Friday, February 11, 2005

Don’t read “Blog”

Via Digby (read the whole post) from the Los Angeles Times review of Hugh Hewitt’s “Blog:”

People who pick up the book “Blog” are likely to think that it’s about blogs. For the most part, it’s not about the Internet phenomenon of blogging, the term for individual or group Web-based chronicling and instant publishing. Rather, this book is a sustained effort of partisan hackery aimed at further eroding trust in what the author Hugh Hewitt calls “mainstream liberal media,” which for him means anything to the left of Rush Limbaugh. This regurgitated mantra, in the hands of skilled marketers, can be applied to the latest hot brand - in this case anything to do with blogs.

And from the Crooks and Liars review, samples of his rightward tilt:

Pg. 108: on Atrios, Hugh says: Hard left, incoherent, actually. But big traffic.


On Daily Kos: (brief history).... He is also an off the wall lefty, willing to say anything.


Pg. 113: A final word on ideology and the blogosphere: there is currently a talent gap. The political left is seriously behind in the promotion and development of bloggers with insight and good humor. It maybe that the early entrants such as DailyKos, Atrios, and Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo have set a tone of self importance combined with coarseness that has repelled would-be bloggers, or that Peter Principle bloggers with energy but not enough talent have taken up valuable shelf space.

C&L concludes: “I find it outrageously hypocritical (I’m not really outraged) to read a guy that stands on his soap box, preaching about the aspects of “liberal bias” when he’s as guilty as “sin” in promoting his own version of right wing propaganda.”

More Bush fake media exposed

Now that I have only basic cable, I depend on the web. The “Jeff Gannon” story is owned by the bloggers. And they have the video:

Here’s Wolf Blitzer on CNN with the first post-resignation story.

Here’s Catherine Crier on Court TV with David Brock.

Here’s John Aravosis on Aaron Brown’s Newsnight. And the Transcript.

Here’s a sampling of the softball questions with a transcript of McClellan’s expalnation of how he got his White House press pass.

This is must-see TV. (With Crooks and Liars who needs cable?)

John, of AMERICAblog has done great work on this story. He emphasizes it’s not a sex story, it’s another Bush fake media story. Kos has done great stuff too, gathered under the Daily Kos Republican thread. Without the blogs, this story would not have shown up in the mainsteam media (CNN, NYTimes, Boston Globe and my guess is the Sunday chat shows).

Read the rest of "More Bush fake media exposed" in the extended entry.

Lynne Cheney a liar?

From blogACTIVE - the photo alone is worth the click: Yesterday on Fresh Air, listen here, “author & historian” (?) Lynne Cheney denied writing a novel about lesbian lovers. Did she? Judge for yourself; WhiteHouse.org has the pertinent parts.

Maybe she just misspoke. A common occurrence among those on the right. Here’s one from Ann Coulter. Here’s another from Bill O’Reilly. Via The Last Minute.