.
As far as I’m concerned, I wish PJM all the success in the world. I do that mainly because my folks taught me to be happy for other folks when they work hard and find success. That and I kind of thought that we on the right were supposed to like it when folks got all entrepreneurial and visionary. I find myself thinking a great deal less of the folks constantly carping about PJM with nary a good word to say about the success the venture’s enjoyed so far. I guess their folks raised them a whole lot differently than mine raised me.
Maybe I’ve gone neo-ludite without noticing, but the whole PJM thing hasn’t changed my reading habits at all. I read my usual blogs (both PJM & non) without really noticing which “side” they’re on. I find new blogs when interesting items are linked via my usual reads.
This whole thing just reeks of “inside baseball” BS about which I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. And I’m thankful that Jeff posts about it maybe once a month, even then trying to make it somewhat interesting or relevant.
tw: graduated
as in: dealing with shit like this is in the past.
I read Protein Wisdom almost every single day, and I always go back to catch up on old posts.
When there’s something on PJM that catches my interest, I read it and follow the links. I don’t feel particularly strongly about the enterprise.
But you know what I haven’t done since PJM launched? I haven’t read a friggin’ word over at Hog On Ice or the miserable Huffington’s Toast.
Add Desert Cat to the list of those who find me a strange and abominable human being.
And that’s just it. I don’t know of any PJM blogger that thinks of “sides,” and those that do, only do so to the very limited extent that some folks just don’t like the enterprise and have attacked individual bloggers.
I haven’t changed my reading habits much, either. I still read the same blogs I did before, but now I also read a few more (at least occasionally) based upon links from the PJM site.
PJM, if anything, is making me aware of blogs I might not have seen otherwise.
Take it for what it’s worth.
– Darleen, the vodka does help, if in no other way, by making the keys all run together eventually in sort of a qwerty Dago slur-melt thing which swallows your fingers and ends the torture, while at the same time totally eliminating writers block and magnifying your creativity 100 fold. Whats not to like says I…..
I consider this site and Hog on ice essential daily reading. I hope this thing gets worked out somehow, but if it doesn’t, I’ll keep reading both of you because I enjoy the writing at both sites.
Steve’s always had a complex about Glenn and his influence, but I never realized it went this far.
For the record, I wrote probably half of the Instapundit parodies on HT. Including the one where he gets sent to prison for stalking Althouse. Feel free to note that fact in the body of your post, Jeff. I know Glenn reads you regularly so I trust he’ll see it.
As for this:
As with most of the anti-PJM invective, this statement reveals a lot more about its author than about his subject. I never felt any competition with anyone at HT; on the contrary, the nice thing about being anonymous was that we shared credit. Didn’t have to worry as much about whether I was holding up “my end” of the project. So much for that, I guess.
And one more thing. What you neglected to mention in your description of HT’s genesis was that it was created for the explicit purpose of getting its contributors “discovered” by mainstream media (e.g., literary agents, magazine editors, ersatz Nick Dentons, etc). Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does grate a bit to be lectured constantly about blog purity from someone who imagined his own site as being not much more than a stepping stone to the big leagues.
See what happens when you mix money with blogging? Poison, I tell you! Personally, I blame Roger Simon.
I blame anybody who doesn’t sleep buck naked, Allah. FOR THE FREEDOM!
Here’s Steve’s latest pronouncement on me, from over at Drumwaster’s site:
Luckily, Steve continues to insist he is taking the high road.
Two-faced is, after all, a Dick Tracy, PG-rated villainous trait. Whereas poking someone who constantly reminds bloggers how insignificant they are by pointing to his butter-packed claim to fame – and actual man-style book!—well, that’s beyond the pale.
There is not a soul alive who knows me outside the internet who would call me two-faced. I am virtually incapable of the kind of diplomacy necessary for such a repulsive trait.
If someone wants to know what I feel, all they need do is ask.
– I don’t know this Steve, but his posts seem to be slipping into the infantile, bitter stomach liquids, gawd I need an Alka Seltzer bad, invective zone of max-contriteness and shit I wish I haden’t started this crap-a-thon in the first place sour grapes school of self embarrisment.
– Jealousy just almost always fucks with your head. Rule #1. Never pet a burning dog.
I’m sure my comment means I’ll be next to face the never-liked-Steve charge, so let me be clear: I do like Steve. Funny guy, good writer. Was flattered that he asked me to join HT. But the fact remains, he passed doth-protest-too-much territory on PJM about ten weeks ago. It’s sad what’s happened to him and the rest of them, and frankly amazing that he’d accuse anyone of being two-faced when he went over to Althouse’s within hours of the PJM launch, knowing that you were onboard, and congratulated her on not being a “house negro.” Unlike certain other bloggers we might mention.
Although I’m sure he didn’t mean you when he wrote that. They never mean you. You’re one of “the good ones,” per Steve’s little racial analogy.
I really do hope this is the last you blog about this, JG. I don’t blame you in the least for defending yourself, but these folks are as apt to give you a fair shake on PJM as your lefty detractors are to listen to your opinions on identity politics. Save your breath. This is a crash scene, and all you’re doing is rubbernecking.
I hear you, Allah. Ironically, I wrote on Steve’s site that this wasn’t about PJM—it was about these Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards, and the story certain anti-PJM bloggers started floating that Roger and the Likudniks had stuffed the ballot box and were buying the awards.
That just really pissed me off—though the whole new dustup speaks directly to your observation that I’m not going to get a fair shake. After all, here we are—with Aaron and Steve and the rest immediately spinning my displeasure over their libelous rumor-mongering nto some sort of unconscious need on my part to protect Roger Simon from being wrestled to the ground, where Moxie had designs on taking a dump in his fedora.
They’re just speaking truth to power, bro. Specifically, the enormous traffic-wielding power of Glenn Reynolds, who, with one link, can deliver 10,000 readers to the lucky recipient’s blog—9,990 of whom will never, ever even think of visiting again.
Did I mention yet that I wrote half the Instapundit parodies on HT? ‘Cause I did. All the really mean ones, too.
Am I the only one who sees any irony in someone at a blog nobody reads (Drumwaster) saying that bloggers who have good to (relatively) huge readership are nobodies? What does that make them?
If that’s something that’s so obvious that nobody deemed it worthy of mention, (Emily Litella voice)……never mind.
Honestly the obsession some people have with this is ridiculous. You’d think they would have at least shut up with the claims that there’s no business model here when the advertisements started up, but no. It’s still the same old nonsense.
I had thought all this stuff was over. [shrug]
This is really a shame. Steve had a pretty good blog going before he decided to go all Ahab on PJM. Now, it’s just boring.
CHICKENHOUSENEGROHAWK!
People who have neither cash nor cachet on the line really ought to shuit up, get a life and stop doing Armando impressions.
Except DTP, because that boy is nuts and funny. I like that about him.
I get the feeling that Steve is your next door neighbor…
I used to read Steve religiously, but the PMJ stuff was boring. I just didn’t care. Call me stooopid, but I read who I read and the PMJ thing is irrelevant to me. I neither like nor dislike it (which, I believe, was a claim the “anti-PMJs” were making.) But, if you truly don’t care – you don’t talk, or write, about it. Because you are totally not interested.
So, instead of playing Moonbat Rules “Six Degrees of Separation” with Karl Rove, they’re playing with PJM? I can probably get within one, as I have received actual email from at least one of the founders. Is there extra evil as you get closer to the center of gravity? (which, btw, is staffed by no one of any significance)
I hadn’t been to Huffington’s Toast for some time and didn’t really know what had happened to it, aside from that the funny quotient had bottomed out. It was once absolutely hilarious. But instead of jumping the shark, it seems to have landed in the tank. Death be not proud.
Would it help things out if everybody involved in this dust-up wore nice hats, like a fedora or a panama hat?
I’ve noticed bloggers who wear hats are fairly happy people.
Anyway, if this keeps up for much longer, Michele Catalano might resume blogging. Which would be a good thing for the blogonets, if not for her personally.
Man, maybe I should join PJM so I could get hated as much. I mean, it’d bring links.
Granted the only think I post newsworthy is…. um, well nothing.
Jeff:Add Sortapundit to the list of those I’ve driven into the waiting, beef-tallow flecked arms of Steve the straight-talking truth teller with all my constant discussion of pajamas media!
More the fool am I! BE THE FLAKY BISCUIT!
Woah, woah, woah, I’m just here for the fisticuffs. There’s precious little entertainment for us Brits in a blogosphere filled with endless commentary on the Alito hearings and other dull, couldn’t-care-less-about American political shite. I’ve found Steve’s crusade to be a good read. As I said in my comment there I don’t think he should moderate you if you want to retaliate – not because I think you’re a fool, but because it gives me something to laugh about while I eat my lunch. He’ll run out of steam if nobody feeds him any coal. So you can take me off your hitlist.
p.s. Damn, I just noticed I called Steve ‘Jeff’ in my comment. I really need to pay more attention.
Artists!
Seriously. There seems to be a certain amount of “gotta fight The Man” testosterone flowing with the “anti-PJM” crowd. They seem to think they represent the purity of blogdom, in all of its height and glory, and have to take down the Apostates of the Blogosphere in any way possible. It’s really rather amusing, when you think about it. Or not.
I would tend to agree with the others, Jeff, in saying you’re taking this way too personally. I understand why, of course, and sympathize. But in the end you’re giving them way too much attention. They’re nothing more than 2 year olds, throwing a temper tantrum. Let’m squawk. Anyone who is swayed by their smears of you wouldn’t get you in the first place, so it’s no loss.
“Funny guy, good writer”; “has bitter stomach liquids”
Pretty much sums up my first and lasting impression of Steve(Only add, “hates girls”), since whenever it was that blogs were new to me and I started looking for good ones.
I wouldn’t get too worked up about anything he says, that’s just the way he, um, rolls. Nobody takes him seriously.
TW: woman
[this comment has been modified because I don’t believe in Margi’s cycle of violence bullshit argument, which is just an easy way to throw up your hands, blame everybody else, intimate that you are above it, and scold those who are bitching when they really should be entertaining Margi. Come back and reevaluate your position after being pissed on for 3 months daily. Then we’ll talk.]
Margi,
Some whiny is art. Some isn’t.
Something tells me Glenn’s too busy rolling in the money to worry about criticism, serious or not.
Also, I think its VERY clear Jeff works pretty hard to keep his audience coming back.
Noticed that Drumwaster had added a couple hot new blogs to his roll–Instapundit and Scrappleface.
He’s all over it.
– Maybe its time to start considering forming a guild of variety artists/writers. Be nice to have a group setting where relevant discussions between site owners could be discussed openly pertaining to contemporary subjects/ideas etc.
– Jerk the gossip out of the cellar and into the light sort of thing. Stop all the dickie wagging and breast thrusting, and engage in adult conversation. Just a thought.
Much like the left: “No, I don’t know what ought to be done. I just know that what you’re doing is just wrong. Wrong, I say!”
tw: theory “As theories go, this one is as plausible as any…”
I would rather have an honest enemy than a false friend. Enemies are easier to scrape off your shoe. But get scraping anyway Jeff. As you’ve counseled me, don’t waste your time on idiots.
So…
That post about Hunter Thompson’s funeral on HT was sweet. Should have known it was one of you guys.
…
SEMEN!
I’m still giggling at “dumb as an Oliver Willis Scrabble move”, Jeff.
BECAUSE OF THE T ON TRIPPLE LETTER SCORE!!!!!
Sortapundit is British? That explains why his writing sucks.
>>I’m still giggling at “dumb as an Oliver Willis Scrabble moveâ€Â, Jeff.<<
Likewise…which, I know, say more about me…
Dunno, a finger down the throat might be easier. I guess it’d have to be someone else’s finger, though.
Admit it, y’all. You’re only doing this because I’ve complained on my own blog that I’m getting bored.
Sortapundit is British? That explains why his writing sucks.
Hey, that’s my language you’re using, Bub. Steady on.
I am the one who controls the BlogRoll on that site, since I own the domain. Helo is his own person and has his opinions, which may or may not coincide with my own.
I link to the blogs I think are worth reading, some of them link me in turn, but that doesn’t mean I would take their opinion regarding anything out here in the real world. The letter (written by Helo) was, as near as I can see, trying to point out in the grand scheme of things, the blogosphere is still too marginalized for the people to recognize any of the names that those of us who surf every day.
Everybody has a “boatload of opinions”, and this is supposed to be FUN. I come here because Jeff is one of the funniest guys I have ever had the honor of reading, and even when he’s not trying to be funny, I learn something. I respect his opinion, but that’s because I know who he is. To the power brokers he is trying to inform, his name may or may not mean anything at all, depending on the spare time they can have to surf around and read him.
I work for my self, so I get to surf at work, and there’s STILL too much good stuff out there.
And the use of the pseudonyms (yes, just like I do, here on the web) eliminates any gravitas to the message being sent. I talk to my Rep’s office on occasion, but I don’t say, “Hi, this is Drumwaster”. I think more could have been accomplished with that letter by just asking people to post or link, and then call their Congresscritters (which is what I did). But posting as their websites is just the epitome of hubris, well deserving of a few pinpricks to the ego(s) in question…
To Ric, I have no idea why you would be blacklisted, although I have done so to a lot of drug and similar spam names. If yours is too close to one of those, I don’t know what to tell you except for the obvious “try something else”.
tw: It’s all good, folks. This is supposed to be fun.
Those comments under “Helo’s” post (in which I was the only one singled out with a link, lucky me) are really fun, let me tell you, Drum.
I like you and your site. I was very upset to see myself being denigrated there as someone who takes myself too seriously.
NZ Bear and others emailed and asked if I’d be willing to sign my name to the letter in question; I said sure, not because I was taking myself seriously, but because I believe when little people speak up en masse, that’s a good thing.
“Helo” read the letter—and my partipation—completely differently. And I don’t like being used as an object lesson by someone who in one breath talks about my insignificance, yet in the next breath seems to suggest that presuming to speak for me is part of legitimate blogfodder, because I am some sort of public figure.
The comments that JimK and Steve left beneath the post were, likewise, quite unfair to me and were delivered in the spirit of malice that simply followed from the tone of the post—and the tone of this whole anti PJM campaign, which (by the by) continues to baffle me.
Again, I don’t hold you responsible. But I will say that those comments by Steve and JimK—I’m a bitch, a coward, what have you—were unnecessary. Everything I’ve said about either of them I said on their sites or my own. Whereas there campaign seems to be to take their criticisms of me on the road like a couple of traveling carny barkers.
But such is life. I never had much regard for JimK anyway, and Steve H, for all his talents, continues to fall in my estimation, particularly as he attempts to justify as “news coverage” three months worth of daily poundings on a startup enterprise that doesn’t affect him in the least, an exercise he has carried out (with his cabal of sycophantic helpers) by beating up on its founders and, tangentially, the HOUSE NEGROES who surrendered their autonomy by joining the program—all of which is a mischaracterization that, though he’s been repeatedly corrected on, he continues to push as part of his new niche as being the brave PJM critic who fears not the great Blogosphere powers (though I admit I’d like to see him, Althouse, Dan Riehl, Elmo, Dennis the Peasant, and a few others in a cage match, with the lone survivor named KING/QUEEN of BLOGOSPHERIC PURITY; but I’m strange that way. Must be the drugs that Steve says were prescribed me by a psychiatrist, but which are really anti-convulsives prescribed by my GP. But that story ain’t quite so sexy, I suppose).
Has Steve really been making fun of you over the Klonopin, Jeff?
Wow.
Yup. ‘Fraid so.
The tone is careful, but the implication is clear.
WOW.
My thoughts, too. But hell, I joke about the Klonopin. So what can I say, really?
Yeah, but he’s not joking. Or is this one of those things that’s going to be played off as a joke if and only if he gets sufficient static for it?
It’s odd that now that you’ve pointed that post out it can no longer be found on steve’s main page (or i am an idiot). Is he still claiming the high road?
Here’s a helpful bit of advice: before jumping into a situation wherein you find yourself accusing people “on both sides” of “acting like they are in high school,” a) have some idea who did what, when, why, and how often (otherwise you sound like a self-important world-weary internationalist talking about the “cycle of violence” between those who blow up school kids on buses and those who target for assassination those who wish to blow up school kids on buses. That is, you sound like an egotistical moron who has convinced himself that you are somehow above the vicious, bloody fray of the rabble.
And b) if you don’t want to get banned from a comments section, take the hint that when you post your pronouncement that we all look like high schoolers (without having the slightest idea what the fuck it is you are talking about) and I subsequently delete the comment (along with a number of others, in an effort to keep the situation from escalating), don’t repost that same comment again later in order to show you’re willing to poke a stick in my eye.
This is particularly important if you run a small blog and think that starting a pissing match with somebody who’s been blogging longer will mark you as brave, or will garner you a legion of new fans astounded at your willingness to fight the giant internet nobody that I am. Instead, it marks you as somebody who a hundred smaller bloggers will tell you has just burned a bridge with somebody who is very willing to link and talk up smaller blogs that post excellent material, and that who does not take himself seriously [see, for instance, my series on CITIZEN JOURNALISM, or my investigation into the Natalee Holloway disappearance].
People send me hundreds of links a day, and I try to answer emails whenever possible. And that’s because I’m not some ogre or egomaniac.
But if it helps you to feel persecuted, by all means, shout into the fucking wind about how unfair and juvenile I am. Write posts about it. Curse my name. Express your outrage. YOU HAVE BEEN WRONGED!
But realize, too that I don’t care about you or what you have to say. Your credibility with me is shot. Not that it matters—I’m still a nobody—but, well, it helps me get through the day, these petty bits of personal vengeance.
Related—I’ve mentioned her site before, but please go visit Gail Hapke’s scribal terror, which I continue to find one of the most interesting and best written blogs on the web. And it is blisfully devoid of duelling political boilerplate, and the kind of high school behavior that manifests itself as a showy disdain toward high school behavior.
Amen, Jeff.
Jeff,
I may be way off base here, but I am thinking that the VAST majority of people who check your site and enjoy what you have to say dont give 2 fucks about what other sites/bloggers have to say about you. Seriously. If I gave a crap about their opinion, I would, ya know, read their tripe. I read PW daily because I want to know what YOU think. Pajama Media? Drumwaste? Some blog fight? No disrespect meant, but P’fuck all that. I intentionally come to this site to get the PW take on things. Protect your turf, do what ya gotta do, etc. etc. But please don’t let stupid bullshit like this get ya down! Okies, back to lurking.
Add Desert Cat to the list of those who find me a strange and abominable human being.
Oh right. Of course. That’s *exactly* what I think.
You survived, Allah. Steve doesn’t think you’re a backstabber. Just me.
And JimK has more to say on my ego. From the public forum Steve provides him. Because really, who reads his own site.
Irony piled upon irony.
“I stopped writing for him because I wasn’t looking for an editor …”
The thing is, though, you DO need an editor. And I write this as someone who’s no political foe, who’s never heard of “Steve Graham,” and who couldn’t care less about catfights among bloggers.
=== FOUR-MINUTE EDIT OF A PROTEIN WISDOM POST ===
The latest entry in the “anti-Pajamas Media / meet your presumptuous bloghost” series is here. Cosponsored by the ubiquitous Steve Graham, who batters and deep-fries hot dog tips wrapped in bacon to dodge the existential dread of being a miserable nobody.
And don’t believe this self-congratulatory garbage. I was happy to contribute to Huffington’s Toast when it was an anonymous parody site. But it turned for the worse when Steve began plucking his own posts from anonymity to highlight them on a special “Steve†section he’d set up. It was an oddly egotistical move that robbed the site of its charming mystery.
My involvement petered out when Steve began editing my posts  changing punch lines, altering “saucy†language, questioning the thrust of my satires. None of that has happened, I should note, since the soul-stealing Pajamas Media mafia began syndicating my posts and placing ads on my site.
Steve and his crew of purists say they’re out to protect the “spirit of blogging.†It’s a spirit that apparently involves his control of the way the medium works and his ability to assert his importance  all while self-effacingly declaring that bloggers have no value outside their own ego-driven fantasies.
So yeah, I guess we’re all holding a few things back.
But I’ll be rolled in lard and roasted with a sweet rosemary glaze if I’m going to let Steve assume the high ground. He’s spent nearly three solid months trying to bring down an enterprise he merely disagrees with, and he’s done it in the most vicious and petty manner imaginable. Hence this response.
Now. Time for me to step away for a bit and have some wine. The blogosphere has become so ego-soaked with prostate drip that I can barely stand the smell.
****
Update: It looks as if Steve and I have different memories of Huffington’s Toast. I’ll just put it this way: I stopped writing for him because I didn’t want an editor. And I didn’t want my posts getting delayed to be published at “strategic intervals†to “maximize exposure.†That’s the kind of micromanagement bloggers take great pains to avoid.
No biggie, though. I simply stopped writing for Huffington’s Toast and thought nothing more of it.
As for this:
… (BLOCK QUOTE SNIPPED) …
I can’t speak for the other contributors, but I’m certainly not reluctant to put my name to things, and I don’t feel cowed by the output of others.
However, it was a parody site. We posted in character. Removing the mask destroyed the joke. And that’s that.
Remember the episode of Reno 911, Jeff, where Patton Oswalt plays the Dungeons and Dragons guy who’s a little too into it? Reality’s too hard for him to deal with, so he decides to live instead in a world of “cold steel, and dungeons, and mighty foes.” And ends up shooting someone with a crossbow.
See where I’m going with this?
Next time they get you down, I want you to think of them rolling that twenty-sided die to slay the dragon Roger Simon.
No offense, Teapot, but your tepid edit took all the life out of my prose. It was like reading manual for how to take a post and rob it of its soul. Oh, and incidentally, your second “sentence” not only misses the gist of what I was saying, but it is a fragment, to boot. Which is why it was such a smart move to do your editorial chest puffery anonymously.
Anyway, you gave me some advice, so let me offer some back: Best you stick to being a quiet, piping hot, unobtrusive beverage kettle—one who keeps close to the krumpet plate on the off chance some pudgy little British boy will one day give your wee little handle a good, thorough polishing.
And seriously, if you don’t like the way I write, go read some other free site.
Boys, what is all this nasty back and forth? Makes Arianna think of sex, and quite frankly THAT makes her dizzy and worried that evil right wing spawn is growing inside the temple also known as her cobwebbed womb.
Make nice and wax Arianna’s Rolls. If you still have the stamina you can remove the conservative dandruff from the wings of my private jet.
Where is Manuel? I need some manuel labor.
O/T: Hey, since when did the word British become an insult? you guys can sit here all day and bicker but please don’t use my country to insult each other.
Use Guam.
I like the Brits. Especially the Australian ones I met over New Years at an East End pub a half dozen years back.
I like Steve’s blog. And Moxie’s. And yours.
I have read most of their PJM stuff but to me it always appeared that they were poking fun at Roger and Charles.
It never came across to me that any of that stuff was aimed at you. Did I miss something?
Why yes, Jane, you did. Your last period!
Psyche! Just kidding.
Leave Jane’s punctuation alone.