Like In Vegas

You know when a dealer in Vegas does that things with their hands to indicate that they are leaving, to be replaced by someone else?  I’m doing that with political blogs.  Holy Jesus, have they gotten ricocolous. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place or something, so feel free to suggest somewhere to go, but I’m out of the game now. 

Some lefty sites, which I like to check to see what they are thinking, have gone straight apeshit.  There will be a post about Ossie Davis dying, and the commenters somehow make it about Bushitler, Katrina, and Che Guevara being the saint of the working people.  Sure, the author of the post (the blog) is not what is stupid there, but they should turn the comments off if they are never coherent.  Don’t even get me started about Daily Kos.  Really. It would take daysweeksmonthsyears to spill my guts about that tripe of a site.

How about the right part of the spectrum?  They are worse.  You have some that do indeed march lockstep with the Bush administration, and anyone who disagrees is a straight liberal.  The commenters are even worse, because they should take the high ground, being the party of decency and morality.  See here for a nice example re: Ann Althouse vs. Pajamas Media.  While Pajamas Media is the topic, WTF?  The reason people like blogs is because they are authored by people ranting, factchecking, etc.  So what do they do?  Make rules about it and try to scrape some scrilla.  Yo, put ads on your site.  That’s cool.  But Wonkette proved to me that professional bloggers are needed like an open sore (see link).  Having a code of conduct at all means that your shit sucks.  To finish the diatribe against these schmucks, let me use Little Green Footballs.  That fool links to stories from the dreaded MSM with no analysis, unless it comes in the form of a quip labelling someone anti-semitic.  Yo, guy, just because someone isn’t for Israel or says something bad about an Israeli politican doesn’t make them an anti-semite.  I’m the biggest Zionist I know, and just as it cheapens it when socialists call Bush ‘Bushitler’, it cheapens it to say any form of disagreement is anti-semitism.

What about my old standby?  I used to love me some Instapundit.  Nowadays, I can’t handle it.  Too much “Heh.  Indeed.  Check this out.  Joebob thinks this.  Nice point.”  All linked to something with no context.  Cheerist!  How about a little something to tell me why I should click on that?  He also spends 3/4 of his blog talking about blogs, the impact of blogs on non-blogging things, and MSM vs. blogs.  In the Army, we call that a self-licking ice cream cone.  If you need more of an explanation, you ain’t going to get it.

So I think I’m taking it back to 1998: the protoblog Drudgereport.  He links to an article with a nice teaser headline, I read the article, I think about it and come to my own conclusions.  Despite what the rightwingers want us to think, almost all of the stories these blogs link to are from the dreaded MSM.  It might just be underreported or in a smaller market, but MSM nonetheless.  Michael Yon?  He’s not a blogger: he’s a reporter with a different medium. 

TOMORROW: Stridency In Everyday Life (or, Why Are Superlatives Used In 99% of Sentences?).

~ by kinshay on 2006-01-03.