The Bludgeon and Castor Oil
This is truly astounding. After a silly post calling "the blogosphere . . . hard fascism with a Microsoft face" Lee Siegel doesn't admit the obvious -- that he was using over-the-top rhetoric -- but instead expands on the argument laying out "the origins of blogofascism."
The good news, I suppose, is that the dubious stretched analogy implicit in the "Islamofascism" neologism looks a lot less dumb when set aside this idea.
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Zengerle makes some good points. Markos fights back by throwing food - his aim is to make the whole thing seem like a meaningless food fight in order to obscure the points Zengerle is making.
So what do Siegel and Peretz do? They throw food back at Markos, helping to achieve Markos's aim of converting the whole thing into a meaningless food fight.
Morons.
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I hope Zengerle and Sullentrop stay on the beat. I've been trying to bring this stuff to light mainly because I thought no mag or blog would be willing to cover this stuff to avoid incurring the exact food throwing wrath of Markos that we've seen this past week.
Siegel has obviously been a moron for some time. If he weren't a moron, instead of breaking Godwin's law, the much simpler point he should have been trying to make is that bullies should be faced down.
June 24, 2006 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
A couple thoughts:
1) the barrier to entry for a blog is about as low as you can get. Someone like Digby can go from nowhere to a readership comparable to a typical mid sized newspaper in a remarkably short time simply by word of mouth and the quality of the writing/analysis. This cuts both ways, over the last year I’ve probably sampled 30-50 blogs and settle on a daily list of about 10-15. The barrier to readership is my time, as new ones come someone gets dropped; to hold my attention a blog needs to maintain quality/something unique from what others have.
In this regard Kos is correct that he is irrelevant.. If he is as nefarious as Petey and others think and becomes nothing but a shill for Warner then his readership dies and goes elsewhere.
2) Essentially what Siegel is saying is “who do you peons think you are having opinions? Where the f’ing New Republic, we tell you what you can think. We earned it the old fashioned way!”
This is the real tension between the blogs and the MSM. The blogs won’t replace news reporting, that takes feet on the ground. The blogs compete with the pundits and opinion writers who provide analysis and commentary on the news. In the past someone like Richard Cohen gets his credibility because the editorial board of the WA Post says they endorse him (not agree with everything he writes, but think his opinion is worth publishing). The problem is that most pundits are really just generalists, they aren’t commenting on some area where they have unique expertise, they are stand-ins for an informed general public. But there is no qualification for this other than the quality of your writing and analysis. That Richard Cohen was a beat reporter 35 years ago in no way makes him better able to comment on the news than Digby or you or me. I’ll read Digby everyday because of the quality, if the quality declines I’ll end up somewhere else.
This applies to a film critic like Siegel as well, sure he or Ebert or whoever knows a whole lot more of the history of cinema and film theory than some dweeb with a PC; but in the end we are all movie fans who have watched a lot of movies. Over time there will emerge amateur movie critics who write consistently well and develop a following based on the reliability of their recommendations; not because TNR or The Chicago Sun Times says they are someone whose opinion matters.
June 24, 2006 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
"In this regard Kos is correct that he is irrelevant.. If he is as nefarious as Petey and others think and becomes nothing but a shill for Warner then his readership dies and goes elsewhere."
You miss the advantages of being the first mover in the tech space.
DailyKos ain't going anywhere, just like Amazon, eBay, and Microsoft ain't going anywhere.
Markos, through a combination of lucky timing and initiative, is a monster in the space. A positive mention from him brings a wealth of new readers to any blog, or contributions to any candidate. A negative mention from him brings a flood of hate emails, or a sense of permanent enmity from his dittoheads.
And with that power comes a responsibility he has so far been unwilling to assume.
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I don't think Markos is nefarious. But I do think he is in grave danger of becoming our side's Ralph Reed if he doesn't wise up to the ethics of his situation.
June 24, 2006 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I’ll read Digby everyday because of the quality, if the quality declines I’ll end up somewhere else."
I dunno how you originally found your way to Digby, but I'd venture that well over half of his readers originally found their way there via Kos.
Now, if Markos shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die, what would the incentive be, personal or professional, for Digby to criticize him?
I'd say that's the dynamic through the majority of the lefty blogosphere.
Things become dysfunctional in communities that ignore elephants in the room.
June 24, 2006 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
No I read Digby becasue of a link form James Wolcott originally.
I think you way overestimate Kos's influenance
June 24, 2006 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But I do think he is in grave danger of becoming our side's Ralph Reed if he doesn't wise up to the ethics of his situation."
Okay, here's a Zengerle-esque little insinuation. What ethics problem exactly?
The fact that he's a politcal activist, who has friends who are political activists? And that he and his friends sometimes work on political campaigns? Which activity he dully discloses? Or the fact that, as a politcal activist, he participates on political activist e-mail lists?
Every claim of ethical lapses on Markos' part that Zengerle or Suellentrop have made so far has been shot down for good within hours of being posted. You mention in an earlier comment that you want these two to stay on this "beat". What beat? There has, to date, been no credible claim that Markos is guilty of anything other than getting too hot-headed and running his mouth off.
June 24, 2006 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Trust me - Microsoft WILL be going somewhere in due time.
Nobody that braindead lasts forever. IBM learned that, which is why they're still around - but they're no longer top dog.
As for power on the Internet, the term for your server being stomped into the ground from a link reference is "Slashdotting", not "Kossing".
June 24, 2006 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Petey,
Would you be of the same opinion if it is confirmed that Zengerle based his column on a forged e-mail?
sPh
June 25, 2006 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Food throwing? Markos hasn't even said anything.
June 25, 2006 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Would you be of the same opinion if it is confirmed that Zengerle based his column on a forged e-mail?"
Of course. You're not seeing the big picture here.
Zengerle speaks to the topic. See his final paragraph for a better worded answer to your question than I'm likely to be able to compose without making a fresh pot of coffee.
And click thru his final link. It's absolutely irrelevant to the topic at hand, but can that really be real?
June 25, 2006 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
> Of course. You're not seeing the
> big picture here.
.
Well, yeah actually, I think I am ;-)
And you confirmed your corner of it for me.
sPh
June 25, 2006 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
From Zengerle's post:
Oh, please. He publishes false information from a confidential source that he was depending on to violate the trust of a private e-mail list on his behalf, and then says "I'm sorry, but it wasn't a big deal and I am no Stephen Glass"?
That is rich. That is very, very rich. And it tells me how seriously these people take little things. Such as the decision to go to war, perhaps?
sPh
June 25, 2006 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink