Wednesday, March 20, 2013

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT.

Rightwing pennysaver the Washington Examiner will no longer be handed out at Metro stations to all comers every day, but instead become a wingnut weekly in which the street-level reporting and 87 employees are replaced by double portions of "commentary" on why Obama is Hitler.
The product will offer news, analysis and commentary on national politics and policy, and its targeted readership will be roughly 45,000 professionals in government, public affairs, advocacy and academia, Clarity said.
Yeah, the same 45,000 people who ask each other every week if they've read the new Cal Thomas column.

This seems to be the new reality for the conservative world of makework in the Age of Obama II; like the factota at The Umlaut and other feeder streams for thinktank babies, they have begun to abandon the idea that their work might make a difference.

It used to be easier to believe that it did. For decades now, the allegedly liberal media has actually been thick with right-wing voices, from the lofty George Will to the humblest rightblogger. Every newspaper, even the communist flagship New York Times, has its Douthats and/or Brookses, albeit in lower-rent versions. The papers are scared not to have them; otherwise who would they point to when someone screams bias? (Not that it stops the screaming -- conservatives will be screaming about bias until the last newspaper lines the last birdcage, and for years after -- but having them aboard allows the papers' management to feel they've done something reasonable, though I wonder if a few of them don't actually feel bullied.)

It never mattered how brutal or crazy these guys' ideas were, either; they were the serious opposition, and had to be granted perches from which they might be heeded. This enabled and emboldened them. They also seemed to understand that what had gained them their perches was no better credential than that they were different from the "politically correct" milquetoasts the public was used to. So they leaned on that. If liberals maintained, for example, that the least among us deserved protection from want, conservatives cried for them to be given less, ever less, lest the welfare queens and strapping young bucks destroy America. Not only did they get away with it -- they had an effect on the discourse and then on policy.

Things got even worse during the early days of the Iraq War -- happy anniversary, baby! -- when conservatives became so comfortable with their own increasingly loud and bellicose voices that they got a lot of non-conservatives to howl along with them. And this too had an effect on policy.

But since the economy collapsed, things have changed a bit. There's not much market for market worship these days. And when you run a presidential campaign based on how the producers know better than the moochers -- well, you saw how that worked out.

Conservatives aren't going away -- their long spate of affirmative action has firmly ensconced them in the public discourse. But the Examiner, at least, seems to have lost faith.  For a while they could at least tell themselves that by running a by-God newspaper with lots of that local stuff local folk love, they were getting into the hands and winning the hearts and minds of the common people. But now they're going to stop covering school board meetings and city council hearings, and just regurgitate propaganda for like-minded souls. This will achieve nothing in the way of political outreach, but it will achieve what I expect remains important to them: It will keep their jobs. Because someone is still paying them to do it -- just like someone is still paying for The Umlaut and Liberty Island and Bill Whittle videos and Acculturated  and PJ Lifestyle and many such otherwise pointless exercises.

If the Examinoids really believed what they affect to believe, they'd recognize themselves as the moochers they are, apologize to old man Anschutz for wasting his money, and seek honest employment. But they're what we might call cafeteria capitalists; they don't want the hard stuff; they won't sacrifice anything real on the altar of the Dollar. But they'll step right up when the celebrant hands around the bread.

147 comments:

  1. "they'll step right up when the celebrant hands round the bread" is one of the great lines you've ever scrawled, Roy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ... now, who the hell said it.
    And, seriously, fuck the war-suckers so endlessly much.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume10:31 PM

    And when you run a presidential campaign based on how the producers know better than the moochers -- well, you saw how that worked out.


    Well yeah, when you redefine "moocher" to mean so much of the country that you're including white people, you've stepped over the line.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Spaghetti Lee10:41 PM

    It's also worth mentioning how important it never was. Mr. and Mrs. average news consumer may be annoyingly unacquainted with the facts, but they tend not to be acquainted with conservative rituals either. The number of people who actually watch Fox News every day is quite small, and the fractally-nested blogs of right-wing crazies are smaller still.


    I'll be optimistic: i think the far right bloggers' project to displace existing truth and install themselves in its place has not succeeded. I also think they've lost power since the Bush years. Sure, people still listen to them more than they should, but ultimately they just can't get anyone to care. Their writing has gotten crazier partly because the whole point of the Tea Party is to let the conservative id run wild, but also because the only people who will listen anymore are other conservatives. Like you said, there's no point in even trying to appeal to a mainstream audience anymore.


    Hey, it feels nice being optimistic! Well, on the other hand, there had been a lot of death-of-conservatism stuff written about this time in 2009.

    ReplyDelete
  5. whetstone10:48 PM

    My reaction is slightly different, colored by recent happenings in my industry*: faced with a decline in print ads, the Examiner is realizing that you can gut the product and still make money from advertiser inertia for awhile. And if there's a race wingnuts can win, it's the one to the bottom.


    *The local Time Out was purchased for $4m so that they can fire everyone, shutter the print edition, and go online only with a skeleton crew, because obviously online is where all the money is. Yes, a hedge fund is behind this--why do you ask?

    ReplyDelete
  6. montag210:51 PM

    Not at all oddly, this is what has distinguished wingnut welfare from the very start. There's a continuous stream of money to keep right-wing memes in circulation. The really crazy libertarian billionaires did and continue to do one thing that the left (always strapped for cash) never did--they funded their operations even when there were no apparent gains made, or to be made, year in, year out.

    Money buys a lot of staying power.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Tehanu10:53 PM

    "The product will offer news,..."
    The PRODUCT? I am now totally convinced that these, er, individuals are actually soulless slime creatures from the planet Gargh. Human beings don't talk like that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. BigHank5310:59 PM

    On the bright side, it shows that even a wingnut can learn something after attempting to polish a turd long enough.

    ReplyDelete
  9. They're in marketing... so your speciation is correct.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love you. It's that simple.

    ReplyDelete
  11. KatWillow11:12 PM

    Do the Kocks and Dimons and other corporate-made billionaires struggling to get their hands on ALL the money realize what parasites they are? I doubt it. Calling them moochers would be a compliment. In fact, they make lamprey eels look bad.

    ReplyDelete
  12. My first thought was to wonder how many of those 87 reporters will wind up replaced by volunteers (sorry, "freelancers working for exposure"). There will always be a market for ads in local publications, but journals of opinion (whether print or online) have never exactly landed the big ad contracts. The only way this thing makes a dime is to cut expenses to the bone, and since the opinion people are untouchable, they'll have to cut from the useless departments, like reporting and photography.

    ReplyDelete
  13. According to conservatives, they've been held down by the man since "Shimmy shimmy ko-ko-bop". At least.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Jay B.11:43 PM

    Thank God there'll still be an outlet for Byron York and editorials that lay out in strong terms that the President is a socialist.

    ReplyDelete
  15. AGoodQuestion12:05 AM

    "It gives you an erection, it wins the election."


    Or at least that's the hope.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Boog Powell12:08 AM

    Now what are you supposed to soak up Camden Yards puke with on the Metro?

    ReplyDelete
  17. AGoodQuestion12:11 AM

    Like Jason Voorhees, they look dead but have another sequel lined up.

    ReplyDelete
  18. montag212:12 AM

    Didn't work for Bob Dole, though....

    ReplyDelete
  19. Don't make me think of Doles' dough.

    ReplyDelete
  20. "Cafeteria capitalists" is awfully good, too, but I also have to give the nod to Edroso's finishing move, the Super Mammon Piledriver.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Horta Dubstep12:27 AM

    "It lengthens... and it strengthens..."

    ReplyDelete
  22. Re: The Ezra Klein apology Roy linked to, I think Charles Pierce has his number
    . It's annoying how few liberal hawks are willing to own up to their support of the war, but this halfassed apology, larded with excuses for his idiocy, is worse.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous12:36 AM

    I know this if off topic but I'm looking into starting my own weblog and was curious what all is required to get setup? I'm assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny?
    I'm not very web smart so I'm not 100% sure. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

    My homepage stiftung warentest krankenkassen

    ReplyDelete
  24. Spaghetti Lee2:04 AM

    This Wonkette bit about being "paid in exposure" is one of my favorite "laugh so that I may not weep" pieces recently: http://wonkette.com/504574/here-let-the-atlantic-explain-at-you-about-why-they-do-not-pay-people-for-their-work



    Because I barely got through my high school level math and physics classes, I'm finishing an English major with a journalism and history minor. All three groups have their never-gonna-find-a-job black humor, but the Journalism classes have been particularly morbid. They had one guy come in and say that public relations-type stuff is the future of journalism, and tried to gently let us know that our dreams of journalistic objectivity might not be totally realistic.


    As an inveterate slacker, my theory is that the kids who were first-chair violin/Student Council president/yearbook committee head/Model UN delegate all at once in high school are now out there working 80-hour-a-week internships for no money, driving themselves crazy and fucking up public expectations of people actually being paid money for their work.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Spaghetti Lee2:06 AM

    You know how some stuff isn't milk or cheese but 'dairy product?' This is news product.

    ReplyDelete
  26. tensor3:09 AM

    "It never mattered how brutal or crazy these guys' ideas were, either; they were the serious opposition, and had to be granted perches from which they might be heeded."

    They suffered from too much success, which meant their ideas were tried out in reality, which was their defeat. Bill Clinton signed surplus budgets? NO HE DIDN'T IMPEACH HIM. Al Gore winning the Florida vote in 2000? STOP THE COUNT BURN THE BALLOTS. W. was an inebriated ignoramus who had fled from a combat role? IRAQ WAR 2 CHURCHILL. Global warming? LIKE EVOLUTION JUST A THEORY. On and on and on, these paid cheerleaders imagined themselves to be the quarterback, and the longer the game wore on, the more convinced they became.

    Finally, it all collapsed around them: Iraq and Afghanistan expensive failures, their triumph of free-market capitalism collapsed in housing-bubble fraud, W. abandoned save for a 27% dead-enders who won't even speak his initial, a half-black son of an immigrant elected over a palefaced military legacy. Sure, they then had a fake "tea party patriot" cosplay rave confected for their amusement, and four years of improving economy they could enjoy without admitting to it, but then the polls showed the immigrant's son beating the Prodigal Son. Even though the latter was not their first nor second choice, POLLS R SKEWED and 300+ ELECTORAL VOTES.

    And even that failed. Gays were *voted* marriage equality. The War on Drugs -- their last war standing! -- got knifed by hippie potheads in Colorado and Washington. There's a lesbian serving openly in the Senate, chapping their closeted asses. Agitprop and denial met their match in reality, a reality of an electorate less white and male than ever. Sure, they can advocate vaginal probe-rape for poor slutty slut slut-sluts, but the dream of national back-alley butchery is lost forever. Hence, their flight from anemic fact-gathering, headlong toward total obloviation. (Alas, rich Buckley, we knew ye well...)

    ReplyDelete
  27. Big Hank53: Yes they have. It's that if you want to continue polishing turds, hire an unpaid intern. The polishing will continue....

    ReplyDelete
  28. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:41 AM

    Is it irresponsible to speciate? I think it irresponsible not to.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:42 AM

    by-product.

    ReplyDelete
  30. It would be refreshing for a change if the heroes didn't wander away from the climactic final battle wherein the face-eating alien is barely defeated, forgetting about the sequel. Let's go search out those space-hardened eggs lying in wait, and smash every last one of them. Fuck the franchise--I'm getting tired of fighting the same battles every 7-year cycle.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Halloween_Jack7:32 AM

    Klein was too worried about keeping his membership in the same Kool Kids' Klub as Megan McArdle to do any really serious thinking about having to pay the piper down the pike, so now he's pulling the "well, I was just a college kid" routine without acknowledging that there were a lot of college kids who also knew better.

    ReplyDelete
  32. aimai7:39 AM

    On the day I got my Ph.D. in Anthropology, from a top University, my advisor met my then boyfriend who had received his Ph.D. in Computer Science the year before. When I introduced them my advisor asked what my BF did? When I said Computer Science he nodded sadly and said "Well, that's good, at any rate." And he was proved fuckin' right since we've been living off of his field ever since.

    ReplyDelete
  33. aimai7:40 AM

    I'm thinking that "News" is now gossip's by product.

    ReplyDelete
  34. The guys who come up to you in the laundromat to explain to you how Proctor & Gamble is a devil-worshipping company dedicated to creating clever subliminal logos with satanic imagery were always meant to be a part of Democracy, I believe. Surely, they existed even in Colonial times. But their purpose, I believed, was to give face to the folly of extremism and motivate responsible people to remember their duty in a democracy to remain ever vigilant of the dark madness that we created modern democratic civilization to guard against.


    Either I was gravely mistaken, or something mysterious happened to allow Laundromat Guy to become a Senator.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Halloween_Jack7:58 AM

    Nothing mysterious, really--they were assigned the right-side frame of the Overton Window. That they've grabbed the frame and tried to drag it even further toward the lunatic fringe should come as absolutely no surprise except to the smooth operators who set them up in the first place, and whose knowledge of real laundromats (not to mention public buses and libraries) is sadly limited.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Is it as simple as financially backing the lunatics? That still leaves the question of "why"? Why did we let that happen? Why does anyone with privilege want to destroy society? Why did we allow such people to gain disproportionate power to shape the national zeitgeist? And so on...

    ReplyDelete
  37. Derelict8:03 AM

    Maybe not the death of conservatism, but the continuation of its present spiral into meaninglessness. It's well beyond the point where conservatives are speaking to each other in a code that is increasingly unintelligible to people who are not already part of the inner precincts. Were it not for the most determined efforts of the general media to constantly push the "both sides do it!!" meme, the Republican Party would have long ago shrunk to the size of the Glibertarians.


    BTW, I am now convinced that the reason we saw zero mainstream coverage of the CPAC race-outburst is because there was absolutely no possible way to come up with some sort of "equivalent" event on the left. So, since this was a clear case were only one side was doing it, it could not be reported.

    ReplyDelete
  38. redoubt8:04 AM

    Kraft durch Schadenfreude

    ReplyDelete
  39. redoubt8:34 AM

    Evaporated Filled News Product

    ReplyDelete
  40. Doghouse Riley8:35 AM

    It's often noted that the phenomenon of the right-wing journalist sinecure began with Nixon's war on the Press, but it's seldom mentioned that the capitulation was swift. At a time when "most Americans got their news from television" the networks quickly 1) added on-screen "Commentary" labels to their regular news editorials, and 2) almost as quickly made the editorials themselves disappear. The driving force behind that wasn't Tricky Dick's rhetorical skills, nor a reappraisal of what "fairness" meant; it was the mass-market media owners' realization that the future would belong to telecommunications, and the President held the key to the vault.

    No one understood the coming home computer, and the internets were still a gleam in Al Gore's eye (this is obvious from just how flummoxed The Media would be twenty years later), but they did get what they sought then: relaxed (to the point of elimination) rules on media ownership, anti-trust protection, and a reversal of English common law, which would have given landowners the right to capture any signal sent across their property.

    It's telling that once "the opposition"--then as now defined as "the sort of anti-fluoridation whackjobs who seized the GOP in 1964"--was installed on the Alternative Truth desk the drive for balance was complete.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Doghouse Riley8:36 AM

    George Eff Will has contributed more to the history of baseball than of political discourse.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Halloween_Jack8:39 AM

    Why does anyone with privilege want to destroy society?


    They have no personal use for this "society" you speak of. They want the biggest, gaudiest castle they can get, and an endless supply of peasants to fuck and work to death, and to whittle away at this middle class that thinks that they have "rights" until it consists of a few courtiers.

    ReplyDelete
  43. aimai9:41 AM

    The current New Yorker as a jaw droppingly terrifying article about one of Australia's mining billionaires, the wealthiest woman in the world, in fact. She is a woman of stunningly poor education, hygiene, tact, grace, humanity and even maternal feeling. And yet she knows that because of her wealth she should be in charge of everything and be deferred to and--yes, loved by all. Underlying her ceaseless machinations to destroy minimum wage laws, to create tax free zones, to force her children into doing what she wants is a seemingly bottomless sense of personal injury that she isn't beloved and respected and looked up to like (say) the Queen of England or some other imagined aristocrat by birth or talented self made person.


    Everything we've ever joked about here in terms of the right wing/upper class/wealthy fantasy of being feared and loved, feared and respected, honored and admired in popular culture is dramatized in that article. Its not enough for this bitch that she (and her father) made money off the deaths of their workers from asbestos poisoning or that he dreamed of using nukes to dislodge the mineral wealth he sought, or that global warming will quickly turn her little fiefdom into a living hell--she wants to be loved and admired too.


    fuck 'em all.

    ReplyDelete
  44. BigHank539:48 AM

    CBS ran their news department at a loss for decades, out of a sense of responsibility to the nation. When the deregulation bug bit everyone in the early eighties, guess who decided the news shows should pull their own weight? Say goodbye to stories that might make advertisers unhappy!


    It's pretty much a direct line between there and Fox's bullshit red-meat-for-real-men twenty-four hour circus.

    ReplyDelete
  45. aimai9:51 AM

    I also think that there is a kind of code of silence among public figures and their media hounds about just how crazy the kind of person who shows up at political meetings really is. It was recently discovered that a major player in the Texas Tea Party was a member of the short lived "Fascist Party of America." This actually freaked out the very people who had been having him on their radio shows or worked with him in the tea party more than I would have thought--as though the word fascist still had some residual world war II style meaning for the modern republican party. But one of the things one of them said really struck me as true. She basically said "look, you have no idea who walks in off the street to work with you in a political setting. Its scary but its the truth." And it is the truth--I've volunteered in canvassing and I've been to political meetings and there are always a few people who are one step up from homeless, insane, severe personality disorder. That's as true on the left as the right. Political movements and places where there might be company and free donuts bring out lots of kooky people.


    That isn't to say that a white supremacist is an unexpected or unwanted influx at CPaC. Just that I think its easy for the organizers to play on the sympathy of media personell with the old "we werent responsible, no one knows that guy" thing.

    ReplyDelete
  46. aimai9:53 AM

    Tastes Great! Less Informing!!


    or


    Nobody can believe its not News!

    ReplyDelete
  47. aimai9:54 AM

    Man, that kid could write a 750 word chin stroker on his choice of masturbatory fantasy girl friend and make it dull.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Derelict9:57 AM

    All very true, and well worth remembering.


    On the other hand, perhaps they were freaked out by the former fascist because of Jonah the Fail's scholarly "Liberal Fascism" book, which revealed the Tea Party member was really a liberal trying to infiltrate their ranks.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Provider_UNE10:07 AM

    And if there's a race wingnuts can win, it's the one to the bottom.


    /golf clap


    The Purge of anything that might resemble quality or trigger a critical thought seems the order du jour. it is somewhat reminiscent of Pol Pot and Stalin. As much as the John Birch Society railed again' Communism, (and as the original re-branding effort by the KKK to become something related to a simulacrum of relevance) they certainly have proven to be jealous of the regime.


    I follow this shit mostly like an Indian in the old western follows a train. I need to know when I need to toss my glasses by the wayside and appear to be sub-normal (i.e stupid.)


    I nave forgotten my style sheet rules but is the current convention desire the period inside the parentheses or out? Thanks in advance.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  50. montag210:12 AM

    If the parentheses come after a complete sentence ended with a concluding punctuation mark, then the parenthetical remark stands on its own and gets a concluding punctuation mark, inside the trailing parenthesis. If the parenthetical remark is dependent upon a sentence for meaning, and completes the thought of the sentence, then the concluding punctuation mark comes after the trailing parenthesis, because it completes the sentence, and not just the parenthetical remark.

    ReplyDelete
  51. This from The Examiner's spokescreature:


    "The product will be created from opinion modules created by specially designed writing units which require little in the way of maintenance or nutritional sustenance. The modules will be assembled by computers running language recognition software incorporating algorithms to successively weight key words; ie "Birth Certificate, Kenyan, Marxist, Socialist, Nazi, Freedom, etc." and printed on paper recycled from dogfood can labels and AR15 ammunition boxes. The product will be consumed by previously lobotomized human-appearing meat puppets which will form the nucleus of a soon-to-be-created community which will exist on free-floating barges off the coast of South Carolina and run by ex-congressman Paul Ryan. That is all."

    ReplyDelete
  52. Maybe, but he would never blow off Chunky Reese Witherspoon...

    ReplyDelete
  53. I read that article, and if Gina Rinehart's assault on society can succeed in Australia, where more than anywhere else on Earth the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" and respect for the "Fair Go" flourishes, it can happen anywhere.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Provider_UNE10:54 AM

    Because I barely got through my high school level math and physics
    classes, I'm finishing an English major with a journalism and history
    minor.


    The former is why I did not attend MIT (my fourth grade first college choice) to study cosmology and astrophysics. and the latter resembles my drift to the Humanities with a History/Poli Sci major followed with a psych minor. After paying for a semester and a half I realized that I had developed the requisite critical thinking skills and could read books written by people smarter than me (or more experienced.)

    As an inveterate slacker...

    About 20 years ago I coined the phrase "Lower Leisure Class" to describe the lot of the crew I was rolling with at the time.

    As a former second chair French Horn Player (First chair is playing for real money) and former Senior class President (the first of two extremely alternative candidates...they put the cork back in that bottle and the bottle in a safe.) Obviously I do not fit the target of your thesis which I think is sound with reference to 60-80 hour unpaid internships.

    I feel that I was lucky when I realized that I could get paid to learn the shit I wanted (and that is a long list), so a job at the bicycle shop introduced me to the wonders of the oxy-acetyline torch and the fundamentals of mechanical engineering.....


    tl:dr
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  55. Provider_UNE10:56 AM

    Having had a gig doing IT in an Ad agency/ PR shop, I wholeheartedly concur.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  56. Provider_UNE10:59 AM

    Money buys a lot of staying power.

    There is no other way that the Bircher/Goldwaterite wing of the party could have ever managed to manage a leveraged buyout of the Republican Party.


    ...

    ReplyDelete
  57. Mr. Wonderful11:04 AM

    (And don't forget it.)

    ReplyDelete
  58. Good thing we voted for Hope and Change here.

    =>In other words: despite Obama's rhetoric against "trickle-down economics," he shows himself here as a top-down type of guy, one who believes, above all, in the aristocracy, and doesn't much care about these underwater homeowners, or any other victims of banksters (such as the purchasers of mega-banks' trashy AAA mortgage backed securities).

    To him, causing losses to the people who had tanked the economy would have been "cratering the financial system." So, Obama chose, instead, to crater the bottom 99.9% of the economy, not this fraction of the top 0.1%. And this also explains why he refuses to prosecute any banksters - it would harm "the financial system," in his view.<=
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  59. Leeds man11:06 AM

    W?hat(

    ReplyDelete
  60. Mr. Wonderful11:17 AM

    All true, and nicely put. Meanwhile, on the Marshall McLuhan front, you have the opposite: While the elders and betters are all relentlessly being proven wrong by actual history and real life, on the Internet not only does no one know you're a dog, they don't know you're a semi-literate crackpot, either. Every cretin and/or lunatic whose Theory of Everything used to be single-space-typed on the back of copy shop flyers and stapled to telephone poles, now "publishes" spell-checked, Times Roman docs that look composited and proof-read at Princeton.

    If the difference between Pam Geller and Charles Krauthammer isn't orthographically obvious, what's a wingnut to believe?

    ReplyDelete
  61. Yeah, I speak from experience. A very SHORT experience. I was looking for a job and this one firm had what amounts to a cattle-call. Come one, come all, jobs for everyone. Well, the introductory speech was so laden with steer-excrement and so obviously geared towards making us hide certain fees from costumers and yet also so very, very boring that it made my brain confused over wether I should vomit or fall asleep. I walked out instead.

    ReplyDelete
  62. All I know is, screeds from both should be in Comic Sans.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Mr. Wonderful11:21 AM

    Finally, I get to write:


    I Can't Believe It's Not Butthurt.

    ReplyDelete
  64. whetstone11:22 AM

    This is actually good advice for future journalists. A lot of the people who are sought-after have serious programming skills; one of the things the Chicago Trib did right during the shitshow Zell years was build a "Web Apps" team that does data analysis and mapping. And they can't keep them. I've learned how to map data but I'm a crap programmer.


    Spaghetti Lee: my advice is that advertising is a better fallback than PR (though I'll admit, as an inveterate smartphone eavesdropper, something like 60% of the people on my bus are in PR). It seems like more fun, pays well, and at least pays the bills of journalism rather than being its frenemy.


    There's also nonprofit PR work, which pays for shit but seems way more interesting; the people who I know who do nonprofit PR/communications actually are engaged in the stuff they're pitching.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Heurstic Analog Rental Meat.
    Trust me, I'm their agent.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Mr. Wonderful11:22 AM

    Thank you. You may pick up your Internet at the loading dock after 5 pm.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Former Examiner staffers?

    ReplyDelete
  68. Yeah, almost-certain control of the House of Representatives until 2023, another shot at capturing the Senate in 2014, Wisconsin getting flushed down the crapper by a Kochsucker, a polytheistic vulture capitalist with negative charisma getting 47% of the vote for president ... It's actually pretty depressing how much power these reactionary psychopaths still wield. Especially when the opposite side is still supposed to meet them more than halfway.

    ReplyDelete
  69. So, Obama chose, instead, to crater the bottom 99.9% of the economy,


    Fucking causality, how does it work?

    ReplyDelete
  70. Thank you (Now can you tell me how to do links?).

    ReplyDelete
  71. whetstone11:46 AM

    This is why Billmon's blog was absolutely crucial. I'm not that much older than Klein, and I remember the attitude but what if we did it right? Billmon, who'd been there, knew: they will fuck this up.

    ReplyDelete
  72. I've never really understood how they got so many people. prominent or not, all tooled up for a second war that had shit to with the first one.

    ReplyDelete
  73. When I said Computer Science he nodded sadly and said "Well, that's good, at any rate."

    Someone needed to tell me that to warn me away from the natural sciences.

    ReplyDelete
  74. The next Twilight, ready to go.

    ReplyDelete
  75. XeckyGilchrist12:27 PM

    The key is the word "tool." They felt like the ragheads had insulted their dicks, and blood had to be spilt. Racist macho dumbshits don't pay much attention about which country is which.

    ReplyDelete
  76. Notice that I did not object to Derlicts in my political party meetings.

    ReplyDelete
  77. XeckyGilchrist12:28 PM

    There needs to be a "mechanically separated" in all this somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  78. I LOLOLOLOLOLO'ed

    ReplyDelete
  79. Anonymous12:33 PM

    Ηi mates, goοԁ article and gοoԁ aгgumеnts commented
    here, Ӏ am genuinelу enϳoying bу these.


    my blog; Chemietoilette

    ReplyDelete
  80. Let's hear it for those second chair French Horn players!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  81. Actually I just heard an interview with a guy on Tom Ashbrook's show "On Point"--he's written some kind of book or booklike object about the present moment and the problem of trying to make sense of the crashing meteor shower of information that comes at us when we lack historical and political background.


    What struck me as useful in this little bit of historical/media hysteria was some word which I can't remember which combines something internety with the concept of paranoia--a kind of heightened false sophisticated pattern seeking (its was something like "inter-noia" or otherwise uneuphonious neologism.)


    I think he's wrong to believe that this is new or that it isn't aided by serach engines and writer bots such as the one described in the comment above. There's a generic reason why conspiracy theories flourish on the net (lots of humid manure in which they can marinate) but there's also a reason why the conspiracy theories tend to divide up along lines dictated by corporate and anti corporate factions.

    Here's a quote from the Amazon site:

    Rushkoff weaves together seemingly disparate events and trends into a rich, nuanced portrait of how life in the eter­nal present has affected our biology, behavior, politics, and culture. He explains how the rise of zombie apocalypse fic­tion signals our intense desire for an ending; how the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street form two sides of the same post-narrative coin; how corporate investing in the future has been replaced by futile efforts to game the stock market in real time; why social networks make people anxious and email can feel like an assault. He examines how the tragedy of 9/11 disconnected an entire generation from a sense of history, and delves into why conspiracy theories actually comfort us.

    ReplyDelete
  82. Or, rather, I should say "us second chair French Horn players."

    ReplyDelete
  83. Michael Farrell12:37 PM

    satch,


    <*a href="the URL you're linking">your own label


    Remove astericks and that should work.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Michael Farrell12:40 PM

    Damn you, Disqus! Was supposed to be a after the word "label. And where did my handle go?? I've been made!!

    ReplyDelete
  85. Well, yeah. I just figured (hoped) there was more to it than that. Some better rationale than that stupid speech to the U.N.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Every time I think I'm out...they pull me back in.

    Not going to come out and play Ittdgy. If you need someone to join in your eternal back and forth, BDSM style Obama hate why don't you find someone who enjoys it? The guy is far from perfect, politically speaking, but he has put his god damned life and family's safety on the line to pursue some policies which a whole lot of people think are going to make a whole lot of people's lives better in the short and long run. What the fuck have you ever done for society, and at what personal risk?

    ReplyDelete
  87. Sanitized for your reading pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Years ago in one of his Modesty Blaise novels Peter O'Donnell made fun of a similar type of Australian billionaire. The guy can't get any cultural respect so he steals art and then steals art curators and professors to show them his magpie collection and then has them killed so they can't report back what they've seen. He's referred to as the Unspeakable Antipodean.

    ReplyDelete
  89. TGuerrant12:46 PM

    I can see a backdoor for hackers - insert "moobs" in the keyword string and countless photographs of Rush Limbaugh will be displayed, driving down readership even further and running up Getty's royalties to skynomic levels. Getty, in fact, should supply the damn hacker.

    ReplyDelete
  90. TGuerrant12:55 PM

    The Washington Times has done the same swan dive. Started out with flouncy pronouncements about broad readership and deep coverage and then scaled back (now at least three times) to serving an elite readership with narrow coverage.


    Were it not for the deep pockets of their crazy owners, neither the Times nor the Examiner would ever have existed - the business case was never good for either one of them - and would not continue to exist in their Vanity Rag forms.


    How their crazy owners managed to get so rich while being so crazy - that's one of my big fascinations. Am I not crazy enough to be rich? How crazy I gotta be? I keep trying harder...

    ReplyDelete
  91. Haystack12:56 PM

    obloviation


    I like it!

    ReplyDelete
  92. Ok, but would she blow off him?

    ReplyDelete
  93. "fuck 'em all"

    [slowly, methodically lights cigarette dangling from his lips; dons dirty helmet purposefully without securing chinstrap; then follows this comment willingly into the din of battle]

    ReplyDelete
  94. aimai1:00 PM

    Is Obloviation what happens when you absentmindedly read enough Washington Examiners to choke yourself into unconciousness with your own rage flecked spittle?

    ReplyDelete
  95. El Manquecito1:13 PM

    No, then you're oblovious

    ReplyDelete
  96. KatWillow1:15 PM

    Perhaps, as is the case in Science, the question should not be "why" but HOW.

    ReplyDelete
  97. redoubt1:24 PM

    Reasons? A few:
    1) "Hello. My name is George W. Bush. You tried to kill my father. Prepare to die."
    2) The idiots behind Project For a New American Century were sure, so sure, that unlike every other military planner since before Sun Tzu, their plan was going to survive contact with the enemy.
    3) SEMIDOCO (Secure Mideast Oil Co.).
    4) John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. When Congress was debating, they went sniping in The Land Of The Pundits, and when Congress stopped, so did they.
    5) Major networks, Fox News and CNN. Who was going to be the new Scud Stud?

    ReplyDelete
  98. Spaghetti Lee1:25 PM

    HARM?

    ReplyDelete
  99. I'll see you on the Judo range!

    ReplyDelete
  100. Halloween_Jack1:47 PM

    The anecdote about her and Prince Philip--where she gets into an event for the visiting royals, wearing a hat about the size of the forward hull of the Starship Enterprise, but can't bring herself to tell him what it is that she does--makes me think that she's about a pallet-load of Kleenex away from being the distaff Howard Hughes.

    ReplyDelete
  101. I know all the stupid and/or actual reasons. I just held out hope that the american populace wasn't that easily deceived. You know, like they came up with a brilliant lie to believe in.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Halloween_Jack1:57 PM

    I've sometimes wondered if the campaign staff of various political parties share a "Ratfuck List" among themselves of people who are not allowed to volunteer for their party's campaigns because they're known members or sympathizers of another party who try to sign up either to directly disgrace the campaign, or simply to do things like dump pamphlets or yard signs in the nearest dumpster instead of distributing them.

    ReplyDelete
  103. Halloween_Jack2:06 PM

    I really wonder about its supposed readership; there may indeed be a heavy overlap with Cal Thomas' readership, but WaPo's assertion that it was "popular with riders of the Metro transit network, where it’s widely distributed" makes me think that people used it to hide behind so that they don't have to make eye contact with potential panhandlers, or hide their tablets or smartphones from potential electronics snatchers. There will be that much less newsprint to line birdcages with, but at least self-conscious canaries won't have to struggle to evacuate with the gimlet gaze of Timothy Carney looking up at them.

    ReplyDelete
  104. aimai2:08 PM

    Yes, that was a very weird little incident. Both because she was ashamed/annoyed that he had'nt been properly prepped to know who she was and also because the temptation to use her nearly chance meeting with him to puff off her consequence caused her to respond to the papers with a snuffy correction just to see her name in print with HRH nearby.

    ReplyDelete
  105. TomParmenter2:10 PM

    Hey, it's 'asterisk', or 'Asterix', not 'asterick'. I wouldn't say anything, but this is a little pool of purism.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Haystack2:32 PM

    Those two litle posts are just riddled with fuck-ups. But thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  107. TomParmenter2:37 PM

    Michigan J! represent!

    ReplyDelete
  108. TomParmenter2:42 PM

    The Will baseball book is as out of date as the rest of his work.

    ReplyDelete
  109. French Horn players rule! French Horn players drool!

    ReplyDelete
  110. Wait, Haystack, you're actually Michael Farrell? Ooh, I loved you in Providence and the live-action version of Astericks the Gall. :-P

    ReplyDelete
  111. ... Sorry; :-P.

    ReplyDelete
  112. willf2:55 PM

    they were the serious opposition, and had to be granted perches from which they might be heeded."



    Yeah, why was that, exactly?

    ReplyDelete
  113. ... wearing a hat about the size of the forward hull of the Starship Enterprise,

    One moment! Apropos of Professor Kaufman's recent LGM comment thread about nerdery, are we talking original Enterprise / A, B, C, D, or E? Because that's crucial to the anecdote.

    ReplyDelete
  114. willf3:05 PM

    but he has put his god damned life and family's safety on the line to pursue some policies which a whole lot of people think are going to make a whole lot of people's lives better in the short and long run.

    Gaaaah, aimai, I can't actually believe you really think that.

    I mean, I get the impulse to defend the guy, But come on, really?

    ReplyDelete
  115. Derelict3:36 PM

    at least self-conscious canaries won't have to struggle to evacuate with the gimlet gaze of Timothy Carney looking up at them.


    I would have thought their struggle would be not continuously evacuate all over Carney in an effort to make him go away, thus leading to the canary risking fatal dehydration.

    ReplyDelete
  116. aimai4:01 PM

    Missed my own joke "If its a chin stroker, he's doing it wrong."

    ReplyDelete
  117. aimai4:03 PM

    Yeah. I really do believe that. A) I think the ACA is going to save 40 million people's lives. Not many people will ever get a chance to say that. B) I think that Obama faces a heightened risk of assassination and did from very early on in his campaign, perhaps less so now. C) I deeply resent the continued invocations of right wing themes like "you voted for hope and change" and look what you got. I got substantially more for my vote than I would have not voting and praying, or voting for McCain or Romney. Those being the only choices offered to me: I'm satisfied.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Halloween_Jack4:31 PM

    Oh, let's say D--it's got that lateral width that's crucial to a really ostentatious toque.

    ReplyDelete
  119. the Examiner is realizing that you can gut the product and still make money from advertiser inertia for awhile.



    I'd bet they also realize that a large general audience is less valuable to advertisers than a smaller one that will buy anything if you stoke their paranoia and/or flatter their patriotism.

    ReplyDelete
  120. Gotta be better than something written by Jonah Goldberg...

    ReplyDelete
  121. smut clyde5:24 PM

    obloviation
    Suffering from Oblomoviation, myself; I would do something about it but I can't quite muster the energy to get out of bed.

    ReplyDelete
  122. smut clyde5:28 PM

    "Tall Poppy Syndrome" [...] flourishes

    Sadly, no. There is a lot of talk in Oz and NZ about this alleged syndrome, but it emanates in its entirety from media impersonalities who sense that they are not receiving the popular adulation they deserve.

    ReplyDelete
  123. smut clyde5:28 PM

    one of Australia's mining billionaires


    She writes Vogon poetry, too!

    ReplyDelete
  124. satch5:44 PM

    Not to mention MASH...

    ReplyDelete
  125. AGoodQuestion6:09 PM

    Put 'em in Wingdings and they'll make just as much sense.

    ReplyDelete
  126. satch6:25 PM

    Wikipedia told me that the syndrome's use in Oz is different from the rest of the Anglosphere due to Aussieland's "long history of underdog culture and profound respect for humility." Thus, its use there is not always negative.

    ReplyDelete
  127. AGoodQuestion6:25 PM

    I attended something similar somewhere near the end of the last century. It was a personal products startup that was looking to build a sales office hear in Pro Town. The guy giving the spiel tried to make it sound like the opportunity of a lifetime, and fun to boot. Skipping over the details, I concluded that:
    1. I hated this guy
    2. I'd hate myself worse if I became him, and
    3. If - and this was the most likely option - I failed to become that guy, I'd be out of a job with nothing within a month.

    ReplyDelete
  128. smut clyde6:32 PM

    Some Wikipedian may have written that... but I have only ever encountered the term when used in the Australian media, and it is only ever used by celebrities, as an explanation for the lack of respect paid to them by commoners.

    ReplyDelete
  129. Joe Blow7:26 PM

    I wonder if a lot of journalists are just afraid of being screamed at by maniacs. They have to learn how to deal with that.

    ReplyDelete
  130. willf8:29 PM

    I'm sorry that you think those are your choices, and I am sorely frustrated that you think no one can criticize Obama without them being a rightwinger (or using their frames). Just because your voting choices are limited it doesn't mean that all your actions are similarly limited to that same false dichotomy.

    I guess If you had said that Obama's there to pursue a whole lot of policies which some people think will make some people's lives a whole lot better I wouldn't have cause to disagree with you.

    It's the placement of some versus a whole lot which is the sticking point.



    (Further, ittdgy doesn't focus solely on Obama, but strangely, your response almost always does. Funny that.)

    ReplyDelete
  131. Tehanu9:32 PM

    "Further, ittdgy doesn't focus solely on Obama, but strangely, your response almost always does."
    Incorrecto, chickenlips -- at least, the specific post aimai was responding to (just a few paragraphs up) WAS focused "solely" on Obama. So WTF? And ittdgy wasn't criticizing Obama for specific things (something I often feel like doing); he was announcing that he could read Obama's mind and that every decision Obama ever made came out of whatever paranoid bs ittdgy attributed to him. Not the same! So again: WTF?

    ReplyDelete
  132. Another Kiwi9:40 PM

    That's an insult to Vogons

    ReplyDelete
  133. OK... I obviously shoulda stuck with "underdog culture' and "profound respect for humility."

    ReplyDelete
  134. The_Kenosha_Kid2:27 AM

    You did IT? I knew I had seen you somewhere before...

    ReplyDelete
  135. smut clyde6:21 AM

    The links are coming from inside the thread!

    ReplyDelete
  136. aimai9:37 AM

    I think what I object to in ITTDGY's iterations of his/her point is the dripping personal antipathy towards Obama. If he's just a functionary/apparatchik who is no better than he can be because each and every democratic presidential candidate who can win has to be a bourgeouis tool then why hate on him? He's just doing what is necessary and natural to the role the voters thrust on him. Personally he seems like a nice guy to me--he can be a nice guy and stillb e terrible politically but critique him for his political acts not in this reflexive and somewhat salacious, brooding and personal way.


    The other side of this is the ITTDGY's observation, which was directed at me personally (that is, it was an off the cuff response to something I'd written on another topic entirely) was an other repetitive slap at Obama's voters who are presumed to have been so stupid and so ill informed that they voted blindly for a slogan--and that is a straight up Republican framing--and they are being castigated for their folly and their childishness. I get it: ITTDGY thinks that all politics and certainly all democratic politicians are liars and cheats. But I don't think that the majority of Obama's voters thinks that they didn't get something for their vote--in fact many things for their votes. I went into the election with my eyes wide open and although I have my many quarrels with both Obama and the Democratic party I think, on balance, they have delivered a lot of stuff I think is important against tough odds.

    ReplyDelete
  137. it's got that lateral width that's crucial


    IYKWIMAITYD.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Halloween_Jack11:40 AM

    Your Rule 34-fu is superlative.

    ReplyDelete
  139. The echo chamber is getting more hollow.


    I can't even imagine what "journalism" is going to look like in 10 years.


    People tailor their news consumption to meet their own confirmation bias ("This is what I've been saying all along!"). Looking at the right wing sites lately, they no longer even try to pass themselves off as journalism, or even debate points - these stories couldn't convince an ideological opponent of anything.


    It's preaching to the choir through loaded headlines.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Provider_UNE9:09 AM

    Throw on a goatee and you got it....
    :)


    But then we have met in meatspace, so you would be a proper judge...
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  141. Anonymous5:02 AM

    The Gгeeks and Romanѕ have publiс baths and less grаndiose Eгotic Маssаges
    offering dаy sessions. Withοut CΥA, uρ tо the οutdοoг mаѕsage rοoms bеhіnd the villаs.

    Тhese pгoducts range in prісe frοm $45 for a 25-minutе Upρer
    oг Loweг Bodу Sωediѕh mаssage to help you to be able tο get by ωith an aged Аtom prοcеsѕor.


    my wеbsite sensual massage London

    ReplyDelete