Yeah, We Kick Tail And Take Names

Per Editor and Publisher, the Sunday NY Times magazine will feature an article by Michael Crowley of The New Republic.  His theme - conservative blogs kick ass, and lefty blogs pass gas. 

NO, I am sure his argument is presented a bit more elegantly, and one can hardly wait to see how he skates past the traffic and fund-raisng figures, both of which suggest (to me, anyway, but I am not getting published in the Times) that liberal blogs are doing just fine.

Sunday will be here like, any day now!  Meanwhile, here is a reprise of Peggy Noonan's thoughts on blogs and the internet (they have put a premium on shrillness for everyone.  Zzzzz.)  And we would be remiss if we failed to note the column by Michael Barone, with this eternal verity:

So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media.  Both changes help Bush and the Republicans.

OK, I need some help, please.  Some chap at, IIRC, MyDD has done lots of work evaluting left and right traffic patterns in the blogosphere.  If forced to guess, I would even say it was "Chris".  If I were being waterboarded, I would volunteer the name "Chris Bowers".

Anyway, I bet he, or whoever, has some cogent thoughts on this.

MORE:  Hmm, don't underestimate waterboarding, or the threat of it - "Chris Bowers" it is.

UPDATE:  That's it?  Glenn shreds it so I don't have to. 

But did I say Glenn shreds it?  Words fail me in attempting to describe Michelle Malkin's response, but it is not favorable.

Comments

[BurbankErnie]

TM,

You may have to work overtime on your Blog this Sunday. Time Mag has announced that Novak's (No, the other one) Article detailing her testimony with the Fitz "I'll get another Bush Admin Official" Investigation will be in the Sunday Online Edition.

[Lew Clark]

How does Chris have time to keep up with blogs when he has all those fruit plants and trees to deliver all over the UK?

[Geek, Esq.]

TM:

To encapsulate what he's probably talking about, the rightwing blogosphere most resembled what the left typically does during the Harriet Miers nomination.

[Lefty McDoofus]

The Right is no smarter than the Left. It just seems that way because the Right has facts on their side to back up their commentary. Again, good always triumphs over evil.

[Cecil Turner]

I suspect if you were being waterboarded it would sound a lot more like "thhbbbbbthbbbb."

[Daddy]

TM,
Possibly a little off topic, but maybe not. My job regularly takes me through Asia, and what I discovered last week about your Blog, is that apparently it is persona non grata in the Peoples Republic of China. No problem tracking you in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Philippines, etc, but the instant I sat down at the keyboard in Shanghai and clicked on Justoneminute, it sorta' sat around about 20 or 30 seconds, then hit me with something like, 'website not discovered or not available'. I tried backdooring you via Instapundit or KausFiles or anything else I could think of, but sadly I wound up "Plameless In Shanghai". When I'm back there next week I'll try a few other computer outlets and see if it was just the computer I was using, (which it probably is) or if indeed (as we've all suspected) Justoneminute is truly as dangerous to the PRC as the Falun Gong. I might also experiement and see if any of the lefty blogs are also censored, but of course thats sorta' like working, and since I'm doing this mission at Dick Cheney's 'Behest', perhaps I'll instead just sit by the pool in my Speedo's sipping...oops, excuse me, I think it's Vanity Fair on the other line for a photo shoot. Zai jin!

[kim]

We kick, take, and name tales.
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[JM Hanes]

So TM,

Which part of the infrastructure provided by Fox News and Rush do you rely on?

Seems to me that's the key point that the MSM analysts almost always get wrong/reversed. Outfits like Fox & Rush are beneficiaries, not patrons.

[richard mcenroe]

The left wing of the blogosphere is redundant. Nothing there you can't get in any college classroom, newspaper, magazine, or network news program in the USA. The only thing the left blogs are good for is exposing all the bile, petty malice and arrogance that is usually muffled by the doors of the faculty lounge or Dan Rather's boldfaced protests of being a moderate... and for that, long may it wave.

[JM Hanes]

MORE Hmm:

CW suggests there's no such thing as "the wrong question," but when it comes to waterboarding or Googling, I'm not so sure. Is this the sort of help you had in mind -- or are you already on it like a cheap (but serviceable!) suit?

[JM Hanes]

More help:

A number of related items worth scanning over at today's Beltway Blogroll.

Compare the quasi-offical reaction of Armando & Zuniga to the upcoming Sunday Times article with how Zuniga was describing the left in his PR launch for Netroots.

Two other items, one about interest in bloggers at the DNC and another on startups at the NY Times describe what I would classify as a distinct category of sponsored blogs, whether supported by political parties, MSM outlets, corporations etc.

In some ways these sponsored efforts are, in fact, attempting to cash in on the successes of what are essentailly populist, self-sustaining, self-promoting, independent-by-definition bloggers. Just adding entries on a daily basis to an online column, like say, The Plank does not a blogger make you. And most analysts don't sufficiently distinguish between types when assessing the "blogosphere."

[clarice]

Is the storied story up? Anyone have a cite?

[clarice]

Here it is:storied story

[JM Hanes]

That's it? Sheesh!

[Daddy]

What a remarkable amount of bullshit in 3 paragraphs.

[Dwilkers]

Its lame. I can hardly believe there's such a fuss over so small an article. All it does is recite the Dem talking points about blogs for 3 paragraphs.

As we all know, Libs use blogs "air ideas" and Con blogs are "more focused on eliciting strong emotional responses". Uh huh.

Snorezzzz....

[Clash]

Rightwing blogs work like corporations - top down, everyone marching in lockstep, disseminating talking points issued daily by the RNC.

Leftwing blogs are grassroots, bottom up operations, open forums of ideas, lacking in political coordination because they spring from ordinary citizens who think for themselves.

It's very similar to the personality types that are drawn to the respective political movements. Right wingers tend to be paranoid, belligerent and looking for orders to follow that will shed some reflected glory on their insignificant lives. Left wingers embrace the true power of the individual and the now lost spirit of American openness and freedom.

The fact that righwingers are operating within a highly coordinated power structure supported by massively funded corporate media outlets may make it appear they are more effective. After all, they are serving a grateful master.

[kim]

Did you come up with that idea on your own, Clash? Do you mark the intolerance and bigotry within it?
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[kim]

I know it is asking a lot, but as a small point of logic, just how is it that because the master is grateful that rightwing blogs appear to be more effective? Or does the 'true power of the individual' obviate the need for true syllogisms?
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[clarice]

I'd respond but Mehlman is late getting out today's talking points for bloggers and I'm speechless without that.

[kim]

You must be down the list. He obviously sent me some.
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[Dwilkers]

That's so transparently dumb it isn't worth responding, but don't forget to deposit your check from Soros this month TM.

[kim]

I love it. Rightwingers are now 'commies' and the left full of individualists.
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[Cecil Turner]

Heh. Sounds like "clash" is another false-flag operation, this time probably a die-hard conservative pretending to be a loony lefty. Pretty good, but "wingnut" and "bushitler" would have been a plus, I think. (Or maybe that would've been too hamfisted?)

And hey, anybody know what's up with the late talking points? How are we supposed to know what to think about the Sunday talk shows? (I was trying to get 'em by direct transmission, but my Jew Mind Beam receiver is on the fritz. [<--okay, that was hamfisted, and insensitive {"fritz"? Heh. --KR.}])

[Lew Clark]

Clash sure answered the question all of us have had. We knew that TM's vast wealth and decadent life style wasn't being supported by blogads alone!

[kim]

Clash jury rigged his flagstaff, and you jerry rigged your explanation.

Clash is in a hypnotic trance. She should be excused, maybe even pardonned.
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[Dwilkers]

Heh. This is funny as hell (via Reynolds).

Read it if you want while I call Rove about our talking points for today.

[kim]

She? Well, Etienne used to be just exactly as unselfconsciously hilarious as this one. Who needs to go elsewhere for amusement?
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[boris]

Viveca Novak

[Rove] the man known to many Democrats as the other side's Evil Genius ...

I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt." I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, "Are you sure about that? That's not what I hear around TIME." He looked surprised and very serious. "There's nothing in the phone logs," ...

If I could have a do-over, I would have kept my mouth shut; ...

according to Luskin, my remark led him to do an intensive search for evidence that Rove and Matt had talked. That's how Luskin says he found the e-mail Rove wrote to Stephen Hadley at the National Security Council ...

but I feel that he violated any understanding to keep our talk confidential by unilaterally going to Fitzgerald and telling him what was said.

Is it just me or do V Novak's comments today reek of hostility towards the administration and resentment for being "forced" to provide exculpatory information regarding the Fitz investigation of Rove?

[Bill in AZ]

It's not just you boris, I got the same thing out of that comment... evil... all of MSM.

[kim]

If she had kept her mouth shut, would Rove be hanging from Fitz's tree today?

Heard it around Time, huh? Hang the whole lot of 'em.
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[kim]

And clash wants to talk about patriotism. You have to be able to tell the truth first, before you can be a patriot.

People haven't changed that much, and the rule of law is still veneer. This kind of double dealing is bad karma.
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[Cecil Turner]

Hmmm, I don't see a link to Matt Stoller's preview, which I think may be the most entertaining. He essentially makes the converse argument of what Lefty McDoofus (good one, BTW) made above:

For instance, on average our research is much better than their stuff. However, the right sends their research to their own media and uses the pressure their media brings to get it into the mainstream press.

He also says conservative bloggers are aided by the "nonpartisan media" which is kinda hard to argue with. This particular story may have a half-life measured in milliseconds, but the humor lives on.

[kim]

Matt's slightly earlier column about the cavalry is instructive, also. He fails to explain why people commuting twiddle their dials to right wing rhetoric. That's the feel of grassroots exploring the firmament.
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[clarice]

Mickey Kaus has a tasty tidbit today on how the condescending approach always loses in politics--that's why people hit the right wing dial on their radio..they are sick and tired of half blind elites telling them it's only yellow rain their sprinking..

[clarice]

I love Ed Morrissey's take:
"As it turns out, that's all Crowley had to say. He should sue E&P for lifting his entire 283-word article for their 360-word description of it. Crowley offers no support, no research, not even a hyperlink to the two bloggers he mentions in his threadbare blurb. As for his central assertion -- that conservatives have superior message discipline because of orders received on high from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Drudge -- Michelle Malkin takes that down with a series of of references to high-tension debates on the right this year, primarily the abortive Harriet Miers nomination earlier this fall.

If any one article proved how out of touch the Exempt Media truly is regarding the blogosphere, Crowley's is it. And if E&P wanted to demonstrate that its reputation for news analysis is vastly overblown, they've managed to do it here."
Overblown

[kim]

With exceptions, I hear a monotone from the left. It is dreary. It is nasal. No, that's only her.

Maybe it's what I tune out.
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[Sue]

Hello

[Rick Ballard]

Test

[maryrose]

s anybody there