Politology has started a coalition of bloggers opposed to the hateful bankruptcy bill. The coalition crosses party lines, as it should — this isn’t a liberal or conservative bill, it’s a disgrace. I am signing on (as myself, obviously, not as Obsidian Wings as a whole.) It’s obviously likely to pass the House and then to become law, but hope springs eternal, and I am a hopeful person. If nothing else, we can show our representatives that we are paying attention, and that selling out their constituents’ interests is not cost-free.
If anyone else wants to sign up, the link is here.
don’t miss brain-dead Lieberman’s “I voted for it before I voted against it” moment.
Added my blog and called Senator Byrd. I hope we can get them to walk back on this legislation. At least we should be able to get rid of asset protection trust once enough people hear about them.
This is a slight tangent, but it’s worth mentioning. Seeing this, and the blinkered “liberals criticizing liberals” aspect here.
Has there been any commentary on the number, frequency, and honesty of the “liberals with liberal values who seem to reserve their criticism and scorn for liberals?”
I count among this group:
Armed Liberal at Winds of Change
Jeff Jarvis
Michael Totten
Are there more?
And it makes me wonder – could any of Ketchum’s 90 million have ended up in these bloggers hands?
I don’t seem to see conservatives bloggers having the same type of issues – particularly targeting criticism to ONLY the members of their own party.
NOTE: Conservatives DO criticize members of their own party, but they usually have even more for liberals. Liberals criticize their own party, but also will go after George Bush.
I may simply be paranoid – what do others think?
And how would one be able to tell?
Michael Totten is supposed to be a liberal? *blinks* Not that I read his blog regularly or anything, but I’d never have guessed that.
Michael Totten has disclaimed being a liberal for some time now, though he’s still clearly formerly one, and clearly one on social issues.
Myself, I wouldn’t quite describe any of those three as “who seem to reserve their criticism and scorn for liberals,” but rather as having varying degrees of interest in doing so, along with criticizing, to varying degrees, various forms of conservatives/others.
Considerable familiarity with the details of each of the three makes clear to me their individual differences, as well, although what unites all three is willingness, or some degree of eagerness, in supporting George W. Bush’s Middle East and allied foreign policies, to various degrees of enthusiasm, and to criticize those who don’t.
The degree to which this means being illiberal is more than a bit debatable, and isn’t an entirely simple topic.
In general, I’d say Jarvis is pretty much a conventional liberal, no matter his emphatic views on Iraq. AL is probably rather broader in his critique of modern liberalism, and Totten is plain cranky about foreign policy, and kneejerk liberalism in general.
Myself, I consider all three honest and sincere and worthy of disagreement and respect, but, then, I’m rather obviously not much of a party-liner, myself, and clearly one should be Suspicious of my own possibly wobbly and dangerous tendencies.
Incidentally, are any of the blog-owners doing anything about either preventing or removing the massive amounts of comment spam infesting and continuing on this blog?
Yes we are, and no it isn’t easy.
There seems to be a problem with the administrative account–lots of commands just time out instead of following through. (This happens the individual accounts too, but not for posting strangely enough.)
But I just deleted a bunch. Thanks, Gary. (As far as I know, all we can do is manually remove them and ban the IP addresses.)
“(As far as I know, all we can do is manually remove them and ban the IP addresses.)”
I don’t know what kind of software you’re using, but I’d strongly suggest that if you can’t use an effective blacklist, that you move quickly to a whitelist, unless you desire to work full-time as a comment spam cleaner, without pay. It’s not going to diminish, you know.
(See something of what’s going on at blogspot here, which I’d add more information to, were it not for the fact that Blogger has again been down all day, just like yesterday, just like much of the past week.)
Cleek,
Thanks for the pointer to Lieberman. He gets my chutzpah award (maybe such an award should be called an “Orphy” after the traditional definition of chutzpah – killing your parents and asking the court for mercy because you’re an orphan).
His press release also raises his already high sanctimony rating substantially.
Gary,
Clearly, Michael Totten has clearly been upfront on his abandonment of being a liberal, and calls himself a neoconservative now.
I believe Jarvis, being the smart and astute marketer that he is, has understood that in the media market, the way to be thought of as a “neutral” observer who happens to also have liberal views, is to loudly and upfront castigate democrats on issues he doesn’t agree with. And its worked for him – big media has accepted him as the interlocuter to big media. Hence the ongoing conversation with Bill Keller.
Armed Liberal is a different bird – the guy is either seriously deluded, if he holds liberals views, and focuses his criticisms the way he does, or, since he doesn’t come off as deluded, there is some other motivation going on.
But, you were closer to the situation, of course.
But since it is bad form to criticize specific individuals, how about we contemplate the general question.
In blogworld, which bloggers described by thes two sentences are more common? And why the difference?
“I hold liberal views, but on my blog I focus my loudest criticisms on liberals, and not much on the conservatives”.
I hold conservative views, but on my blog I focus my loudest criticisms on conservatives, and not much liberals”.
My view is that the first statement is a more common occurence in blogworld.
Gary
Spam first. I think, based on google searching for words like ‘poker’ or ‘Viagra’ and a handful of others in the obsidianwings.blogs.com domain, the folks here have been really working to keep the comments clean. A white list is a good idea, I think they should consider closing comments after a fixed period of time, those old threads are really spam magnets.
As for blogs, I think that Oxblog could probably be put in the category of self-professed liberals who end up taking more conservative positions than one might think is manageable. Oxblog’s Adesnik did have an interesting post where they he resisted being named a neo-con, but claimed that he was a liberal hawk. He says
A lot of people who are attracted to the notion of a universal minimum level of human rights (including me) supported the idea of invading Afghanistan and felt that given the reports of Sadaam dropping people in plastic shredders and massive reserves of WMD, felt that both invasions were part of a muscular ‘liberalism’. Dreams of Bush becoming a Lincoln like figure, elected in a divisive election. Yeah, yeah, I also believe that I’m actually making points when I comment here, so call me delusional.
As for the blogs, admitting that you are wrong is difficult in the best of times, and if you carved out your reputation on the predictions that you’ve made, well, doesn’t make it any easier.
Of course, this sort of tightrope walking leads to the self-impression that you are standing a lonely vigil. My jaundiced perception of a lot of conservatives is that they are able to consistently cast themselves as an endangered minority, so don’t need to convince themselves that they are hewing a line against a confederacy of dunces. The appeal of being the only sane voice in a world gone mad can make people cast aside all reason. Of course, no one is going to hire you as a pundit if you don’t have some hitherto unnoticed/unmentioned view of events that defies conventional wisdom amd if you are conservative, it’s built in, but if you are liberal, you have to work at it. ;^)
“…and calls himself a neoconservative now.”
Does he? If so, I’d missed that, but, then, I never claimed to read him religiously (there isn’t anyone whose blog I read religiously, though there are some whom I read more frequently than Totten).
“I believe Jarvis, being the smart and astute marketer that he is, has understood that in the media market….”
I don’t belive he’s other than a sincere purveyor of his views, of what pleases him and pisses him off, like most bloggers. But that’s just my sense of him, of course.
“Armed Liberal is a different bird – the guy is either seriously deluded, if he holds liberals views, and focuses his criticisms the way he does, or, since he doesn’t come off as deluded, there is some other motivation going on.”
Again, it seems to me his motivation is his opinions, like most any other blogger. And I don’t believe there’s only one simple set of “liberals views,” either. But, then, for the most part, I couldn’t be less interested in scrutinizing people and their opinions so as to determine which pigeonhole to place them into; what interests me instead is closely scrutinizing opinions to see how right or wrong they are, and what I can learn from them.
Hilzoy, thanks for the link. I think I’m both too partisan and too much of a political mechanic to get much joy out of the Politology blog, at least partly because the nuts and bolts of grassroots and netroots lobbying seem to be unfamiliar to the creator(s). As does the concept of one’s party being completely bought by a moneyed lobby… But more power to ’em. I expect to find more useful info at the bankruptcy adjunct to Talking Points Memo, and in Kos diaries.
Basic info that does not seem to be out there yet: the House bill H.R.685 has 83 cosponsors, almost all Rs, and has gone to the full Judiciary Committee and the Financial Services Committee. Check the link to follow up on the info.
Gary,
It’s the contradiction between the stated values, and the rhetoric, that’s interesting. Perhaps it is only interesting to me.
As a tangent related both to this and to the race thread, Gary, I was wondering if you could explain some of your views to me. It seems as if you regard labelling — specifically, the assignment of discrete semantic categories to continua; or of using low-dimensional descriptors (e.g. left/right) for high-dimensional phenomena (like political affiliation) — as more than merely a potentially-poor approximation, but as something actively problematic, worthy of deprecation, and fundamentally broken. Am I correct in this assessment, inelegantly phrased though it may be? If so, could you explain the source of your antipathy?
“It seems as if you regard labelling — specifically, the assignment of discrete semantic categories to continua; or of using low-dimensional descriptors (e.g. left/right) for high-dimensional phenomena (like political affiliation) — as more than merely a potentially-poor approximation, but as something actively problematic, worthy of deprecation, and fundamentally broken. Am I correct in this assessment, inelegantly phrased though it may be?”
Only partially. I don’t think use of labels is necessarily or inherently negative, by any means; they’re both necessary and useful, at times, when used carefully and with reasonable accuracy, and with awareness by all parties of their necessary limitations.
On the other hand, I think that all too often — I can’t really claim either a majority of times, or not, since this would depend upon how one chose a sampling universe — political labels aren’t used with such restrictions, and thus are often — but certainly not always! — more misleading than helpful, which can indeed considerably damage, or at best, distract, useful political discourse and accurate analysis. I’d particularly suggest that all too often, labels become focused upon as a source of argument over the considerably more important discussion and analysis and argument of substance of issues. This is, in my view, frequently — but not always! — a mucked up priority.
Put simply, I don’t think use of political labels is bad, but I do think such use of labels is frequently badly done. Perhaps more than not (and perhaps otherwise), it tends to reduce complicated positions and complicated people to overly simplistic, to the point of considerable inaccuracy, descriptions.
But, then, I did vote for John Kerry, and thus am apt to favor “nuance,” eh?
(And, to be sure, I tend towards the view that if one sees a simple and clear answer to every question, and one can find these answers in every case as handed-down wisdom from a political party, or single alignment, you have to be pretty much not the brightest candle on the birthday cake.)
Put simply, I don’t think use of political labels is bad, but I do think such use of labels is frequently badly done.
Fair enough; that’s more or less my position too.
Neoconish soi disant “liberals” are using a marketing ploy that appeals to the mass media. Since the mass media is allergic to real liberals, but have to offer a simulation of even-handedness, they like “liberals” who either aren’t, really, or who are meek.
Neocon bloggers looking for mass media attention – e.g., speaking engagements and talk show appearances – are happy to present themselves as liberals or, better yet, as former liberals who have ‘seen the light.’
The mass media also like commentators who are not only conservative, but paleo-conservative, with genuinely hateful opinions, as long as they’re attractive blond or ethnic females (Coulter, Ingraham, Barbara Olson, Malkin). Because being a hate-ridden fascist liar is somehow more acceptable if you’re a cute female, and esp. if you’re a cute female ethnic.
esp. if you’re a cute female ethnic.
Which is my cue once again to ask if anyone knows where, specifically, Michelle Malkin’s parents* hail from in the Philippines. I’m betting she’s Ilocano but I haven’t been able to track it down.
* Grandparents, actually; I think her folks are from Metro Manilla. So yes, flying in the face of the previous thread, I’m really asking what race she is.