Blogcritics: Comments on Are conservatives stupid?

Comment by Mac Diva

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:14:47 EST

Hello? I am hardly the source of outting of either Rice or Drudge. I don't think Barger gets away from the farm much or he would know that. Or, if he wasn't opposed to doing research, he could just Google the issue. (Signorile works so hard. It seems a shame to let the credit go to me.) Furthermore, before another false claim about the Diva gets planted, let me emphatically state I have nothing against ice cream. Prefer Breyer's, but it is hard to find out here. So, I settle for Haagen-Dazs. My favorite flavor is strawberry, with butter-pecan second. I eat it during all seasons and have noticed no impact on global warming, Good line at the end there, Jim, I may steal it.

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 18:49:05 EST

To get back to the main topic, are conservatives stupid? On CBC this morning, they interviewed some Repubilicans in Iowa who are trying to copy Howard Dean's internet recruiting. Their biggest complaints about Dean supporters were they were educated, informed, thought about issues before deciding their opinion and active. Forget development of artificial intelligence, the US administration wants to perfect artificial stupidity.

Comment by Al Barger

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:59:53 EST

Diva, the only "revelation" about me digging on Natalie is that you pronounced one out of the blue in this very comment thread [#34]. Not to put too fine a point on it, but her victimhood schtick doesn't get me hard. Craig, Diva has a habit of wanting to out people who may or may not actually be gay, and using that as a little smear. She's playing that here with Drudge. She was making similar implications about Condi Rice a few days ago. It's OK when she does this type of thing though, since liberals are not homophobes. It's a special dispensation of some kind.

Comment by Craig Lyndall

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 13:21:47 EST

Sorry, I said Reynolds instead of Drudge. My Fault. Anyway, I think the Diva and I agree about Clark. I think not reading between the lines on what a military guy says in front of a microphone while still actively involved in the military is a mistake. We don't truly know what a guy like Clark thought, at the time because he has a certain obligation as a part of his job. I am willing to take his opinions now at face value without scouring his past conversations on record to look for inconsistencies. I think it is a baseless accusation of indecisiveness.

Comment by Mac Diva

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 12:35:30 EST

Exactly. I was playing matchmaker for Barger and Drudge, in the wake of the recent revelation that Barger has a thing for . . . Natalie. (I can't help being a Good Samaritan somtimes.) I don't doubt that Glenn Reynolds is heterosexual, though probably in a rather tedious way. Craig, I was thinking the same thing about Clark. It must be very hard for a hardcore military type to say no to any war -- like going against reflex . It also seems to me that politicians who wanted to make it clear they support the war have been explicit about it regardless of party affiliation. Heck, Zell Miller has endorsed Shrub. If Clark wanted to go that route, he would have done so explicitly. I do some adjunct teaching. One of the examples I use to caution students against jumping to conclusions about cause and effect is: Ice cream sales are high during the summer. Murder rates are high during the summer. However, eating ice cream does not cause murder. It seems to me that this kind of basic reasoning error would have to be present for anyone to believe the presence of a given temperature, high or low, anywhere on a given day means global warming is not occuring. Yes, I drop into Free Republic often enough to know those folks eat nonsense like that up. But, I must blame the citizenry on this one. Perhaps people have a duty not to be so stupid.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:32:29 EST

C, she was talking about Drudge

Comment by Craig Lyndall

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:37:15 EST

Ok, I have a couple of issues here so far. First of all, I was with you Brian on the Drudge portion. I thought the whole criticism of Clark being an opinion-hopper was baseless. I mean he is a military guy. His job is to give opinions behind closed doors, but generally military people (while they are still in the military) don't oppose in the press. I think that is a good tradition as they are technically advisers for the President. So, I think even if he HAD switched his "opinion" dramatically that we can't exactly hold Clark 100% accountable because his actual opinions aren't on record. After that you lost me a bit. I think you hurt your good argument by trying to lump Glenn Reynolds in with Matt Drudge. Others have gone through this argument, so I won't do it again. You are 100% correct about the global warming too. I guess it might be a little ironic to give a speech about global warming on a cold day, but it sure isn't the kind of story that anyone should run with because of its significance. Finally, Diva, I was a little disturbed by your characterization of Glenn Reynolds as gay and available and then using that as some sort of ammunition against Barger. Maybe I am not reading it right, or don't have proper context of other arguments or something, but it came off a little anti-gay.

Comment by Al Barger

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 03:03:55 EST

Oh no, Diva. I would carry a torch for you WAY before Natalie. You paint such a delightfully evil, Cruella de Ville figure. You can give up pining over Brian, though. You ain't getting any no matter how much you Tom for him. And that goes for Reynolds too. Brian is MY girlfriend.

Comment by Mac Diva

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 02:22:24 EST

Barger, since Drudge is of your political ilk, gay and available, why not give him a call for what you want? He seems perfect to fulfill your desires. I'll even send a commitment gift down to the farm. It sure makes more sense than the torch you're carrying for Natalie.

Comment by Mac Diva

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 02:11:15 EST

Scott (joined at the hip with Glenn, eh?) I do find that entry patronizing. The subtext is that it is shocking for a woman, and an African one at that, to have brains. The last graf is a dig at affirmative action. However, former InstaPundit fan and longterm white supremacist Steve Sailer got a real thrill out of the entry. He picked it up to use for multiple sneers -- at black people, interracial relationships, immigration and Glenn Reynolds. (Seems they had a parting of ways. Though I find Glenn dubious on racial issues, Sailer decided he wasn't racist enough.) Which raises the question: Why does the InstaPundit keep company with people like Sailer, and his offspring at Gene Expression, anyway? People who believe in the genetic inferiority of some 'races,' as they do, are not exactly mainstream.

Comment by Al Barger

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 01:12:23 EST

Brian- Sorry I'm late to the party. As you can see, I've got the link to our backstory pinged in. It's endearing to see that you were pining away in anticipation of my attention. However, I'm not real pleased that you're expressing interest in UBL. This is UNACCEPTABLE. Trying to hook up with Glenn is bad enough, but this is going too far. I won't stand for it. You might almost have a slightly reasonable beef here with Drudge, and his selective editing. If you weren't so over reaching with it,I might regard the argument more seriously. However, even factoring in your mitigating counterquotes, it does seem that Drudge et al have a legitimate point about the supposed staunch anti-war stance Clark the candidate seems to espouse now versus the far more ambiguous responses from a year ago. Drudge rocks. He's a fine, reliable source. He has (rarely) jumped the gun on a story that didn't pan out- but he's generally been pretty good about making something near equally prominent corrections. He honest. Really though, 95% of what he's doing is just being a media filter- pointing to what he considers the most relevant stories. I find his regular media links to be a useful resource. I just don't see what Eric's beef is. Plus, I would think that you might have one or two kind words for someone such as Mr. Drudge who has managed to get Bill O'Reilly's goat. Doesn't that count for anything? Of course cold weather on the day of Gore's speech doesn't PROVE anything- and nobody says it does. However, it does start to look as if God were mocking Al Gore with a cleverly timed little blast of cold, perhaps just for sport at this point. I'm sure it's tough being Al Gore. Now Brian, I know you don't dare speak my name in the light of day. What would the blog neighbors think? But I know you're going to give up on chasing that silly law professor and come on back to ol' Al. XOX

Comment by Dirtgrain

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 00:10:08 EST

This just in: interest rates are down.

Comment by TDavid

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:17:08 EST

Nothing wrong with business bloggers. John, hit me up by email or phone (number is posted at tdscripts.com) sometime. I'd like to see about the possibility of getting you on a future radio show of ours to talk about your approach to using blogging in your Real Estate business. Seems like you have done really well with that. It would fit the audience of webmasters that we've been working with to encourage starting and using blogs in business the last couple years.

Comment by Brian Flemming

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 22:36:11 EST

Eric Olsen:

I also think everyone should be careful in jumping to conclusions about the motivations and intent of others...

vs. Eric Olsen:

I also don't think Brian is a bigot, but based upon what I have gathered, the wholesale rejection of a clearly narrow-minded Christian fundamentalist past has resulted in a trajectory that is in some ways equally narrow-minded and dogmatic.

Well, I guess this is mostly psychoanalysis as opposed to speculation on "motivations and intent," so it's not entirely a contradiction.

Comment by scott h.

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:57:35 EST

Mac Diva, if you're going to talk about a post you feel is "patronizing", would it really be that hard to link to the post in question? The only post I could find fitting your description was this one, which hardly sounds patronizing. Is that the post you were talking about?

Comment by Eric Olsen

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:50:38 EST

So John, how DO you do the Technorati thing, since it keeps coming up?

Comment by John Mudd

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:45:30 EST

MD, you can view my blog here (or you can wait to see it in Florida Realtor Magazine in February). I am a business blogger. I have never pretended to be someone or something I'm not (ask anyone in the media who have interviewed me because of the business blogs I have created). The fact that I am a business blogger does not put me outside the arena of blogging, as you seemed to infer. However, even though I am a business blogger, I also blog about other things not relating to my business from time to time, when I am both able and willing. Cheers.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:44:55 EST

Hey, Jim's right about global warming - it doesn't get uniformly warmer, but more extreme, which certainly bears out here in Ohio with 65 degrees one week and 5 degrees a week later. Beyond that, "best" is about as subjective and amorphous as it gets when it comes to blogs, but in general I see the better sites rising to the top. There are all kinds of criteria by which to judge, but quality of writing, quality of thinking, uniqueness, originality, personality, reliability and on and on are all matters that bear on quality and traffic, and in the long run the BETTER (not necessarily the BEST, whatever that means) sites generally rise to the top. I also think everyone should be careful in jumping to conclusions about the motivations and intent of others: if you look for the worst you will find it.

Comment by John Mudd

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:43:22 EST

MD, you can view my blog here. I am a business blogger. I have never pretended to be someone or something I'm not (ask anyone in the media who have interviewed me because of the business blogs I have created). The fact that I am a business blogger does not put me outside the arena of blogging, as you seemed to infer. However, even though I am a business blogger, I also blog about other things not relating to my business from time to time, when I am both able and willing. Cheers.

Comment by Mac Diva

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:27:25 EST

John, it seems to me, most of us are in the arena. By which I mean blogging, with the exception of people who are just using the blogosphere to build traffic at non-blog sites, like Vaknin. Glenn, you don't show appreciation for a person by patronizing her. Using the Nigerian woman as an opportunity to sneer at affirmative action (which as an immigrant she does not qualify for) was also shameless. Since you haven't figured it out for yourself, a good rule of thumb is not to pat a woman or a minority on the head for anything you would not do the same for if she were a white man. For example, if bhw wins a Pulitzer, by all means congratulate her. But, don't act flabbergasted because she can think, for heaven's sake. We recently had a discussion at Blogcritics about Condi Rice that I think you would find it beneficial to look at. Dawn posted the entry.

Comment by John Mudd

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:15:16 EST

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat."-Teddy Roosevelt

Comment by Glenn Reynolds

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:03:38 EST

Gee, Mac Diva, I guess it's hard for you to imagine that I might genuinely respect her and be in awe of her abilities. But keep it up guys. This kind of criticism doesn't hurt -- it just demonstrates the nature of the critics.

Comment by scott h.

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 18:18:35 EST

Now, Clark's position is that it was "the wrong war at the wrong time". Maybe it would have been helpful to mention that to Congress instead of urging them to authorize use of force if the UN failed to act. It's one thing to change your mind, another to claim you've been consistent.

Comment by Brian Flemming

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:58:24 EST

Content from blogs usually can't be trusted.

Tell me about it.

Comment by Mac Diva

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:43:18 EST

Bhw, in my opinion, brown-nosing of popular bloggers is probably the most destructive aspect of the blogosphere. Right behind untalented bloggers attacking talented bloggers because they're resentful. That can harm the talented bloggers' traffic while building traffic for the know-nothings, but it can't give them ability. So, people end up linking to and citing the least able bloggers out of cowardice and stupidity. The impact of both problems is to make this little corner of the world very unreliable. Content from blogs usually can't be trusted. Brian, I addressed the piggy-backing issue in regard to Sam Vaknin, a Blogcritic who does not even have a blog. What he does have is a site where he pretends to be a doctor dispensing medical advice. From it, Amazon and a few other online-only sites, he sells a self-published booklet and pamphlets about Narcissistic personality disorder, which he may have. He posts the same material scores of times all over the Internet to keep his site high in search engines. Here at Blogcritics, he was second only to Eric in number of posts last month. (I predict he will become the leading poster if allowed to. He appears to do nothing but repost material all day every day.) Those posts consists of recycled material, with a paragraph changed here or a headline there, that have been published all over the 'Net for years. This is what happens when people focus more on number of pings and/or visitors than worth of content. Obviously, I don't have any clout here, but, if I did, the behavior of a Vaknin is were I would draw the line. Going along with a fraud cheapens the site.