Steve at Hog on Ice asks and answers. Question is, is he right?
Because if so, I’ve, like, totally overspent on my credit cards…
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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
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My dear Steve, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will ruin your happiness.
but mainly because conservatives squash new talent, because they’re convinced the right-wing-media pie is only so big, and they’re terrified that someone else might get a sliver of their piece.
I didn’t think “zero-sum game” thinking was part of the Conservative mindset. Am I wrong there?
I think Steve is under the mistaken belief that most people give flying fuck about blogs.
Newsflash: They don’t.
The number of blogs may be increasing, but their relevance and influence is still as limited as it was five years ago. Yes, they can makes noise, but for all the supposed success of dailykos on the left, ask Ned Lamont how much they helped.
I’ve always believed that the only people who really care about blogs are bloggers themselves. And nothing is more pathetic than a blogger complaining about their relevance.
How do you find this stuff? It’s loony, pure Warner Bros gold!
“This is why the right-wing Blogosphere is dead and moldering but Markos Zuniga, who can barely write his name, is a multimillionaire.”
Riiight.
“And nothing is more pathetic than a blogger complaining about their relevance.”
Damn, I’m pathetic again. I knew it.
Geoff,
It’s Mary KathArine Ham.
‘Katherine’ is a cheap whore’s name. ‘Katharine’ has class.
Loads of class.
–
This guy sounds as nutso as that tazed guy! He needs to hear the speech by the professor written about in the WSJ 09/20/07 edition, “Moving On” by Jeff Zaslow and then rewrite his column.
What if he’s right? I can’t dismiss that out of hand. There is a sickness on the right for sure. All the marbles thinking that’s as twisted as anything that comes out of a MoveOn strategy session. And Cap’n Ed and Hugh Hewitt and Power Line guys: stalwart, brave and true. With the cyber-charisma of Google Finance’s new charting functions.
What if he’s right? I can’t dismiss that out of hand. There is a sickness on the right for sure. All the marbles thinking that’s as twisted as anything that comes out of a MoveOn strategy session. And Cap’n Ed and Hugh Hewitt and Power Line guys: stalwart, brave and true. With the cyber-charisma of Google Finance’s new charting functions.
That comment, it is twice.
Whine, Whine. Steve should stick to writing about home brewed Beer, midget Pron and cookbooks.
Damn, happyfeet, try to save some of the right wing pie for the rest of us!
Hmmmm.
*shrug* I’ve always believed it has to do with essential aspects of both liberals and conservatives. Conservatives don’t mind going it alone and don’t require other conservatives to reinforce ideals, beliefs or ideology. On the other hand liberals quite often do require such reinforcement.
This explains both the different sizes in blog populations but also the organizational aspects of the blog cultures involved. Conservative blogs tend towards the informational. Liberal blogs tend towards the affirmation.
I don’t know Steve at Hog On Ice, but from that article he sounds like someone who has a “Liberal’s understanding of Conservatives,” i.e. he analyzes conservatives through the lens of leftist propaganda.
In other words, it sure smells like those trolls who say “I’m a lifelong Rethuglican, BUT (insert list of liberal talking points here).”
Could just be sour grapes, or clinical depression, or Gin or whatever.
Poor Steve. Still pissed off the world did not beat a path to his door. Maybe it would have if he had continued to be funny, but whiny gets you nowhere, unless you are liberal.
Steve’s saying that a lot of the best voices on the right side of the sphere don’t get any notice from insiders, and that by being ungenerous with recognition in an attempt to maintain their own demographics, they unwittingly diminish the influence, not only of all the other blogs that are allied with their views, but of themselves as well.
For sure that’s what he thinks he’s saying; but if I may get all Aunt Gardiner on his ass, that speech savours strongly of disappointment.
He’s also saying that it’s because those voices on the right are used to being tokens, and there’s only so many slots that the masters of the “unbiased” media will allocate to their tokens. I actually think he’s right, but that this environment will exist only for as long as these masters control the conversation. Given how quickly these masters are heading for retirement, and how quickly their ratings continue to plunge, I don’t think it’s safe to say that this situation will last indefinitely.
Andrew Meyer is a fucking sideshow. He may join the stable of freaks that the networks maintain to spice up their shows, but it won’t change the fact that these people are little more than sideshow freaks. Why Steve bemoans the fact that there aren’t more right-leaning bloggers in this freakshow is beyond me.
He’s right. The left does maintain a farm team type system that helps those that “share the message” get noticed. My belief is that this cannot work on the right, because we don’t actually share a common message. Sure, there are things we agree on, but even then there are usually areas of disagreement.
He’s also wrong about Meyer’s prospects for limelights and profit.
Meyer is ill, and his troubles are tragic and likely to ruin his life.
Yes, they can makes noise, but for all the supposed success of dailykos on the left, ask Ned Lamont how much they helped.
They helped a great deal. No one would have even heard of Ned Lamont if it hadn’t been for Kos’ “Mentos” commercial.
I found it refreshing that he gave Blondie some props in that article, but wouldn’t she be mopping the floor with her boobs by now. I’ve got her at about 97 give or take, and Dagwood’s been in the ground for years now. The cholesterol from one of his sandwiches would clog the trunk of a bull elephant.
I keep pronouncing that BYAINwash.
Do the guys get fur hats?
I also have to question what Steve proposes to do to change the current situation. Does he think the right needs its own Soros to bankroll an astroturf machine? Does he think we need a Dear Leader (M. Koz Hubbard, anyone?) to head up a sick cult of personality that can throw a convention every couple of years where the GOP can come kiss ass?
I also think Steve misses the fact that guys who expend huge amounts of energy criticizing the media might not actually be angling to join the media circus. Would the news be better if Jeff was sitting in the editor’s office vetting stories for accuracy and bias and narrative reinforcement? Undoubtedly. But would it be better if Jeff was invited four or five times a year to be the token goofy libertarian riffing about red pills and armadillos? I won’t deny that it would be entertaining, and probably enlightening, but I just don’t see Jeff embracing the idea of being their trained monkey. Given his opinion of Coulter, I think it’s a safe bet. (If I’m wrong, Jeff, I promise I won’t think less of you. Much.)
My proposal? So glad you asked: Keep holding the bigwigs accountable. Keep exposing their stupidity, their bias, their skewed worldview. Force the media back toward the center, whether through institutional change or outright replacement of the dinosaurs.
When there is an environment for balanced debate, those on the right will have more than just a handful of token positions. Then they can turn their efforts away from protecting their endangered habitat and look to cultivating new talent. Hopefully, that talent will have something of substance to add (though big tits will probably still help). Watching the smug leftists eat their own as their habitat shrinks should make for some good entertainment, too.
And as another mentioned, we engage for information and discourse, not so much for affirmation. This all but guarantees the right will never match the lockstep force of the progs.
Frankly, this is not as much a problem as Steve makes it to be. It is entirely emblematic of the fundamental difference between the two camp. We remain the idea people, they by and large are simply the opposition to those ideas.
Hey Steve-o QQ more, N00b !!!
Yes. Mostly I agree with Steve, especially the general tenor of his argument. It’s not just the bloggers that are stale like day-old Malkin, and also they are ungenerous, but it’s also their range, which is quite limited.
Example. Show me a top-tier blog on the right that has carried an economic meme that rises above “the economy is not that bad… the media is like totally exaggerating. Damn immigrants!!!! Outrage!!!!111!!! Dubai Ports World!1!!11 Foetuses!111!!”
The lefty blogs, they have a story to tell about the economy, made easy by lots of supportive MSM links to adduce. This exemplifies the lameness of the Malkins and the Cap’n Eds. So they don’t want to blog about economics. Fine. But why can’t they realize that they can remedy their severely limited intellectual range by linking to people who are willing and able to do the work? This way they could have substantive content without taking any time away from their outrage patrol duties.
Then again, maybe economics will be irrelevant in the ’08 election.
On the far Left we have:
1) Loud-mouthed, often immature people with a chip on their shoulders who love public tantrums
2) Grandiose claims and Utopian ideals
3) “Righteous” anger that the rest of the “sheeple” don’t recognize their wisdom and virtue
4) An itching to overthrow the current order and put themselves in charge, even if it comes to violence in the streets (which some no doubt would relish)
5) Fanatical devotion to their ideas
6) Loads of free time on their hands
7) Ambition to burn
8) A preference for drama and emotions
9) Cover from the MSM for their failings
On the mid-Right, however, we’ve got:
1) People with mortgages to pay and kids to raise
2) Congresscritters who will sometimes fold when we jam their phone lines
3) No desire to overthrow the current order: just do some tweaking here or there
4) A preference for facts and practicalities
5) Acceptance of human frailties as the source of all the worlds ills, and therefore understanding that there’s only so much you can do to make things better
6) People whose religious impulses are not focused on politics but rather on the self and family
7) Pie
We’re not going to recreate dKos on our side because we don’t have much of a Crusade to conduct. Against the Immigration bill? Flood the switchboard in Washington and presto! Whereas the MoveOn.org folks get an ad in the NYT and the war continues on as before.
Was it Dean Barnett who said that the Left perceives that its political machine doesn’t work but the media does, whereas the Right is the reverse?
Prolly. Conservatives are not, by definition, revolutionaries, and so are slow to be aroused to drastic action, whereas the Left is up for a fight 24/7. It’s their job.
As for the Left nurturing its talent… um, I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.
Also, links to Larry Kudlow don’t count. Glenn Reynolds shows how it’s done with that Greek kid he likes at USN&WR and that NAM blog.
This is belied by their constant invocation of teh outrage du jour I think. And putting a wall on the border is fairly bruising to the status quo. Remaking the Middle East, not a tweak. Privatizing Social Security? Something of a paradigm shift. Calling for objective news coverage? Quixotic in the extreme.
I think the right has a far more sophisticated understanding of the blogosphere as a medium, and spend more energy analyzing the ad network models and the monetization of traffic. The left has a far better understanding of the community elements. Go to the PJM flagship site lately? There is no “community” there, just the network bloggers fawning over each other in the comments. It’s icky.
Conservative new media is not dying. To the contrary, it is as impossible to kill as Lefty new media, or any other kind of new media, if for no other reason that the barriers to entry are low.
Steve’s complaint seems to be that it’s a failure because it hasn’t been accepted by the MSM — and FOX, I suppose, though iirc Malkin tried to host a FOX show featuring blogs.
Steve doesn’t explain why that’s the metric for measuring success of conservative new media, as FNC is about the only outlet that would be sympathetic to the non-Left viewpoint at all.
The reality is that — in the grand sweep of things — it wasn’t too long ago when you didn’t even have FNC to give non-Left views a fair shake. He (and some here, I see) aren’t fans of Malkin, but how long ago was it when you couldn’t have found anyone like her anywhere on TV?
He can write off the right-wing blogosphere as “impotent,” but you wouldn’t have Senators and Reps complaining that it defeated the immigration bill if it was.
He can dismiss Allahpundit as second banana on a video website, but unless you want to place your bet on the MSM suddenly embracing conservative blogs, perhaps HotAir is a forerunner of what conservative new media may become in the future.
If he thinks the GOP candidate in 2008 isn’t going to have money to get the message out, he’s delusional.
The post reads like Steve got into blogging on the notion that someone in Big Media was going to hand him a well-paid job for doing so. The world doesn’t work that way… and it’s a not a very conservative attitude.
I should also add re dKos:
If the thing makes a lot of money, it’s not because Kos is linking this or that small blogger. It’s because he set up something like Blogspot for Leftards. It provides a mechanism for fundraising that makes pols notice, but the dKos track record of failure extends far beyond Lamont, unless I missed the Dean Administration during a nap. I imagine they did better in 2006, but that would have to do more with the general political environment in 06 than anything dKos did. Whether it’s dKos or MoveOn or the idiot kid who got tasered, these people hurt the Dems more than they help, just as they were hurt in the 70s when they became seen as the party of Acid, Abortion & Amnesty. Even if (some) libertarians don’t care about the first two, the ever-Leftward drift of the Dems since Vietnam will continue to be a drag of their political fortunes.
I guess there’s a reason why my own blog has become mainly a photoblog. Too much other stuff to do. It isn’t my livelihood. If it were, I’d drive a couple blocks to Malkin Headquarters and beg for a job, I guess.
Looked at another way, I think “conservative new media” was very unhelpful in 2006 – I think the word was “pre-mortem.” Fuck that action.
It’s a hard knock life.
The sooner you understand this and account for it the easier things will be.
Re: happyfeet’s comments vs. dicentra’s – We do want to overturn the status quo, but we don’t want to turn into mad freaks doing it. We will want more and more drastic changes the more leftward things slide, but it will take a long time for us to get off our asses to do something, because we are adverse to activism. When it happens, it will be violent, and we have the guns + training.
I stick around here to prepare my mind for the whole thing. Maybe it will help.
Also, the other reason why conservatives are slow, is we for the most part (generally speaking in averages, I guess) have to see tangible results before making a big decision like, um, declaring our blog the new center. Rockets? Yeah. Goes up, comes down. Good. Blogs? Ok, so people visit, maybe they aren’t bots. If they comment, its more possible that they read the article. The overall influence of them is nearly impossible to grade. The internet, unlike the TV (or even newspapers) is so non-linear (or multilinear anyway) making clear judgments about it (at least about today
) will be a task of historians.
Steve’s post, BTW, sounds like a ‘dammit, my budget is narrowing’ post. You’ll know it if my rent goes up. Rational people are wired that way. They oughtta be honest about it.
Happyfeet:
What’s your deal with Dobson? So he’s decided not to support Fred Thompson. So what? He has a certain amount of influence but Evangelicals are not lockstep voters. People like Dobson, Robertson and Fallwell were always demonized by the overexageration of their influence.
So I agree with him about McCain-Feingold, disagree about the Marriage amendment, am a bit troubled with Fred ducking the whole faith issue and disagree about his ability to campaign. He didn’t even mention my concern for Thompson’s views on immigration.
I guess that the word “sickness” bothers me. Religious conservatives have been a strong force in the the Republican party without whom we’d all have been saying, “Hi,President Gore.” (shudder) One of the things I like about conservatism is the diversity of ideas wrapped around agreement on principles. Classical Liberals and social conservatives may look askance at each at times but, when the chips are down, they’ll find some kind of common ground to vote for principles.
I’m just not sure what message you were trying to send.
I heart Katie beagle.
Oh. Sorry BJ – just saw your comment. The sickness is the idea that Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Fred Thompson because of yada yada yada. I don’t care who this Dobson supports in the primary. He’s more than free to order up some Brownback yard signs and start a prayer circle, but did you read the whole article that traces Dobson’s statements of non-support? This is I think very similar to liberals who tingle with desire for a Nazi Police State to rage against. They just don’t get it, Dobson pouts, as he heads into his bunker. Useful as tits on a nun, that one.
Or useless. I’ll have to give that one some thought, really.
Btw, I am a partisan not prone to self-examination. Republicans good, Democrats bad. Except for the Senate, which is very confusing and is something I try not to think about very much. Scoff if you will.
I’ll spam this over to here as it’s relevant.
I think the leftist nutroots phenomenon is overblown. The only thing that props them up to be as important as they seem is Soros money and a compliant and sympathetic media culture. Otherwise, they’d just be another set of fringe whackjobs screeching at the moon.
Also, the right leaning blogosphere isn’t dedicated to the “grassroots” organizing, pushing the Big Lie templates and purging the ideologically un-pure in order to protect their ideological narrative. That is a habit of the left since the 20’s. They used to only be able to publish in underground rags like the World Workers Daily. Now they have webpages. All the major players that make up the current Nutroots were in cahoots before. We dealt with their ilk in the Enviro/Green/Anti-Nuke/Anti-Military/Anti-Anti-Commie movement throughout the Cold War and Post Cold War 90’s. These are all the same players, with a few different faces. They just now are more visible because of the web.
I mean, take a look at the “anti-war” movement. Their turnout recently has been insignificant and they have to rely on a sympathetic media to prop their numbers up, hide the anti American, pro-Communist pedigree of the movement and ignore a significantly bigger pro-military turn-out in order to maintain the liberal-left narrative.
The Conservative blogosphere is successful in fact checking and exposing the propaganda put out by the left for what it is as well as ideological discussion.
But, to claim that we’re not effective is ignoring that the Dems may echo MoveOns talking points, but they are getting very little done in support of them. The Dems are in pander mode bigtime due to their primary and lust for Soros cash, but in vote after vote, the Dems cannot come thru or flatly refuse to actually follow thru. Witness the Senate condemning MoveOns ad, even though they won’t publicly demouncing it as individuals. Once the primary is over, expect the Nutroots to have even less influence, because the Dems will have to drift more towards the center in order to compete. We also are partly relying on the self-proclamation of known leftist liars as to just how in control and organized the leftosphere actually is.
Just because our victories aren’t trumpeted by the MSM doesn’t mean “they” are winning, or that the conservosphere isn’t effective. We ARE effective; we’re just not a mirror image of the left. Nor should we be.
We do want to overturn the status quo
Let me clarify what I meant by status quo:
• Representative democracy (instead of rule by Our Betters)
• Separation of powers (no judges who legislate or legislators who conduct foreign policy)
• Free-market capitalism
• Private healthcare
• Traditional marriage and families
• Old-fashioned notions about truth and its relation to language (e.g., you can use the latter to denote the former)
• Academics in academia instead of in control of the levers of government
• Using American influence and force to spread political liberty and economic development
• Free speech for everyone, including ignoramuses
• Some version of American Exceptionalism in the public eye
• Waving the flag on the 4th of July
• True = accurate; fake = innacurate
• News reporting as separate from advocacy
• etc.
In contrast to the soft or hard socialism or anarchy or communism or whatever those nutjobs who show up at every rally, regardless of the ostensible purpose, are promoting. I’m talking the Zombietime freak show, here.
No there aren’t.
The secret commie word for the day is negative dialectic.
The right blogosphere embodies it without knowing what it is.
The left blogosphere is a caricature of televangelism.
Yes, it’s ironic.
#46 – I’m somewhat familiar with the idea of Marxist dialectic; how can you have negative dialectic? Or same thing, different name?
LEAVE HEIDEGGER ALONE!!!!
I think from the context of the thread he means when you’re not being reactionary so much but you still sort of float along being not-liberals. I think.
It would appear that one advantage left wings blogs may have is happyfeet doesn’t inundate their comment threads with his blatherings.
That’s just unkind, really.
As far as it goes with Dobson, almost all of the things he says about Thompson, he could have said in 1980 or 2000 about the men who got elected president in those years.
When it comes to this business of “conservative new media,” I deny the premise. There is not, nor should there be, such an institution as “new media,” conservative or otherwise. “Media” should never have become an institution in the first place, and if we try to establish “new” media as one, we undermine the whole friggin’ POINT of having “new” media.
“How about Protestwarrior.com? Smarter and more honest than Meyer, and unlike Meyer, the issues confronted were real and important, not contrived in order to get media attention.”
They got a lot of attention in Crawford
I disagree with Steve; there’s new talent appearing as needed. For instance, I like this kid, and I hope someone gives him a break.
And as for all of the negativity surrounding ‘loud’ conservatives (Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush, even that unusual Michael Savage persona) it seems no one who is markedly better is actually marketable, or understands marketing well enough to position themselves for the Big Time. You must realize that the ‘product’ Conservatism is just like any other commodity: if you present it correctly, if you can give an audience what they want, you and your product will succeed.
My suggestion to bloggers, the conservatives or even the liberal mainstream (who for all their disregard for capitalism seem to innately know how it’s done), is to follow the simple rule that’s worked for thousands of successful businesses, and realize You’re there and successful because of your customers, not in spite of them. Therein lies the explanation for the successes of Sean and Rush; they fill the needs of those Conservatives who know what’s right, and just want to hear some affirmation. When Ann goes a bit over the edge, and gets slapped by ‘professional’ conservatives, well, that’s her schtick, and it seems successful to me. I for one bought her new book. And the next ones, too…
I’ve been reading Steve off and on for several years. In my opinion he’s a good writer and is usually fairly entertaining, but it looks to me like he’s got a severe case of the Red Ass over not getting a better response from his Nigerian book. And maybe a little PMS too.
All I know is that when negative dialectic and positive dialectic meet, the result is described in terms of e and c, and in the form of energetic particles (pions).
#28 dicentra
That was really all you had to say, darlin’. What kind?
“Comment by BumperStickerist on 9/20 @ 10:14 am #
Geoff, ”
Er, I’m Geoff a sometime commenter. He’s JEFF and he runs da place. :-)
As for the thread subject. The left blogs are like the former USSR’s economy. Looks big and powerful from the outside but is really a hollow brittle shell. The right is into “creative destruction” which allows for many distinct voices to evaluate everything and is much more robust.
His starting premise is bad, sure Kos gets more hits, but who has had more impact? The “marginalized” right.
In the run-up to the last election, about half of the prominent right blogs were calling for the GOP to lose.
As for this
but mainly because conservatives squash new talent, because they’re convinced the right-wing-media pie is only so big, and they’re terrified that someone else might get a sliver of their piece.
Waaaaaaaaaaaa. He’s been making that whine for years and it gets funnier each and every time.
Especially since he’s running basically a narcisso-blog where you have to be interested in the minutae of his life. I usually like his writing, but I couldn’t care less about the details of his attempt to get a router.
Merovign: I think that varies depending on the dialectic constant* of the material**.
* In modern terminology, the relative static permittivity, although I’m not sure what kind of relativism is involved? Moral? Or maybe it has something to do with how willing you are to have unemployed relatives crash on your couch for an indefinite period of time?
** Hence, dielectical materialism.
SmokeVanThorn,
Blatherings? What’s that for? Happyfeet reaches into the gooey impenetrable chest of obtuse philosophical jargon and pulls out the red still-beating core, and you resent it?
I thank Happyfeet for the salted snack of organ-meat. The good, hearty kind, that is. And you, you can enjoy whatever organ-meat it is that you enjoy.
I used to read Steve’s blog pretty regularly until the last few months, and posts like this are examples why. While his point is not entirely incorrect, I think most of his resentment comes from the fact that the so-called bigwigs in the conservative movement didn’t help him out. Which is somewhat baffling considering he seems to be somehow independently wealthy (does he even have a job? by reading his blog, you wouldn’t think so), and the books he’s written so far are apolitical. Why he would need or expect other conservatives to help him out is beyond me. What’s more, he fancies himself a good writter and humorist, but in reality, he’s neither. He’s a fairly mediocre writer, perhaps slightly above average at best, and he hasn’t been all that humorous in years. Back when he used to write about dating and relationships or going off on the left, he could be pretty funny. Now he spends entire weeks writing about perfecting pizza dough recipes. Hilarious.
That is, when he’s not writing posts alienating everyone in the conservative movement who’s help he’s lamenting not receiving.
Also, he uses this Meyers kid, Kos, and Sharpton as examples of the left supporting their own, unlike conservatives. But is this a trait we should really be emulating, elevating our own goofballs to national status?
I wouldn’t mind.
No, sorry, Dan. You’re our goofball we’d prefer not to share you.
And pay no attention to those rumors of outside pressure concerning this decision.
I don’t find much fault with what Steve had to say. I’ve found, as a teeny blogger that it’s damnably tough to get the attention of the big guys (Hewitt, Reynolds, et. al.), no matter what you do. I’ve pretty much given up sending polite e-mails alerting them about the occasional post because I’ve not gotten so much as a “thanks, but no thanks” from any of them. There are plenty of bloggers out there who are vastly more prolific than I and I’m pretty sure they get the same treatment.
That said, I think it’s about time that we saw some of the right’s more gifted bloggers breaking into other media. Exactly how many columns does Glenn Reynolds write now? And they all tend to be about the same things. Has anyone ever seen a column from The Anchoress – who is among the best writers I’ve ever read on the blogosphere? How about our very own Jeff G right here? Are you telling me that National Review or The Weekly Standard couldn’t put out a few ducats for a bi-weekly dose of Protein Wisdom? Sure they could. They just don’t because they have their own fish to fry, whatever those fish are.
Now, sure, those publications and other stalwarts of the right can surely publish whomever they want and I wouldn’t say that they are solely responsible for advancing a conservative movement. But they do bear some responsibility for bringing some new blood into the game.
SBP: I think relative static permittivity is why people are always calling each other “bro” and “sister” when they’re not related.
…and if I can deal with having the PW commentariat utterly ignore what I have to say, dealing with it from Instapundit and PJM is a piece of cake.
[…] Driscoll offers an inadvertent, libertarian counterpoint to yesterday’s assertion of new media impotence (at least, on the right) offered by Steve […]
happyfeet
Your good humored response makes me sorry for my gibe; consider it retracted.
Sarah
I’m not surprised that you would enjoy a salty snack of (any type of) organ meat; I would be surprised if anyone has been or is willing to give you one.
H
thank you sir
Also, SarahW, she is unfailingly good humored. Let’s not test that though.
“The post reads like Steve got into blogging on the notion that someone in Big Media was going to hand him a well-paid job for doing so. The world doesn’t work that way…”
Hey, it worked for Anne-Marie Cox. She parlayed a silly tacky blog into a bigtime job with the MSM. But she may have big tits.
MKH nailed another one:
http://www.townhall.com/video/HamNation/1450_hn092107
nothing groundbreaking, but she do have a gift for bringin it on home.
Wow, it’s not often that you see someone apologize for a vicious and unwarranted attack and commit another one in the same post. A red letter day indeed.
BJ – my link at #9 – Google switched it, and so my #40 makes no sense at all. Here’s the only version of the original I can find, which is kind of weird.
The part I was (over)reacting to was this bit:
Dobson has, reportedly, ixnayed the top-3 front-runners. That’s what I meant by “all the marbles” thinking, and mostly my opinion is informed by a lot of the negativity on the right that preceded the ’06 debacle. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that. It was not meant as a hit on social conservatives or the religious right in general, not at all – I feel the same way about Mr. Reynolds when he trots out his pork-busty litmus tests. Or even holding McCain-Feingold support against a candidate, since mostly I guess I’d say it was the Supreme Court’s responsibility to castrate that nonsense, but I can see how that’s a different case really.
happyfeet
Before the party has chosen a nominee, it’s not surprising that someone like Dr. Dobson would do what he can take to assure the nomination of the candidate with whom he most closely agrees. I can guarantee that once the nomination is decided, Dobson will support whoever runs against Hillary, Obama or Edwards. That has been his record to date.
If your concern is that Dobson may influence the race such that a less electable Republican is nominated, I don’t frankly don’t see how that could be the case given the present “standings.”
As for ’06, I don’t recall that it was evangelicals staying home or failing to vote Republican that handed control of Congress to Pelosi and Reid. It was my impression that it was libertarians, “pork busty” types and third party supporters, combined with the uncertainty of the Iraq situation (support for which among evangelicals and by Dobson is very strong) that turned the tide. I think the negativity you heard on the right was from fiscal conservatives and libertarians, not from social conservatives and evangelicals. If there is information that shows that the lack of support by evangelicals was a factor in the Republican losses, I would like to know about it.
I was overreacting to Dobson, definitely, and it’s the AP’s fault that the article could not find room for any elucidation of who Dobson does support. Ponnuru is really all I can remember of negativity from social conservative quarters preceding ’06, so definitely I don’t want to be making a case that ’06 should be put at evangelicals’ doorstep. I really should just retract my original comment really. Is there a form or something?
The Right is busy and productive and much more diverse in day-to-day living, which may make for more of the rugged individualistic attitude that reads well, but links poorly.
The Right is also busy policing themselves with blog etiquette and fair play and good form and sobering accountability for words and deeds. Aw, aren’t they cute?
The Left is much more forgiving of its Rottweilers and Coulters, and so a sense of loyalty is engendered in the hopeful noobs making mistakes and firing at will. The anarchy there gives wide berth to all comers. And The Left doesn’t care who gets hurt in the crush of ideas. Has anybody noticed?
The Left is successful only as a Palistinian-type car-swarm of noise; everybody jockeying for a piece of whatever body of political thought has recently been blasted by common sense, so they can hold it up to the crowd and voice outrage to their homies. There’s a lot of outrage pie to go around, an unending supply.
But outrage is a full-time job. Who subsidizes it?
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