Could you be anymore dramatic?

Cable back up for the moment. I have been under a tropical storm for days now. That is my excuse for missing any "snark".

Yep. That's my story and I am sticking to it, as the news folks sometimes claim.

This has been the agenda of the Right for the past 20+ years.

Give extreme conservative and Right-wing voices a microphone or a column or a book deal, denounce any and all criticism of such voices as slander, and accuse any one with less radical views as "a flaming liberal". Within a generation, a huge chunk of the electorate has lurched to the Right, and accepts these opinions as Truth.

Thanks for the link to your blog. I bookmarked it, and I'll give you a read.

The best blog on the net for me is to read "b" and the comments at Moon of Alabama. Glenn's blog is second, and perhaps you will win a medal for third place!

Peace.

The best blog on the net for me is to read "b" and the comments at Moon of Alabama. Glenn's blog is second, and perhaps you will win a medal for third place!

Why thank you. <*blush*> But there's plenty of other good blogs out there; I know that Jim White, DCLaw1, and Ondolette have recently thrown their hat in the ring with some fine new offerings. But the more the merrier, there's plenty to room for all good people to contribute...

Cheers,

I need to respond. I doubt it will alter your jaded, emotional, neurally impaired view of the world, but, hope springs eternal.

1. My post last night about olderman (the pompous wind bag) used the example that he comments extensively on right-wing pundits, rather than policy. That is anything but serious journalism. It is more like a junior high school hissy fit.

2. I made the analogy between salonista’s rabid support, or opposition to a personality, to that of the Hatfields vs McCoys feud. The analogy is correct in that it is in large part a mindless hate filled battle. It is incorrect in that both the Hatfields and McCoys were gun totin’ hillbillys. I doubt that many salonistas tote guns (with the exception of sen. webb and rosie o’donnell).

3. Why do you hate the New Republic so much? . . . because, like dumb dan rather they couldn’t get away with their forgery? (the Baghdad Diarist)

Dear Friends,

I need to respond. I doubt it will alter your jaded, emotional, neurally impaired view of the world, but, hope springs eternal.

-- NotOrbitBoy

Generally speaking, an address such as "Dear Friends" is not followed by a boring, self righteous quip that the "friends" to whom one is addressing are, in the opinion of the one calling them "friends", almost hopelessly challenged with a "jaded, emotional, neurally impaired view of the world". But then, John McCain frequently refers to every one he is addressing in his lectures to as, "My friends", when it is likely that many of those he is addressing don't consider themselves to be his "friends".

I see no evidence that 'nuance or intellectual rigor' are the standard by which networks select morons like Matthews, O'Reilly, and Scarborough.

Having a loud mouth and the ability to distort and reduce a serious issue to the level of a movie magazine headline appear to be the reigning standard.

To that extent, Rachel Maddow appears to bring an infusion of cool-headed, non-confrontational opinion-spouting to a field that has brought 'journalism' to its lowest level since the 19th century.

If the field of journalism could introduce some basic standards and a form of credentialling to its practititioners, the pundits-posing-as-analysts could be kept properly corralled in their own unique form of infotainment.

Maddow has a mild leftist slant - don't forget that socialism, communism and anarchists occupy the far left, that fringe that that nearly closes the circle with the fringe right that has driven this administration's policies. What's so liberal about wanting to protect the constitution?

Since Nixon's time the political frame has been dragged to the right, right, right by the corporate interests represented by industrialist family powerhouses like Scaife, Olin, Koch, Coors, Bradley who have funded this drift toward monoply capitalism Glenn documents. Let's not confuse the facts of history with the devolution of journalistic preference for objective or subjective reporting: either approach is subject to editorial (non-explicit) spin, and frankly I am tending to prefer subjective reporting since there is an explicit context for understanding the reporter's take on choice of current event, and how they describe what's going on. Walter Cronkite never let on why he picked "tonight's important news stories", did he?

I am just now reading the letters and had to laugh at this post yesterday morning (7:55 am).

The last comment about how media helps people make decisions made me laugh. That is one of the jobs of the media is to help people make decisions by informing them.

And I just can no longer stand the comments section at Salon. Most of these comments belong in the trash.

How many times do I have to tell you that my e-mail, land mail, and phone calls (no collect calls, please, we have a small budget) run about %53 to %62 positive? And they usually praise other commentors, too.

This comments section will be a combination Rosetta stone, abacus, Holy Scripture, Machinery's Handbook, Atharva Veda, Sama Veda, Rig Veda and Hill's Manual to future scholars.

So that's a hell of a way to talk, if you ask me.

It's so funny that this "oh no, liberals mustn't be too partisan" attitude is coming from Zimmerman. In her own silly way, she's the perfect embodiment of the magazine's clumsy determination to be taken seriously by their professional elders.

I remember reading one of her book reviews, of a David Mitchell novel I believe, that began with a lengthy and highly skittish rumination on the politics of litcrit and the proper way to maintain one's "cred" with one's fellow blogger/ reviewers. Specifically, she was anxious about not being negative enough; as an acolyte of the Peck School of "blast-first-ask-?s-later", the prospect of writing something positive about a quality work left her somewhat flummoxed.

It was a dizzyingly ditzy performance of writerly nerves, or the lack thereof. While every writer and reviewer feels the impact of a good word or a not-so-good word in the world of publishing back-and-forth, to watch reviewers make a melodrama out of their own position[s], trying to capitalize on the narcissistic spectacle of their manipulation of the author-reviewer relationship, is nauseating, to put it mildly. And of course, when it comes down to the actual business of the review itself, the critic's response to the work at hand, Zimmerman's observations are invariably amateurish and confused, everything you don't want in a writer whose sole stock in trade is the capacity for balanced, thoughtful judgment.

I had my own sort of "encounter," if you can call it that, with Ms. Zimmerman. I replied to a TNR Online blog post of hers in which she denounced the TV show "Mad Men," because, in her view, the show is too stylish, too smart, too scrupulous about details of its period setting, the narrative pacing and "character development" didn't suit her (although it's highly doubtful how much she grasps of such freighted critical vocabulary) in that they didn't conform to the conventions of TV drama; mostly, though, she just found the characters "unlikable," -- too adult, too many flaws, not quirky-cute or lovably hot enough (like her TV fave, the high-concept genre kitsch murder show, "Dexter"). When I challenged her on her rejection of "Mad Men," seemingly based on nothing but a distaste for its more literary qualities, its more adult themes -- precisely those aspects that would merit praise, in my book -- she hid in a defensive, whiny rhetorical crouch, and then blew off the debate with fluffy, "Twitter-ish" remarks.

So what does Zimmerman ultimately have to do with Glen's general critique of TNR-ism, as an institution in journalism, as a point of view, and most importantly, as an attitude or style of media thinking? Zimmerman is typical of the jejune "sophistication" that passes as a substitute for critical thought amongst a large segment of young, careerist New York media types. They have learned about the power of media from its impact mainly on the culture. As adepts of "culture studies" of various sorts, they have come to know social discourse of any genre -- political or literary, intellectual or even economic -- primarily as an expression of personality or, at least, persona. This is the obsession with tone and emphasis one expects to find amongst aspiring writers who are most worried about fitting in among their more peers or famous and powerful colleagues, who haven't studied their topics enough to grasp the distinction between "cool" and "meaningful," and can't be expected to assume that there are more important things than "likability."

Not that likability is unimportant, of course, when your goal is to be a minor media star in a political culture dominated by passive-reactive notions of what's mainstream and what's cool. The problem with TNR these days is that so many of its young writers have formed their professional ambitions before achieving any commitment to principles and ideas of substance. And they see in their personal success as established pundits an adequate substitute for the success of any larger social movement or cause. Obviously, one won't take easily to aggressively critical notions in political discourse when one trembles at the possible personal effects of the expression of such ideas. TNR is Headquarters for the kind of nervous liberal for whom "seriousness" means sticking to superficial Russertesque gotchas and avoiding that uncool old warhorse, "ideology" (always in the patronizing tone of the pseudo-"pro"; see Chait's recent takedown of Naomi Klein). If one can have a comfortable, even flattering career as a tut-tutter with insider credentials and standing invitations to insider social events without ever soiling one's hands on any position that might become the basis for any exercise of real power -- eww, gross -- well, it's nice work if you can get it. Just look at the inept, dithering and sloppliy self-conscious way they've gone about advocating military power on behalf of "liberal" values (as with last week's self-righteous, but ultimately vague treatise on Darfur). In terms of real political impact, you might as well be working at Us Magazine.

One has to keep in mind that these popularity- and media-hit-fixated tyros receive all of their intellectual training in academia, where a kind of mildly liberal consensus is enforced by defensive gatekeepers, clucking mentors and grant-disbursing bureaucrats, not rigorous thinkers. Today's university training inculcates youth with far more respect for dinner-party access and conference-resort connectedness than for any "iconoclastic" originality. It would seem that "persona" is far too broad and shallow a rhetorical instrument to be effective in debates about solid, substantive issues. And TNR's knowing style, of which they're so proud? -- the non-confrontational but snarky "paraphrase" followed by a rebuttal that's more of a put-down than a refutation -- has already become a reflexive, dessicated cliché.