May 20, 2005

5/20: A Tale Of Two Stories

The activity on the political blogs today brings into sharp focus the tendency of the blogosphere to focus, equally and simultaneously, on stories that are getting a wide airing in the MSM and those that are not.

The "are": A New York Times report on U.S. military findings about the deaths of 2 Afghans in captivity and related charges against American soldiers. The timing of the article feeds the Newsweek controversy while to some degree diverting attention away from it. There is widespread disgust and outrage concerning the charges, though it is expressed more reliably by the left. For many on the right, this is a further example of the MSM's habit of undercutting the U.S. military.

The "are not": On the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) called Dems' jud. filibusters the "equivalent" of Adolf Hitler occupying France. That didn't go over so well. This is probably as good a point as ever to explain a term that is almost universally understood in the blogosphere, but rarely shows up elsewhere: Godwin's Law. The term originates from online message boards (something of a precursor to the blogosphere), where debates would often devolve into unchecked hostility. In 1990, atty Mike Godwin posited: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." In such cases, the discussion is pretty much over. In short, the adviso is to refrain from calling your opponents Nazis -- you'll just look stupid.

Meanwhile, the blogosphere is hopping with plenty of other news: conservative blogs are calling attention to a newspaper union official who claimed the U.S. military is purposefully targeting journalists -- remarks reminiscent of those that cost ex-CNN exec. Eason Jordan his job earlier this year. Travis Co., TX DA Ronnie Earle, who is investigating House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay, comes under fire for criticizing DeLay at a Dem fundraiser. And the filibuster debate continues to run hot. Plus, there's plenty of Star Wars talk out there again today, but we've left it out. If you're looking for blog discussion of "Revenge of the Sith," Technorati has you covered.

TRACKBACKS: Maybe The NYT Was Jealous?

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

• The New York Times does not lack for attention: Matt Yglesias; Arthur Chrenkoff; Huffington Post; This Modern World; American Entropy; Silflay Hraka; War and Piece; DailyKos; Instapundit; AMERICAblog; BuzzMachine.
  
  

  >> Right Wing News, in a post titled "Liberal Hostility To The Military": "For example, part of the reason Abu Ghraib has gotten so much attention & the press keeps churning out 2 and a 1/2 year old stories about soldiers working over prisoners is because liberals can use it to smear the troops. 'See? That's what they're all like behind closed doors! Sadistic savages.'" GOPer John Cole takes the charges more seriously: "These may be isolated incidents, but when a lot of shit starts piling up, as it is, you have to be flat out dain-bread to ignore it. Given the tin ear of my party lately on the issue of torture and abuse, that might just be the case."
  

  >> TalkLeft: "You can read the actual documents here. They were not cooked up by Newsweek or the liberal media. Or even the dead men's defense lawyers. What will be the Adminstration's response? Take your choice: (1) It was the work of a few bad apples, or (2) There is no credible evidence to support these claims." Liberal Angry Bear sarcastically titles a post on the subject "Damn You, Newsweek!" More: "Now anything bad that happens in Afghanistan or Iraq over the coming days will be the fault of the New York Times; anything good that happens will be due to the Newsweek retraction, and the Bush administration's leveraging thereof. It's perfect." Liberal Rising Hegemon: "It says a great deal about why American policies are going to shit. Many regular Corner contributors and other, even worse, troglodytes, of course, don't think you should know any of this."



• It's worth noting that the first available transcript of Santorum's speech was posted to the lefty amateur news site Raw Story, and in the absence of any MSM outlet picking up on it this morning, it continues to attract at least as much attention as the Times story above. Among those linking: Political Wire; PoliBlogger; Life in Bush's America; The Moderate Voice; The Airing of Grievances; Signifying Nothing; Fear of Clowns; The Heretik; The Left Coaster; Thoughts from Kansas.
  

  >> Further down in today's Blogometer is a round-up of takes on Santorum more substantial than "Trackbacks" was designed to handle.

JUDGES: There's A War On, You Know

"DavidNYC" at Daily Kos: "One claim the GOP likes to make is that they were justified in blocking many of Clinton's judicial nominees in the 90s because they were in the majority in Congress. ... Only problem is, that story isn't true. Even when the Democrats held a 56-44 advantage in the Senate in 1993 & 1994, the Republicans still tried to stop nominees they didn't like." The judge was ID atty John Tait, and "DavidNYC" quotes from a '94 Lewiston Tribune: "Two months ago, U.S. Sens. Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne successfully blocked Tait's confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee." He adds, GOPers are "trying to rewrite a period of history (as they often do) that's just a little bit beyond the edges of recent memory. Of course, we won't let them."

Conservative Power Line catches ABC News doing a "rewrite" of their own, reporting that GOPers filibustered the civil rights act, and commenting: "If you check ABC's site now, you'll see that they have silently corrected the error. I would have thought that pretty much everyone knew that it was Democrats who filibustered the civil rights act. The fact that this howler got by the eagle-eyed editors at ABC raises, once again, the question whether the fabled multiple levels of editing and review that the MSM are always telling us about actually exist."

Liberal Marc Cooper: "Fighting to oppose objectionable presidential judicial nominations is an honorable and worthy cause -- but it's about number seventeen on what should be a list of real political priorities. This is not going to galvanize some new Democrat majority. Quite to the contrary."

Captain's Quarters: "I've held off mentioning the Not One Dime campaign, where Republicans have pledged to withhold all 2005 contributions to Senate campaigns and the national party until the GOP forces a vote on the Byrd option and eliminates filibusters on judicial confirmations. Now that Bill Frist has moved to do that, we need to make sure that we continue our pressure on the individual Republican Senators to ensure they support the motion when it comes up for a vote. Please call the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121, and ask to speak to at least one of the 'wobblies' today." He offers a few tips to potential callers, including: "Don't just be polite; be friendly and sympathetic. The staffers are not enemies, and they're overworked and underpaid."

At TalkLeft, atty Jeralyn Merritt compiles a list of previous posts arguing why jud. nominees Priscilla Owen and Janice Brown should not be confirmed, and encouraging readers to call their Senators, provides a Senate phone number for them to call.

DailyKos diarist Bob Johnson: "The real issue isn't abortion or gay marriage or religious nuts controlling the Republican Party. And we better pull our heads out of our behinds and get the big picture or we risk losing a lot more than just the filibuster fight. The battle over judges is about MONEY. Greed. Exploitive capitalism. What all battles are over with the Cheneys and Roves and DeLays of the world. Rove and Cheney don't care about abortion. And, I suspect, they don't care about the religious right, either, except as these zealots serve to further their own Rovian Republican goals. ... Rove and Cheney want to stack the courts with pro-corporatist judges. Period."

DELAY: Run, Ronnie, Run

Right-leaning blogHOUSTON, on Travis Co. TX DA Earle's negative comments about DeLay at a Dem fundraiser: "Money and politics are and will forever be intertwined. blogHOUSTON advises readers to be wary of politicians, bloggers, pundits, or anyone else who sanctimoniously suggests one political party is somehow more pure than the other on the topic of money and politics." Conservative JustOneMinute picks up on the post as well. His headline is aimed at Earle: "Activate The "Auto-Discredit" Function." Conservative Pejmanesque: "Go ahead. Investigate Tom DeLay. But maybe get another prosecutor."

Liberal, TX-based Off the Kuff: "I'm not going to claim it was a smart idea for Ronnie Earle to give a speech at a fundraiser for a brand-new Democratic PAC. ... Stick to civic groups and reporters until these cases are resolved, Ronnie." More: "But let's say for a minute that he is blinded by partisan zeal ... Let's not forget, he's planning to retire soon, and I'm pretty sure one or more of his executive assistant DAs will want his job when he does. Are they all equally blinded as well, to the point where they can't see their own ambition and the effect such a fiasco would have on it? Don't you think one of them might have seen the writing on the wall and resigned loudly, so as to maintain political viability for later? You'd have to believe in the irrationality of an awful lot of people to think otherwise."

Liberal Glenn Smith: "Many years ago I represented one of the Democratic officials Earle indicted. Despite claims of partisanship, Earle has prosecuted many more Democrats than he has Republicans. In any case, I was young and stupid, and tried to make Earle the issue. My client pleaded out."

SANTORUM: You Can't Do That On Television

To see a WMV file of Santorum's remarks, click here. To see it in QuickTime, click here.

At Eschaton, lefty Duncan Black draws attention to Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) comparing Senate Dems to "Adolph Hitler in 1942": "Once upon a time an organziation called Move On ... ran a little ad creation contest ... and a couple of them admittedly crossed the line by making Bush/Nazi comparisons. Those ads were yanked immediately by the organization, but are nonetheless used to this day by the liberal media to smear Move On as an irresponsible 'extremist' organization. Now we have the junior Senator from Pennsylvania comparing the entire Senate Dem caucus to Adolf Hitler. Will the 'Move On' standard of the liberal media still apply?" At Tapped, Jeffrey Dubner asks the same question. "Digby" at Hullabaloo just assumes that's how it will be.

New England Republican, on Santorum's comments: "I miss the days when we would just say I don't agree with you, let's vote. That being said, no Democrat could really attack Santorum over it considering their leadership has all said something similar." Liberal Arch Pundit, on the same: "For the record, I don't think Santorum is a fascist. I do however think he's a jackass. I thought Byrd's reference was dumb, though it was within a fairly complicated discussion of the issues---this is just craven stupidity."

Dem blogger Oliver Willis lists GOP blogs that hadn't mentioned the Santorum comments as of 8:18 EDT on 5/19: Instapundit, Power Line, Blogs for Bush, NRO's The Corner, GOPBloggers, Andrew Sullivan, LaShawn Barber, Michelle Malkin, RedState.

One of the few top right-leaning bloggers to note it early on is John Cole of Balloon Juice, who titles his post "Senator Godwin." He quotes Santorum and comments: "Sometimes I just want to start bitch-slapping people." Later he updates to promote a comment to the main body of the post: "This may be one of the best comments ever: 'In Santorum's defense, he is really really dumb.'" Another is righty UCLA prof Eugene Volokh: "The precise nature of the equivalence with Hitler, I regret to say, escapes me. And in the absence of such equivalence or at least a very close similarity, it seems to me to be both unfair and in bad taste to compare your adversaries to Hitler, even when the analogy -- a rather weak analogy, as I mentioned -- is simply to his hubris rather than to his atrocities."

David Sirota: "These extremists are so out of touch and out of control that they will say anything -- no matter how offensive -- to get their way, even if it means contradicting themselves in the process." Santorum Cybergate: " Who let the (GOP attack) dogs loose? Who? Who?? WHO??? What a surprise, it's... TRICKY RICKY SANTORUM"

BLOGS VS. THE MSM I: Easongate Redux

JunkYardBlog: "Eason Jordan has an imitator. Her name is Linda Foley, and she is the International President of the Newspaper Guild. According to this site, she is also president of Communications Workers of America, the nation's largest broadcast and journalism workers union. Foley is, therefore, a big deal." At the '05 Nat'l Conf. for Media Reform she said: "Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or... ah, or... ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um... in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq." And: "They target and kill journalists... uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al --, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity..."

JYB's B. Preston adds: "Linda Foley had better offer proof of what she said or step down from her jobs. Tossing up unsubstantiated smears of the US military, especially in light of what Newsweek's smear led to in Afghanistan last week, is unconscionable and unacceptable."

The post has picked up a number of links throughout the conservative blogosphere since it was posted, and Preston has since added updates.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM II: Moran Goes To The Front Lines

ABC News WH corr. Terry Moran, who asked WH spokesperson Scott McClellan the question about who "made him editor of Newsweek," went on Hugh Hewitt's radio show on 5/18. Radioblogger has the transcript.

Wall Street Journal's James Taranto quotes Moran: "There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous." Taranto adds: "It may be that the bad habits the media learned during those years will fade away as older journalists and executives retire and younger ones move up the ladder."

Ace of Spades HQ focuses on a more contentious segment, where Moran "says the White House has no right to criticize the press. That whole dissent/accountability thingee seems to run in only one direction." He adds, Moran "accuses Hewitt of practicing 'demagoguery,' and seems strangely uninterested (shock!) in Kerry's failure to release his full military records, as he promised."

WRKO radio in Boston has replaced its weekend Newsweek Internat'l radio feed with a radio show hosted by the bloggers from Pundit Review.

BLOGS VS. THE WORLD: Little Old Bloggers From Pasadena

Calblog's Justene Adamec announces: "As the influence of blogs grows, more often bloggers are gathering news directly in addition to commenting on stories from the traditional press. The Bear Flag League is putting together a summer conference on bringing bloggers and newsmakers together." The event will be held 7/17 in Pasadena. Sacramento Bee columnist/blogger Dan Weintraub is the featured guest. The Bear Flag League is a loose association of mostly right-leaning bloggers from CA.

WHITE HOUSE '08: The Third Way?

Ex-Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger writes, "the law of averages says that one day a third party will have the right issue(s) and the right candidate to win the presidency. And right at this moment, far fetched as it seems, that that day might arrive as soon as the presidential election of 2008. I'm beginning to believe the issue is there and what is needed now is charismatic candidate to rally Americans in support of that issue. The issue: open borders and illegal immigration. ... If the day comes when terrorists launch another successful attack within the U.S. and it is found that the terrorists walked across the border from Mexico how will the president explain it? How will congress defend its refusal to act? ... It seems obvious at this moment that both parties have become complacent about the problem. And in politics complacency, as the Democrats learned in the Republican sweep of l994, is the sure road to defeat." Note: No permalinks -- see 5/19 post.

MD-based conservative David Wissing, on the expected protest of ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) at Loyola: "Unfortunately [Cardinal William] Keeler decided he would rather make this personal between himself and Rudy Giuliani instead of celebrating the graduation of these kids. Feel free to disagree, but I still believe ... Keeler is dead wrong in this case and it is unfortunate because I am sure he is a sincere person."

SOCIAL SECURITY: Another Twist

Andrew Sullivan: "One of the intellectual gurus behind Bush's social security plans has withdrawn his support for private accounts. Right now, I'd be happy to have real cuts, Pozen's means-testing scheme, and voluntary add-on accounts. Bush could claim victory -- and he'd be right. It would be a victory to wrestle social security onto a more secure footing. Then maybe we can get to grips with the Medicare nightmare."

IN THE STATES: Kilgore Gets An Assist

Commonwealth Conservative: "I hear that the Republican Governor's Association is going to begin running ads on Friday on behalf of ['05 GOV candidate/AG] Jerry Kilgore (though Kilgore's campaign evidently had nothing to do with the ads). I don't know what they are going to say, but I'm told that they are powerful."

WA liberal blog Horses Ass, on '04 WA GOV candidate Dino Rossi's (R) strategy in contesting the election: "In recent days, the Rossi camp's spin has veered away from the felon vote, and back towards the 'total mess' thesis ... an unsurprising tactic considering the number of offsetting illegal votes the Democrats have alleged. But this shift is also likely due in part to the report" -- summarized in the post -- "recently issued by the Democrats' expert witness, Christopher Adolf, who effectively exposes the Republicans' data as 'unrepresentative', their methodology as 'flawed', and their entire case as 'hopeless'." Note: No permalinks. See "Rossi's hopeless case."

Dem-leaning Our Senate cites a poll showing Rossi leading Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) for '06, and writes: "Lucky for us, its very unlikely that Rossi will run. However, with only a 47% approval rating, Cantwell needs to get her campaign going now."

Conservative NYC blog Slant Point: "Slant Point will be offering regular interviews with Republican candidates running in New York this year. I recently had a chance to pose ten questions" to NY SEN candidate Adam Brecht, "a young PR exec who has been campaigning since last year" against Sen. Hillary Clinton. Other blogs to do interviews with Brecht recently include Alarming News and GOP Bloggers.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: File Under 'We're Pretty Sure This Is Just A Clever Marketing Campaign'

Not so much a thought as an amateur investigation into a slightly unbelievable website:

The Zero Boss brings our attenton to the announcement of a supposed forthcoming glossy magazine that will put bloggers on the cover: "Hold onto your hats... it's Blogebrity magazine! Because, you know, Nick Denton and Wonkette don't get nearly enough coverage. ... And what kind of f---ing name is Blogebrity? It sounds like someone trying to say "celebrity" while vomiting. It's one of those words that should be pronounced by a doctor, and suffixed by '...and that's why you only have six months left to live.' I mean, this is cruel and unusual. Why would anyone hate bloggers enough to want to make celebrities out of them?" The widely-read Instapundit cites the Zero Boss post and writes: "This is a parody, right? Please let this be a parody."

Blogebrity indeed looks to the Blogometer like an obvious parody, and its recently-launched associated blog is conspicuously short on content. A Whois search shows that the site was registered on 5/8 by an L.A.-based company called the Gawp Network. Gawp appears to be represented on the web by Gawp Daily, which at looks a bit like Denton's Gawker and reads like Denton's Sploid.

An e-mail from the Blogometer to "Blogebrity" was not returned by deadline. We'll update this if/when we hear more. The exercise reminds us a bit of James Lileks' investigation (scroll to "April 5 update") into the "Virgil King of Code" blog ads, which he found to be sponsored by Audi (see 4/8 Blogometer).

LEST WE FORGET: If There's Anything A Blogger Likes More Than Blogging, It's Not Blogging

AutoBlogger is the website for a fictional product which "uses a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence algorithm to 'read' the public entries of your journal/blog to triangulate a sense of your writing style. From that point forward, any time you hit a writer's block, want to take a vacation, or simply wish to step away from your computer for a few days, AutoBlogger can be set to take over, using what it has learned about your posting and writing patterns to author original content in a voice consistent with your existing prose." The faux campaign is modeled on Apple's "Switch" ads, including a video similar to Apple's TV ads (featuring website creator Kai Chang). There is also a testimonial page. Some highlights:

"Arianna Huffington": "Do you really think most of the halfwit 'celebrities' who contribute to my blog even know how to write a complete sentence? So really, it's not like anyone noticed when I switched to AutoBlogger anyway."

Daily Kos' "Markos Moulitsas": "You think I have time to blog? Fighting right-wing corporate interests is a full-time job, all the more so since we've been abandoned by the DNC. Screw them."

Wonkette's "Ana Marie Cox": "Before AutoBlogger I was called a profanity-laced and sex-obsessed vain, young, foul-mouthed tramp. With AutoBlogger, I can finally live up to the hype."

Posted by at May 20, 2005 12:00 PM