The Young Curmudgeon

Back from the Dead . . .Maybe

Well, life continues even if you don't blog. Here's the update: The crazy, high stress, long hours job I obliquely referred to the last time I posted lo six months ago was being a New York City rental real estate broker. Um, I'm not one anymore. It turns out that even if you get totally obsessed with it and work 7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day doing everything you're told will further your career you still don't necessarily succeed. Who knew?

I've been out of the real estate hustle for about a month now and the time has been pretty much filled with copious amounts of television viewing, with some wine drinking and nice home cooked meals thrown in for good measure. Times is tough. With both me and Kim not really working full-time simultaneously since August of 2004 we're really starting to feel the crunch. We had to cancel both HBO and Netflix. I don't know which hurt more. This is a particularly sad state of affairs when you don't have the money to go out and a bottle of pinot, some chips and hummus, and a night of HBO/Netflix is the most exciting thing you have to look forward to. I can't explain my disappointment at not getting to watch the first new season of The Sopranos in five years or whatever. Why am I so upset? It's not even like I'm a huge fan of the show, which I've always thought is way overrated and which has gone way downhill even on those terms. It's at not being part of the whole pop cultural conversation. I hate being unaware of anything pop cultural. It makes me feel disconnected from my own country. That's why I can't fathom people who don't know who major actors, singers etc. are.

Actually, to me Big Love looks like the much more interesting show. And, on the level of purely of artistic merit, I'm much more disappointed to be missing it. I wanted a friend to start watching it for me so I could live vicariously through her, but it turned out that polygamy disturbs and disgusts her more than anything else in the world, so she couldn't even watch it.

In fact, the Netflix wasn't completely cancelled but it restarts this month. It seemed cheaper to just turn it off for a few months than to completely stop it and pay fees for restarting. To give you an idea where my life's at spending yesterday updating my queue was one of the most exciting days I can remember in a long time. I forgot to mention that I've seen nothing in the theater for the last six months to a year because of the lack of money.

The very first film I wanted to see was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I grew up on those books. They didn't convert me to Christianity like I guess they were supposed to, but they were the predominant adventure/fantasy series of my life. In fact, I didn't get into Tolkien until after the movies came out. Then, I finally read the trilogy as an adult and was of course blown away. I'd be hard pressed to say which series is better now. I love them both, but it means more to me to see an attempt at real high-budget film series of Narnia because those books meant so much to me as a kid. To not have  seen the primary adventure series of my life turned into a movie on the big screen still really bums me out, but this will have to do.

Next, I went for King Kong. You see, it's all about catching up on the big movies (not films, in these cases), the pop cultural artifacts which form the national conversation, which make you less American if you've missed them. The conventional wisdom on this third version of King Kong was that it was too long. It's even better if you say that the original 1933 version was a true classic, meaning of course that it's really old. Well, King Kong 1 was too short. It was barely 80 minutes long if that. Sketchy and way too quick. I'm so certain of Peter Jackson's filmmaking brilliance that I'm willing to say that the people who bought in to the easy joke that this one was too long were the same philistines who thought Return of the King was too long, when in fact it was just barely as long as it needed to be in order to be remotely faithful to the source material. I'm certain that King Kong 3 was amazing, the primitive vision of the first one wedded to filmmaking techniques and directorial ability which can truly make that vision come alive.

Then I went straight to Brokeback Mountain. At this point I started thinking about my last six months or so of being totally unaware of news, blogs, etc. How there must have been all these debates about these films carried on on blogs that I was blissfully unaware of, debates where everyone predictably played their tired roles and fit the films into their tired preconceptions and political cultural biases. I was still following stuff when Lion was about to come out. What I remember then was that more liberal critics were savaging Lewis for being so Christian and saying the explicit Christian content was a weakness of the books and the film. In turn, Christian right types, like Ross Douthat, were essentially saying the film was only worthwhile if you viewed it as a Christian allegory. I'm assuming that's how the debate continued to play out.

King Kong didn't have much of a political angle, but I'm assuming amongst film critics and the public at large it had the predictable comments of: 1)The first one was so much better and 2) It was too long and that was pretty much how the movie settled into the national consciousness.

With Brokeback what more do I need to say. You probably had the social conservatives saying that it was nothing more than another insidious attempt by liberal Hollywood to cram the gay agenda down our throats. Meanwhile, I'm sure liberal critics pretty much thought that anyone who didn't think the film was great (which for all I know it was) was a homophobe. Actual discussions of the film as film were probably few and far between. I remember seeing somewhere that someone wrote that it wasn't a great love story as everyone else was saying, because it was depressing and the relationship between the two men was destructive, which seemed kind of weird to me seeing as how true love is seldom pretty and often destructive.

I then went on to Walk the Line, probably not much annoying axe-grinding there. Then I went indie with Coffee and Cigarettes, not really part of the big national conversation. From there it was Jarhead. I'm assuming the right wing blogosphere didn't like that if there was the slightest hint that it was a trifle ambivalent about war. There was probably also a lot of confusion of the war depicted in the film with the current one. The liberal critics probably played their part by just assuming it was a hard-hitting critique of the current war.

Did I miss anything? Did this pretty much describe exactly the media and blogosphere reaction to these films?

The rest of my queue went as follows: Everything is Illluminated, Gunner Palace, Hustle & Flow, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Ray, Capote, The Squid and the Whale, Match Point, A Love Song for Bobby Long, March of the Penguins (Right: "A rare film that acknowledges the existence of a higher power. Penguins mate for life so it shows the need for a Federal Marriage Amendment". Left: "Some penguins are gay you idiot!" Am I right?) Murderball, The Aristocrats, Broken Flowers, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Morvern Callar, War of the Worlds, Grizzly Man, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, Howl's Moving Castle, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Domino.

Am I Blogger?

Evidence Against: I don't really have time to post anything anymore.

Evidence For: However, I am going to the big blogger ChristmaHanuKwanzaa/Eid/Festivus/Winter Solstice/whatever party. 

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog

Content goes here right?

I told everyone at the Pajamas Media/Open Source Media/Open Sores Media/Flannels Media/whatever it's called party that I was going to be back to regular blogging here. I figured it was a great way to start blogging again and to have some automatic traffic. Unfortunately, once I started all I could think of to blog about were my reactions to the launch event itself and then the debacle of PJM. Much as I love to bait the compulsive self-technoratiers out there, this topic is starting to become boring. Even trainwrecks eventually become tiresome to look at. For ongoing coverage of the trainwreck, and critiques of Pajamas Media that are simultaneously detailed and cogent and deranged and obsessive see of course Dennis the Peasant. (His post here also describes why I too have very little interest in writing about politics anymore.) For a perfect but too close to reality parody of one of those insufferable "blogjams" go here.

Things will continue to be pretty boring around here for awhile I fear, as I just started a new job which will be pretty demanding in terms of hours. I'll have to leave it mostly to others to be an army of Davids empowering the average man to shift the paradiggum and bring about the singularity by lending gravitas to the blogosphere or whatever.

Less Later.

Oh, and two more words: Jeff Goldstein.

BREAKING: OSM to be PJM Again (UPDATED)

Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson have relented and given the name back to Christopher Lydon. Their note about it makes them sound unserious and like they don't know what they're doing. It also contradicts all of their previous notes on the subject (all of the stuff about how Lydon "relinquished" the name or "graciously agreed" to give it to them). In addition going back to the Pajams Media name now contradicts all the rhetoric about how Pajamas Media was an unserious name and how moving away from it was a recognition of growing up and that the blogosphere needs to learn to build things instead of just criticizing (hence the move from a Rathergate reference). It still makes the company look like it's run by amateurs, but at least they've given the name back to its rightful owners. In a way they should be grateful that the name problem has been forcibly solved for them. Now they just need to solve the problem of figuring out what they are and finding interesting content for their website.

UPDATE: Utterly essential (and hilarious) Dennis the Peasant reaction is up.

UPDATE: And Althouse. I agree with commenter Benjamin at Jeff Jarvis's that the marketing people were right and Pajamas Media is a bad name. (My problem with it being that it relates to an extremely inside baseball joke that can only be appreciated by blog geeks). The problem wasn't changing the name, but changing it to Open Source Media, which goes too far in the other direction, sounding too dull and corporate. And it was already in use to begin with. I'm not saying I can come up with a better name. Names are hard. Even if I could think of one I wouldn't post it for fear of somebody using it.

Further Roundup of OSM stuff

The Name Controversy

A complete explanation of this, from the person whose blog and radio show they tried to steal the name from, can be found here. Brendan also responds nicely to the bizarrely disingenuous "About Our Name" section of the OSM website, which has been changed multiple times, usually without acknowledgment. (Hmmm, multiple unacknowledged and disingenuously worded corrections which themselves contain inaccuracies. OSM is starting to remind me of some other "SM". Can't quite put my finger on it, hmmm . . .). He responds to the first stealth edit here and to the next one here. Now the note stands with a correction (really a correction of a correction of a correction or something by this point I think) that seems to finally jibe with Brendan Greeley at the real Open Source Media's version of events, but doesn't deal with the central question at all, that is the brand confusion issue, nicely explained by Jeff Jarvis here. Jeff also does a good job picking apart the ridiculously pompous and self-important tone of the disingenuous "About our Name" post:

The goal of our enterprise is to bring gravitas and legitimacy to the blogosphere

Oh, gag me with a mitre.

I don’t think that blogs need to have legitimacy laid upon them … and who died and made you the legitimizer?

And gravitas? Good God, big, old media has an oversupply of that. That’s what got them in such trouble. And that’s what we’re running away from.

Previously, I was merely amused and confused by whatever-we-should-call whatever-it-is. Now I’m cringing as I await the sound of trains crashing.

The latest wrinkle in the story is that Roger and Brendan are going to talk sometime this week. Do you think Roger'll turn on the charm like he did with Ann Althouse? (see bottom of that particular post). That certainly worked out well! Seriously what's disturbing about this name thing is that it means that at a minimum they've never heard of Open Source Media, a fairly well-known weblog and radio show. Unforgivable for someone trying to do what they're trying to do. On top of that, it means that they didn't do a basic search to see if anyone in the same field had the same name, a basic first step when starting up any new business which even I knew about as little as I know about business. And that's from interpreting the facts in the best possible light. More sinisterly, maybe they knew full well that the name was already being used and they thought that they could somehow use the power of the conservative blogosphere to bully their way into stealing it. I'd believe anything after what we've seen these last few days.

In a hilarious bit of high-concept punditry blogger Don Surber has renamed his blog Open Source Media.

The Luke Ford Controversy

Not enough has been said about this part of the story. Matt Welch summarizes the episode concisely. Luke Ford, exasperating as he can be, is an American original and a good writer who would have definitely helped the site greatly. Casting him aside at the last minute, however, was not unforgivable in and of itself, just unprofessional and rude. What's more troubling is thinking of what must have lead to the decision to do so. As Welch writes "I just hope that Pajamas acted as it did because it somehow didn't realize that Luke was still writing about porn, which if true would just mean that they were remiss in not conducting basic due diligence, and that they have a prudish take on what is acceptable. Any other explanation I can think of (and I'll post 'em as I get 'em) suggests something considerably worse."

Some good speculation on the "considerably worse" can be found here. Cathy Seipp admits in this National Review Online column that Ford was dropped "at the insistence of the porn-hating main Pajamas investor." So, this all begs the question who is this double super-secret main investor who seems to really call the shots?

The Best Account Yet of the Party and of the Launch Generally

I've been meaning to link to this. It's simply one of the best pieces of writing I've seen on the internet in months and one of the best blog posts I've ever seen. It's really a read-the-whole-thing situation with this, but I can't resist excerpting a large portion of it here and, forgive me, bolding the parts I most agree with. I've never seen anyone so deftly puncture the pomposity of blogs, bloggers, and of OSM. It's from Jim Lowne, a photojournalist and writer and friend of Tim Blair:

Apart from Blair and the ever-lovely Cathy Seipp, I didn’t know a face in the room. But people seemed friendly and introduced themselves as they tried to get closer and speak with Blair, or better yet, have a picture taken with him.

“Are you a blogger?” I was asked repeatedly.

“Well, I have a blog…” I would answer.

At about this point, Blair would jump in and introduce me as photographer and tell highly exaggerated stories about me shooting wars and covering September 11th. It was here that I started to get a different read on some of the people gathered in the function room. The internet is this incredible thing that allows access to an amazing flow of information from all over the planet. But a blog is really about everyone’s own little world. And some of these folks truly lived in their own little worlds.

Blair was making up stories about me in Bosnia and then said something about covering 9-11.

“So, you went right from the war in Bosnia to 9-11?” asked one woman. The woman next to her also eagerly awaited my answer.

I just looked at them and said not exactly. There was a six year gap between events. In all fairness, why should they know or care about the Balkan wars from 10 years ago? I was there, so it is matters to me, but I can’t fault anyone for a lack of knowledge about it.

The women, both 40ish and well-dressed, seemed nice and reasonably intelligent but disturbingly disconnected from the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. It was as if they had mentioned a class in college they once took and had some authority on the subject. I mean, did anyone actually “go to 9-11”?

The September 11 attacks quickly became the meat of the conversation. But these nice folks didn’t mention the horror or death or the survivors or the wounding of a city or brave firefighters or fatherless children. They didn’t even offer a personal tale of the day. There were no “I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard” stories.

The talk went straight to the media coverage. One woman made comments about how the flow of information about it all slowed dramatically in the weeks shortly after the attacks. Why did “they” stop showing certain pictures from that day, another asked. A mainstream media conspiracy was afoot, it seemed to them. It was clear to me that none of them have ever worked in the news business.

I believe many of these people have come up with the information equivalent of the biggest mistake in dirty politics. As we know in politics, it’s not the alleged crime but the cover-up that takes you down. To some of these bloggers, it is not the story that matters but the coverage. And they want to use the coverage to take down whatever news outlet doesn’t fit in their world.

Not long into the 9-11 conversation, Blair mercifully suggested we retreat to the overpriced bar in the hotel lobby so I could finally get a drink and a fresh conversation. He went up to the bar to refill his wine glass and took my martini order while I waited in a little drinking area. There I met two gentlemen who were still buzzing on the possibilities of Open Source Media, and some wine I would guess, too.

One gent was a tall, quiet Dutchman who flew down for the OSM launch from his home in Vancouver. The other guy said he was a professor at a university in Boston. Since I knew absolutely nothing about OSM or any of these people, I decided to do something a decent reporter would do; if I opened my mouth it was only to sip my drink or to ask a question.

I asked the Boston guy if he was a blogger. It seems like the right question with this crowd.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said.

“What would you blog about if you had a blog,” I then asked.

“It's clear in my mind but I can’t put it into words,” he said after an incredibly long pause.

Thankfully, he was wise enough to put off his blog launch until he figured out the words part. But he had no shortage of words verbally. Boston guy praised former New York Times reporter Judith Miller who spoke at an OSM event earlier in the afternoon. He said he could understand her hesitation to start a career in blogging after leaving the Times. I asked him what the risk was for her.

“She wouldn’t have the protection, the layers, the editors to shield her from criticism,” he said. “It would be just her putting her words out there for everyone to pounce on.”

“She could turn off the comments section on her blog,” I offered.

“She would really be making herself vulnerable.”

“Well, most reporters have thick skins to begin with,” I said

“Yes, there is a think skin, but this would put her reputation at stake,” Boston guy said.

“Didn’t she do that when she fucked up?” I asked

The whole Miller thing went flat, so I asked him about what Open Source Media was going to do or be.

“It is going to take on the mainstream media.”

“Like a wire service?” I asked.

“No, not exactly.”

“How exactly will it work?”

He really didn’t have an answer. Actually, the few people I spoke with didn’t seem to have any clear or detailed answers of what exactly OSM was going to be or do. But Boston guy sure did know it was going to be bad for the mainstream media, especially the New York Times.

“There was no mainstream media coverage of the French Intifada for the first five days.”

The what? At first I thought he had a speech problem or too much wine but then realized he meant the rioting in France. I hadn’t caught that term. Clever, I thought. And Boston guy was clearly proud about being clever enough to use a clever term.

“You mean to tell me that there wasn’t a wire service there at the start?”

“Well, the New York Times didn’t report about it for the first five days.”

This could have been true. I didn’t know since I hadn’t been following the story that closely. It sounded like classic rioting with all the classic reasons for rioting. It was horrible but wasn’t directly affecting my life, as I was working very hard to get a guy elected governor of New Jersey. People riot for a reason, things burn and then change comes for better or worse. The long-term effects and the French government’s plan and policies are the interesting stories down the road.

In any event, I tried to explain to Boston guy why it wasn’t exactly a massive international story the first night of rioting. A local story at best, perhaps a national story in France. The story only got legs as it dragged out night after night.

“Bloggers were all over it the first night,” he said.

“That’s great,” I said and meant it. “I am sure they had some great first person accounts to share.”

“No, they reported it the first night!”

“Um, how?”

“They were all over the French Intifada.”

“Sorry, I didn’t see any of that,” I apologized.

“It took the New York Times five days.”

Nothing I could say would change Boston guy’s mind that there was some media conspiracy being led by the New York Times. Even worse, Blair still hadn’t delivered my martini.

The conversation went around in circles with me asking about how OSM could do it better and what exactly was wrong with the Times. Finally my drink arrived but any enjoyment was short lived.

“You are of the second millennium,” Boston guy spat at me, in French no less.

“Excuse me, but you don’t know anything about me.”

“I can tell by your reactions.”

“You are presumptuous and insulting,” I replied.   

He didn’t care. I did not get it or agree with his gospel, as far as he was concerned, so I was ignorant. The New York Times and the mainstream media are both evil. That was it. That was all that mattered to him. And when he gets his blog that’s what he will write about, everyone who disagrees be damned.

Before harsher words or fists flew, I downed the martini and grabbed Blair for a smoke outside.

Fuming, I bitched to Blair about the self-important clown while pulling on a Marlboro. Blair told me to forget about it. The guy probably had too much wine. Whatever, he wasn’t worth the energy. Besides the beautiful Filipino woman who asked for a light was far more worthy of attention.

Blair and I talked much nonsense with the beauty as we smoked. He said we were in business together.

“What kind of business?” she asked.

“Big business,” he lied.

“Oh, I like big,” she smiled.

I don’t think Blair caught that and I let it pass but I was a little concerned when he invited the beauty to join us for a drink. One Gray Goose Sea Breeze with a splash of orange for her, and I moved to scotch.

“So, would you like to come back to my hotel?” she quietly asked me as we stood in a group of bloggers.

I was trying to think of a polite way to say I don’t have that kind of money. So, I smiled at her dumbly instead and sipped my drink.

In this new group of people around us at the bar was a blogger woman who lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and her investment banker husband. She said she likes to blog about art and literature, things that move her, some things that don’t. She was very sweet and excited about meeting all these other bloggers.

I asked her husband about blogging and he hadn’t a clue but was happy his wife was so thrilled with it. Since he was an investment banker, I asked what he thought of OSM as a business. He said he wasn’t hopeful, and it reminded him of the internet bubble. It was hard to disagree.

Soon Blair and I were chatting with the beauty again.

“So what do you do?” he asked her.

“Anything,” she smiled

“No, I mean how do your earn money?”

“I believe she already answered that question,” I piped in.

She just smiled, still looking for a ride back to her hotel, and for the first time ever I saw Tim Blair speechless.

Once he was able to talk again, Blair and I went outside once more for a smoke. The bloggers faded away from the bar and the beauty thanked us for the drink and said good night. I watched her walk away up Lexington alone and realized she was the only person I had meet at the Open Source Media after-party who was truly open and who had a solid business plan.

(Emphasis Mine.) And I think that's all that really needs to be said.

 

Big Roundup Post on OSM/Open Source Media/Open Sores Media/Pajamas Media/Name to be Announced Media Problems and Controversies

Woooh doggies! So that whole have-a-splashy-launch-to-create-good-buzz-early thing didn't go too well, huh? Unless you've been living under a rock, or getting your news entirely from Roger L. Simon, Charles Johnson, and Jeff Goldstein, (which is to say again, unless you've been living under a rock . . .) you know that what Jeff Jarvis aptly calls the "trainwreck known variously as Pajamas Media, Open Source Media, OSM, and Open Sores Media," has come under a lot of fire since the moment of its birth and even before. And it's not just that the recently launched web thingy (criticism one, what the hell is it?) with the constantly changing name (probably changing for the third time soon) is being criticized by its natural enemies on the left (which it is and with some cogency), it's also being criticized by right-of-center law professors, political conservatives who have been screwed over by Roger L. Simon, and even members of its own "editorial board." At this point, the only people defending the project outright are bloggers who have signed up for it who must be worried about their ad revenues. The haziness of the business plan (if there can really be said to be one), the lack of interesting content on the website itself, and even the business ethics of the CEO himself have all been questioned, and seemingly all with good reason.

Since I happen to have been at the launch I thought I would write a post partially from the perspective of seeing if any of these fears were allayed by actually being there. Let me say a couple of things as caveats. First of all, unlike a lot of the people who are talking about this, this is only the second ever launch of a product, service, publication, website or anything I've ever been to. The first one was the party Nick Denton threw when he was launching the weblogs Screenhead, Lifehacker, Kotaku, and Jalopnik. Let's start there though. The difference between the two affairs seems instructive. At Denton's event there was no full day of panels and blah blah, no Rainbow Room, why, there wasn't even a "keynote address" by a disgraced former New York Times staffer. Imagine that! (I think Jayson Blair had a previous engagement snorting coke in the bathroom of Siberia or something). The entire event consisted of an open bar and hors d'ouevres over a couple of hours inside an Audi showroom. An Audi showroom you say? Yes, you see, they probably got the space for free because Audi was there big advertiser. Cutting costs and having big name advertisers set up as you launch as oppposed to just talking about how you'll have them in the future!? Madness, I know.

My second caveat is that, unlike a lot of these cogent critics, I know nothing about business, on-line or off, and have made a pathetically small amount of money in my life. Why, my trying to opine about OSM's viability as a business model would make about as much sense as a fiction writer with no business experience wanting to be CEO of a multi-million dollar company. That said, the criticism coming from people who do know about business and have made money in their life, especially Jeff Jarvis and Kenton E. Kelly aka Dennis the Peasant is much more convincing to the business layperson than the defenses (such as they are) coming from the OSM crowd, characterized as they are by whiny poses of martyrdom and facile, defamatory charges of stalking. What are you doing here Roger? Channeling Paul Krugman when he accused Donald Luskin of stalking him? It's called criticism. I went into the OSM launch event neither a believer nor a non-believer as to whether it would make money, and have only caught up on the discussions of that question after the launch, now I'm a definite non-believer and the conversion process was a lot of fun. And I owe it all to Dennis the Peasant. Really, if you're interested in this stuff and you haven't done so yet, you need to read the whole saga of his posts on why OSM/Pajamas/whatever was a doomed venture from the start. Just started around here and keep going forward. Of course, he's insanely bitter and has his own agenda, which he's completely up front about, but he also makes a lot of specific points about how the whole thing won't work that I've yet to see refuted.

My other caveat turns out not really to be caveat, my very small relationship to the project and to the people involved, one I share in common with virtually every blogger who gets more than ten hits a day. (A lot of these stories of initial discussions with Pajamas Media which lead nowhere can be found in the survey responses and comments to this James Joyner post.) On March 22, 2005 Roger L. Simon sent me an e-mail inviting me to "join a company in formation called Pajamas Media aimed at making substantially more money for bloggers and also increasing their importance." Since I'm all for increasing my money and importance I signed an NDA and I think two other agreements without much hesitation.  I certainly didn't have the hesitation that a lot of the bloggers who were early critics did, that Pajamas Media wouldn't give them the flexibility or the money that BlogAds already did, because I didn't have any ads. I've never had any illusions that blogging should make a lot of money. Recently, Typepad has instituted a service where you get ads from something called kanoodle and this now pays for my Typepad "pro" level subscription. This still seems like a great coup to me. My hobby now pays for itself. In fact, I was the ideal candidate for a Pajamas Media blogger as it was being explained at the time, a 150 visitor a day type of guy (at the time) who would just love to be aggregated with other low-but-not-non-existent-traffic blogs to buy ads, who wasn't on blog ads, and who didn't expect much. Anyway, some months went by and I heard nothing back from them. My thought was that this was either because a) My political leanings were drifting farther and farther from those of the other Pajamistas, or b) I was blogging less and less frequently. I wrote Roger an e-mail in late September asking what was going on. He said I was still welcomed to come on board, and put me in touch with Nina Yablok, an attorney who is also conservative blogger Ed Driscoll's wife. I went back and forth with her a couple of times but nothing came of it. So this was the state of play as I went to the launch event: I thought I still had a chance to be part of the venture and I wanted to be. So, in fact my bias was pro-OSM.

So, was OSM's business model explained and were the critiques answered if you attended the launch? That would have to be a resounding "no". First of all, there were the embarrassing technical glitches, the disastrous panels, the fact that Judith Miller was the keynote speaker. These could all be seen as sideshows though, if they presented and explained their product in a way that made it appealing and understandable. But, I've noticed something troubling (for the company) when I look over my multiple earlier posts on the launch: I actually forgot to mention the moment when Charles Johnson, put the site on the screen. You know, the actual launch part of the launch. That's because it was that forgettable and lasted about 10 seconds. The site moved painfully slowly and Johnson didn't go on to explain any special features of the site or anything (if they exist). What appeared, what still appears is nothing new, or particularly interesting: clunkily written news stories "compiled by OSM staff", links to wire service stories (as many have pointed out, most of which ironically come from the Chinese Communist government's Xinhua news service). This is all fine and well, but I fail to see how it will be a new "hybrid of journalism and blogging" or how it will revolutionize either, but the breathless tone of all of their announcements etc. have said that it is and it will. They've been so self-important and pretentious about everything they've made themselves easy targets. Like a lot of other people who were actually there, I have no better understanding now of exactly what OSM means to be and that has to be a bad sign.

Anyway, if you haven't read it yet read Dennis the Peasant's/Kenton E. Kelly's detailed account of getting screwed over by Roger L. Simon. Contrast that with Roger's only defense thus far, which is essentially that verbal agreements are meaningless to him. See which one you think is more compelling. You may not need good ethics or manners to succeed in business, but I can't imagine that this much taint attached to the CEO of a brand new company is a good thing.

The Party

Now we're finally onto the party, the final installment of this epic four-part saga. First of all, everyone should read Karol's account of the party. She does the best write-ups of parties, really capturing the feeling of being there. And Karol is damn right about the quality of the open bar booze. That was one area at least in which OSM was on point. But, what's this about there being something wrong with drinking Merlot. I mean, yes, yes I know a nice Pinot Noir of Shiraz would be preferable but at least it's red wine.

I myself chose to have a few glasses of the Merlot as well as a couple Martinis, upon hearing this Ace of Spades said "That's good. They say you should mix." Well met sir. For some reason I don't dig his over-the-top online persona but the couple of times I've met him in person I've found him funny. And it was nice to see his commitment to his various ventures. He was immediately on the "get" for the radio show when he saw Cliff May in the room.

I talked to Cathy Seipp. (It turns out her last name rhymes with pipe not seep or tape, all three of which I had thought were equally likely). We talked about David Ehrenstein, this crazy lefty commenter at her site, (who is also a published author apparently). She said he was a really nice guy in person, always wears a nice blazer etc., just gets crazy on-line. Also, he lives in LA without a car so he spends a lot of time stuck in his house. That explains it.

I talked to these two friends of the charming Englishman in New York. They were photographers. One had some sort of UK accent I couldn't place and the other some sort of continental European accent I couldn't place. I thought they were the most hilarious people there, but maybe because they caught me when I was at the perfect point on the graph of drunkenness.

I talked to this Jewish guy named Ben about the great Gene Wilder/Harrison Ford film The Frisco Kid. He said that in the late 70s when it came out he took his family to see it and the older generation all assumed it was anti-Semitic. The kids explained to them that it wasn't, that it was quite the opposite. Now it's a beloved favorite of his whole family. He said that the very fact that he's alive at all is a miracle. I felt like crying, but in a good way.

I didn't really approach any of the gazillion huge name bloggers there. I guess I didn't want to appear sycophantic or something. I spent most of my time during the party proper with Judith, Mary, or Karol. When the party was over many of us repaired to one of the downstairs bars. I talked for a long time with Clive Davis, not the music guy, the real Clive Davis. It was a great conversation and we see eye to eye on a lot of stuff. He agrees that it's ridiculous how people slagged Andrew Sullivan off for his pledge drives and vacations. We talked about how surprising Blair's reaction to 9/11 was and how there was no one else in English politics to carry Blair's foreign policy forward.

All the while Glenn Reynolds was in deep, deep conversation with Pamela of Atlus Shrugs.

I also briefly met the legitimately funny (not just by blog standards) Tim Blair. He's a really, nice friendly unassuming great laid back guy, just like everybody says.

Judith Miller/Senator John Cornyn at OSM Launch

And now we move on to the most star-studded part of the day. Lisa Ramaci, Judith and I were all seated one table away from the table of "luminaries" which included John Podhoretz, David Corn, Roger L. Simon, Charles Johnson, Kate Lee - superstar literary agent to all the bloggers including Glenn Reynolds - and eventually Judith Miller. Now far be it from me to criticize the choice of Judith Miller as keynote speaker, because that of course would make me an enemy of free speech, so I'll just do some straight reporting of what she had to say.

Ostensibly she was there to talk about a federal shield law for journalists and whether it would apply to some or to any bloggers. She spent about five minutes on that topic. The rest of the time, for the millionth time, she went over the details of her story, which everyone who wanted to know and doesn't live on Mars should know by heart by now. What her tale of woe and self-martyrdom had to do with Open Source Media no one knew.

Let me interject here that Judith Miller is one hot middle-aged woman. She is petite and has a very sexy voice and an appealing, quasi-flirtatious manner. I can easily see why she's so good at getting information and access. I don't mean that in any snide way, nor do I remotely mean to suggest that she's had an "improper relationship" with anyone, I just mean I think she probably uses feminine wiles of the more subtle sort to get powerful men to open up to her. Now only if she would vet what they were saying to her more instead of just transcribing it and putting it in the paper.

After regaling us with the passion of Saint Judy she finally got around to talking about the shield law, the only thing she said which remotely had anything to do with blogging or new media in any way. She said that the federal shield law which she's advocating for would cover all journalists and some bloggers. She was very clear about this point. She thinks that there is some kind of bright line that can be drawn between God-fearing, respectable blogs which would get the shield protection, and blogs that deal in (her words) "humor" and "vitriol" which wouldn't. I think this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

The floor was open to questions then which meant that it was time for the big shots to talk. A bunch of them had shown up just for the Judith Miller portion of the day. The first question was John Podhoretz. The next was Bill McGowan. The third was Jay Rosen.

Rosen's question was the most penetrating. He said that he was watching MacNeil/Lehrer over the summer and Bill Keller had said that despite the fact that he supported a federal shield law for journalists he admitted that the Judith Miller case would not have fallen under it and should have been a case of her going to jail in an act of civil disobedience, just as it was without the law. Given that, she goes all around the country and talks about her case when she's advocating for the shield law. Shouldn't she make it clear that her boss says that her case wouldn't be covered?  Miller responded that her lawyers tell her she would have been covered and one of the authors of the legislation told her he would have been covered, so it's a gray area.

There was a question I was burning to ask but didn't because if the intimidating crowd, one related to Rosen's question. I wanted to ask this: The idea of having a shield law for journalists is premised on protecting whistleblowers. At least, that's the only conceivable justification I can think of for it. However, in this case we're not talking about a whistleblower. If you buy into the premise that leaking Valerie Plame's name and the fact that she worked for the CIA was this horrible crime possibly endangering national security, which I don't at all but that was more or less the premise of the investigation and it was the position that the New York Times itself staked out over the course of multiple editorials, then we're looking at a situation in which the very act of speaking to the reporter was a crime. Ergo, by not giving up her notes or testifying you, Judith Miller, (again, if you buy into the premise that Valerie Plame was actually an undercover agent covered by the relevant statute) were covering up a crime. We're pretty far removed from the whistleblower scenario here aren't we? So, anyway, are you saying that journalists and certain (non humorous, non-vitriolic) bloggers should have a special law passed for them which allows them to cover up crimes with impunity? That can't be what you're saying is it?

I know, silly question.

Next was Senator John Cornyn, who was beamed in to appear on a screen in the front of the room. Though, like most politicians, he was very boring to listen to, he was also pro-blog and had the right ideas about not having blogs become regulated political speech.

The left-wing journalist Russ Baker was deeply disturbed at the Senator's egalitarianism. He asked a question which made what I find to be the most tiresome of old media's anti-blog arguments, but journalists have all this training and knowledge and special expertise so how can you compare them to just some guy with a computer and yadda yadda yadda. The Senator had a good reaction, he pointed to Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair and all the other debacles and how they seem to all come from people who've had all the special training so how can you posit a bright line distinction between journalist and joe schmoe?

The Political Panel

The political panel included John Podhoretz, Richard Fernandez of the blog "The Belmont Club", David Corn, Claudia Rosett, and Larry Kudlow as the moderator.

For most of the panel Fernandez closed his eyes and tilted his head back as if her were deep, deep in thought. On the few occasions in which he did speak he started using terminology from I'm not sure what discipline - software? engineering? - I'm not sure what, but I certainly didn't understand what he was trying to say. He doesn't know how to do panels.

David Corn makes a good point out the outset which is that blogs are mostly dependent upon the MSM to gather facts. I think OSM is supposed to get blogs more in the business of gathering facts themselves somehow, but nothing I saw yesterday indicated how that would happen. Corn's point doesn't really go far enough though. Blogs are actually dependent upon the MSM for the vast majority of their content period, as that content is mostly reaction to and criticism of the MSM. I even wonder if most of the bloggers in the room would actually like to see improvements by the MSM. What would there be left to talk about. Of course you could always talk about someone not reporting things your way and how that means they're "biased".

Fernandez manages to say one comprehensible thing here which is worth responding to. He says "blogging is the revenge of the guy with the day job." This is true if your day job is law professor, or software developer or think thank fellow or if you're some kind of consultant who works from home or something like that. Try blogging when you have a regular day job where you have to go to a cubicle and your boss is constantly hovering over you and internet is probably filtered or you're not allowed to use it at all.

J-Pod says that he has special qualifications and there's really no reason anyone should listen to him, but he's an MSM opinion leader and "there's a mystique to being an MSM opinion leader that isn't earned," whereas "in blogs the authority comes from the work.

Kudlow winds up for a long time into a question. He says he's reading the new Doris Kearns Goodwin Lincoln book (J-Pod asks "Who wrote it?") and in the book there's a lot of stuff about the various political races Lincoln was in in the 1850's and of course 1860 and how back then there were innumerable different explicitly partisan papers who would all report the exact same debates etc. with completely different storylines. The point obviously is that we now have the same kind of situation with blogs and everything's just hunky-dory and no one should strive to mute their bias at all. The exact question he asks David Corn is whether this sort of Lincoln-era situation is okay and everyone should just let-'er-rip or if individual sites should strive to be "balanced". (Paraphrasing except for last word obvs.)

Corn makes an interesting comment, which is that the internet in general has put opinion journalism on the same footing as traditional "objective" news, since you can so easily click from the New York Times coverage of an event to that of The Nation or National Review depending on your persuasion. He also makes what I think to be the second most important point made during the panel, (He also made the first most important later.) which is that with blogs and internet opinion journalism "everyone has self-ghettoized". This is true and is one of the most disturbing features of this new media age we live in. Initially, it started with the MSM, which as Podhoretz correctly said later "thought they weren't a niche when they were.", but now a conservative counter-niche has been created through talk radio, cable TV, blogs etc. in which the inhabitants also don't think they're a niche. OSM/Pajamas Media has made various noises about trying to do something about rectifying this problem, but I fail to see how bringing together over 70 bloggers who all are (to varying degrees albeit) pro-Bush, pro-war etc. does this. Not that there's anything wrong with putting together a partisan site in the same way that the Huffington Post did, but I just don't see where all the talk of intending to "foster dialogue" etc. comes from.

I'll just move on to Corn's best point, which he phrased in the form of a question, something along the lines of: Isn't there value at least to the aspiration to be objective, accurate, to get things right? No one really touched with a ten-foot pole, I think because the question points to a huge problem with the way the endlessly lionized bloggers there view blogging. There's this idea that you can be as intellectually lazy, as resistant to dissonant data as you want, and as long as your explicit in your bias, as long as your bias is blatant not latent, that this is okay. While it's correct to point out the MSM's frequent failures to live up to their professed objectivity, I agree with Corn that the ideal, the aspiration to be not objective maybe but how about intellectually honest, to not be totally blinded by your  biases should not be forgotten. It's a pity that so many bloggers have forgotten this ideal, using the excuse of "Hey at least I'm up front about my bias."

The panel closed with Kudlow asking Rosett if we will all end up working for the UN? She said that we should all take to our blogs to stop that from happening. She said the midnight ride of Paul Revere was a good reference point.

At that it was time to file out for the traditional rubber chicken (I actually didn't think it was that bad) and Judith Miller and the afternoon speakers. This was actually the most exciting part of the day for me, because it was when I got to experience what sincerely was one of the greatest honors of my life, meeting and hanging out with Lisa Ramaci, widow of murdered journalist Steven Vincent. Unlike someone who merely types and cuts and pastes links into browser windows all day Steven Vincent was a true hero, someone who put himself in harm's way and eventually lost his life trying to observe first-hand the liberation he advocated for.

Lisa Ramaci is an incredible person, warm, open, unassuming and intellectual, a medieval history expert. She spoke of trips with her husband to Viet Nam before relations were normalized and even to Iran, where it turned out everyone was pro-American. She talked about her husband's memorial service, with representatives from the fetish scene, the downtown arts scene, conservative politics etc. and is going to send me a DVD of it to watch. Like Steven Vincent, she's a true American original and an utterly amazing person. Meeting her and actually getting to talk to her at length made my day and meant a hell of a lot more than meeting some blogger or journalist.

Impressions From the Open Source Media Launch Event

Yesterday was an amazing day and it was a great privilege to be a part of it. I don't mean that it was a historic day in the development of media or anything like that. I still, like Jeff Jarvis, don't really understand what this venture is all about, and this is after having attended the launch. I also think that, despite the fact of its train-wreck-like quality, Dennis the Peasant's relentless, vitriolic critique of Pajamas/Open Source Media does raise some good points. (Also see Ann Althouse here and here questioning why bloggers who are already getting a good income from blogads would want to sign up with OSM in the first place.)

No, it was an amazing day just in the fact that it got a group of smart, absurdly varied bloggers and journalists and other strange personages together at the same few events, which made for a lot of fun and some real moments of intellectual/cultural frisson. Also, the party had an open bar.

It was an amazing day for me personally just in that I got to meet so many people, some of them people I admired greatly or read already or whatever, and I also got to re-connect with so many people I hadn't seen in awhile and connect better with people I only sort of knew.

What follows will be an exhaustive account of my impressions:

I started the day talking to Boi from Troy. I asked him what his brief stint editing Wonkette was like. He talked about how hard it was dealing with all of the e-mail from Wonkette's rabid lefty audience wanting him to pursue dubious anti-Bush conspiracy theories and rumors.

Next I hung out a bit with blogging wunderkind Steven I. Weiss, of Canonist, CampusJ and countless other blogs and other outlets before that. I talked to him about my interest in learning more about Jewish thought (no secret to anyone who really knows me) and he hipped me to some authors whose names I've forgotten now.

Then it was time for the morning panels and launch. The table I was at included a diverse group of people. There was Weiss, a student from the New School Media Studies program, a Japanese reporter from Nikkei (which I guess is a news service as well as the stock exchange) and Stephen Green, aka Vodka Pundit. I didn't talk to him, but what I noticed about him that day was his clothes. For the day time portion of the proceedings he was wearing a salt and pepper blazer and some sort of gray slacks with an ordinary white shirt blue tie combo. But, for the cocktail hour he was in a very slick dark suit with a burgundy pocket square (though it was double-breasted and I don't know how I feel about that). Multiple costume changes like he's hosting the Oscars or something! Wow! (Actually a lot of people put on fancier clothes for the evening, something I couldn't do because I live in the suburbs.).

The first speaker was Andrew Breitbart, Matt Drudge's right-hand man, the guy somehow involved in founding the Huffington Post, the guy behind the new breitbart.com newswire etc. etc. He's a charming, laid-back guy and I wish he'd done more stuff over the course of the day. I saw him at the party that night and he was hilarious (or maybe I was just drunk).

He said that this was the first launch he'd ever been to at which Parliament-Funkadelic wasn't playing and maybe that was a good thing. He said he'd been on-line for 10 years, literally. He noted that being involved with Huffington Post he was in competition with OSM, but here he was introducing them, because "in the blogosphere we're all friends". (Ahhhhhh) He went on to introduce Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson and say that they were both heroes. Over-the-top encomiums and reckless throwing around of the h-word quickly became the order of the day.

Roger L. Simon was the next speaker. First he tried to explain the name change. He said that Pajamas Media was conceived in ironic recognition of a moment in media history. (The whole Jon Klein, president of CNN calling bloggers just some guys in their pajamas thing.) He then went on to recount the Rathergate thing as an illustration of the power of blogging. But the purpose of this venture is not merely to criticize but to create. Or "Times have changed but with changing times comes responsibility." (Hence the new name.)

He said the Open Source Media was to be "a hybrid of journalism and blogging."  He said it will have "elaborate fact-checking protocols" and "a firm firewall between news and opinion," and that it will "publicize errors on the front page."

He then went on to say that OSM will be "citizen journalism, not created by elites, top-down" but will instead be "grassroots" etc. etc.

Roger then turned it over to José Guardia, the "Western European Editor" of OSM, leading to one of many technical hiccups that would take place over the course of the day. Guardia appeared in the form of a really crappy looking Windows Media file of some kind, with bad resolution, lots of audio hiss and pop, and constant freeze-framing. It was literally painful to look at. I still don't really understand who the audience of this day-long event was meant to be but if it was to include media or potential investors and not just people who were already cheerleaders then I can't imagine this looked good to them.

Roger took over again. He said that the goal was "not to overthrow the MSM but to enhance it." He also said that OSM intended to "foster dialogue", meaning dialogue between those of different political persuasions. To this end OSM has commissioned studies by Princeton. He quoted one study which supposedly shows that 43% of Americans are uncomfortable being called "conservative", "liberal", or even "moderate". Interesting if true obviously. Roger's conclusion: "Hybrids aren't just for cars."

Roger then went into the usual spiel that anyone launching a new venture involving blogging does: Blog readers are affluent, early adopters, opinion leaders etc. Which in short means that they're members of the elite, which probably means that bloggers are members of the elite. So tell me again how blogging empowers the common man Professor Reynolds?

Finally, Roger informed everyone that OSM would also have "lifestyle blogs", meaning blogs on sports, fashion, pop culture etc. This signaled a major problem with OSM's approach, one which would become more apparent during the disastrous, cringeworthy "fashion panel". What seems to have happened is that as an afterthought they thought they should somehow bring on board some "fun" (i.e. non-political) blogs, but since no one involved with OSM ever reads non-political blogs (seemingly) or seemingly knows anything about pop culture, they made a couple of mistakes in how they did this. One: the very idea of cordoning off a part of the site and putting a big sign up saying "fun" or "lifestyle" is a bad one. This is not how the human mind works. You don't all of a sudden say "Okay, brain I want you now to focus exclusively on silly, fun thoughts about America's Next Top Model" and then "Okay, now it's time for serious political thoughts and nothing else," particularly in the internet age, in which at the click of a mouse you can go from a deconstruction of Plamegate to a deconstruction of a Lost episode to a deconstruction of a bad celebrity outfit. The best blogs shift gears all the time, whether it's Andrew Sullivan talking about Madonna in the midst of inveighing against the Bush administration's torture policies or Karol alternating between hip-hop and conservative politics or Ken alternating between conservative politics and relationship stuff. A sense of fun and awareness of pop culture should be infused throughout all the writing on the site, in the manner of the great New York Observer or even the way Gawker mixes in serious topics, albeit approached obliquely. If you ghettoize the fun to a fun zone labeled "fun zone" you risk killing the, um, fun. Second, they didn't get very good fun bloggers, which became apparent during the panel.

This panel was one of the most bizarre spectacles I've ever witnessed and would justify an epic-length post in and of itself. First of all, there was a high-concept conceit to the panel which went amazingly badly due to technical issues. The panel was supposed to be moderated by The Manolo who's one of those bloggers with an annoying on-line persona shtick. Because he's anonymous his moderating was to be piped in over the speakers from somewhere else. The trouble was he was on an enormous delay. Judith says 10 seconds here. To me it felt more like about 5 minutes.

Tom Julian, this corporate coolhunter guy, was also trying to moderate on-site.  Beyond the technical glitch, he was clueless as a moderator. The discussion was directionless and awkward. The only thing memorable about it was that Elizabeth Hayt, an NYT fashion journalist, bravely showed up. And I say bravely pointedly, to contrast her dignified bearing with the hooting and hollering that occurred both in the room and on-line for her daring to depart from the blog triumphalist mood of the day.

She stated at the outset that when she was booked she told the guy on the phone that she doesn't blog, she hates blogs, and thinks blogs are absurd so she didn't know why they were booking her. He said "That's why we want you." She was brought in as a sacrificial lamb, an example of evil MSM thinking for the assembled blog horde to devour with their teeth. She gave her quick critique of blogs, half of which I agreed with: the endless self-refrentiality, the bad writing etc. She also said that they were "for rich people with too much time on their hands who feel disenfranchised." Since most big bloggers are rich law professors or software developers or something like that who felt disenfranchised by the mainstream media's coverage of things it's hard to argue, especially when you're trumpeting how upscale your demographics are simultaneously.

The crowd was having none of it. By the third comment here someone's talking about bitch-slapping her. Nice. Ed Driscoll admits to hooting at her remarks here, which means that he openly admits to doing so to a guest who was invited by a company he works for specifically to share her views. Classy.

Thankfully, this torture eventually ended and it was time for the political panel.

The 2,000th Death

(Note: I will still occasionally blog on political/controversial stuff here, but primarily I will be blogging on pop culture at Blatherist)

A few days ago virtually every newspaper put something on the front page about the 2,000th American soldier being killed in Iraq. Pre-emptively the pro-war blogosphere had started attacking these stories before they came out. Glenn Reynolds dismissed any reflection on the meaning of the 2,000 deaths as a "PR event". He linked to another blogger who claims that the media doesn't see any of the soldiers who have given their lives as more than numbers.

There is some truth to these critiques of the media and the anti-war faction's fixation with this arbitrary number. Much as the Cindy Sheehan faction strips the soldiers of their dignity by referring to them as children as opposed to as men and women who have made a free choice, they also rob them of their humanity by simply using them as numbers, as props for their arguments. Surely, many if not most of the 2,000 supported the war they were fighting and would answer yes to J.D. Johanes's two questions. The vigils etc. marking the occasion that the anti-war activists are observing are affronts to the memory of all of the fallen who would have disagreed with having their deaths being used in this way, which is to say most of them.

Yet, I still understand the need for the media and for the culture as a whole to acknowledge this event and I think a big part of the blame for the meaning of these occasions being dominated so much by the anti-war side and by the media is that the pro-war side does not acknowledge these types of evens and provide their own context for them. While the media surely has ignored many positive developments in Iraq and features like the ongoing "Good News in Iraq" are a needed corrective, they need to be balanced with reading the important reports that the media has done very well: the chronicling of all of the casualties amongst American soldiers. What a lot of the pro-war side seems to do is to read only the good news. In a post in January Glenn Reynolds snidely  dismissed the attacks which kill American soldiers as the "daily boom and bang" which he felt under no obligation to cover. The approach to casualties seems to be to ignore them.

Of course, the pro-warriors say "Every war has casualties." And then they'll probably say "Shut up you goddamn pinko commie lily-livered Andrew Sullivan-reading suspected Democrat. Here's a Jeff Goldstein link to read. And one from Ace of Spades. And then if those didn't prove my point beyond a shadow of a doubt, here's Hugh Hewitt. And Brownie was the best horsey judge who became head of FEMA ever and Harriet Miers would have been a great Supreme Court Justice and . . ." Anyway, of course every war has casualties, but the question is how many and to what end. The Vietnam War Memorial, which I only saw recently for the first time, starts out slowly with just a few names and then builds and builds but it doesn't seem like the casualties are adding up that much. Finally, when you get to the middle you feel like you're just drowning in this sea of names going off infinitely in both directions. I'm not saying that there are many parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, just that it's probably a good idea to remain cognizant of the number of casualties before we're in the middle of casualties as far as the eye can see not realizing how we got there. Exactly how many deaths will this take? Surely there's a point at which this would no longer be worth it. I'm not saying we're there now but it's probably a good idea to keep an idea of what the total is in our minds, so we don't end up in the equivalent of the middle of that monument not knowing how we got there.

I read a great Richard Brookhiser column (speaking of pinko commies) in which he said that the pro-war side says that we need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we don't have to here, but that's a distinction without a difference for a mother in Ohio who's just lost her son to the war. The media has actually done a good job bringing home this side of things. I've seen a lot of in depth reporting by the NYT and others on the aftermaths of deaths, the funerals, the kind of towns the soldiers came from etc. None of them were anti-war hit pieces. Most of the soldiers seemed to have been conflicted about the war, but none of them were out-and-out anti-war. Absolutely none of this type of reporting has been done by the pro-war blogosphere or any pro-war media. But of course, if you think all that is just the "daily boom and bang" you probably don't care. There is a vacuum, and the pro-war side with its refusal to acknowledge the casualties and setbacks in Iraq has allowed it to be filled by someone else; so they're hardly in a position to complain about all the coverage. If they don't like the way the 2,000 death is being covered, why don't they find a way to acknowledge the occasion themselves? Or is even acknowledging such things a sign of weakness and possible Sullivanesque tendencies? Maybe so. While the NYT and the Daily News had big front page stories about the 2,000 dead, the New York Sun marked the occasion nowhere but with a tiny photo caption.

Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

If posts and exchanges like this and this tell me nothing else, it's that I need to stop doing this. I'll still be blogging though, just in a completely different register about completely different sorts of things, at my new blog Blatherist.

Quotes of the Day

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government".

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond,"

-President George W. Bush.

But Nothing Went Wrong I Tell You, Nothing!!!!

Well, I just heard on CNN and then verified by checking Fox that Bush says he accepts responsibility for things that the federal government did wrong in the response to Katrina. This puts his more zealous supporters in awkward position. 1) A dedicated minority will now have to accept that the response was less than perfect and all the stories of problems weren't just stories made up by the "MSM". I haven't actually been able to stomach reading the posts but it's my understanding that this blogger for instance is advancing the general proposition that the federal response was a model of perfection. I wonder what he'll say now. Is Bush a Bush-hater? Has the MSM gotten to him with orbital throught-control beams or something? The mind boggles. 2) Those who are connected enough to reality to allow for the possibility that not everything was handled as completently as it could have been but were going for the popular "blame the locals" strategy now have to confront the fact that Bush is more willing to hold himself to account than they are.

As I type, I'm sure fingers are furiously pounding away at keyboards forming posts saying something to the effect that Bush is only responding to pressure from the dastardly MSM. Oh yeah, that sounds just like him all right. And isn't the fact that he never, ever does that the reason you like him? Everywhere you turn, some kind of brain malfunction or self-contradiction. Does not compute! Does not compute! etc. etc.

(I did trackback for this so if some partisan robots come over here from there, please be aware that I'm not a Bush-hater, I'm pro War on Terror including War in Iraq and I find the response of the Bush-haters on these issues to be equally tiresome. I volunteered for the 96-hour task force for Bush in New Hampshire and, obviously, voted for him, though I regret some of that now. I just think that the pro-Bush blogosphere has gotten increasingly shrill and goes to lengths to defend to Bush administration beyond even what they do themselves.)

The Flight that Fought Back

Last night I saw on the Discovery Channel the premiere of The Flight that Fought Back, the new documentary about the heroes of United Flight 93, the "average" citizens who won the first battle in the war on terror, showing that it only took a group of Americans who didn't know each other about 90 minutes to adjust to the tactics of the enemy and defeat them. It was an amazing documentary. There was only one slight misstep towards the end when the flight-school instructor of the terrorist who acted as the pilot said something which seemed to humanize him, saying that he preferred to look at him as the nice guy in his flight class, not as a mass-murderer. Other than that, it was a straightforward pro-American documentary that didn't humanize or excuse the terrorists in any way. Real recordings of phone calls and flight recordings were used and where details couldn't be filled in a jerky, hand-held camera style and some quick editing were used to convey the panic and adrenaline of the moment, a technique which drew you deeply into the story, while not taking any final stand on matters that can't be finally decided, like who actually struck the first blow against the terrorists.

Like Sheila O'Malley I already knew the story so well going into the documentary that I knew all the names of the people like they were all old friends of mine. Having seen The Flight that Fought Back I feel even closer to these heroes and their families. Watching this show on the anniversary was the perfect September 11th memorial, a tribute to those who won the first battle in this long war.

Some Blog Posts (Like You Need Them)

Katrina

I'd always been fascinated by New Orleans - the culture, the architecture, the food, the history, and had always wanted to take a trip there. I finally got around to taking that trip last summer and found that the culture, architecture, food, history, and everything else were everything I'd imagined they'd be and then some. The picture in the right corner of this page, my favorite picture of me ever taken, was taken in New Orleans. I began fantasizing about having a second home there, you know, someday when I could afford it, maybe even living there full-time. So, it's been especially difficult for me these last couple of weeks watching my favorite American city save New York completely decimated at a level far beyond even what New York experienced on 9/11/01 in terms of area of the city affected. New Orleans has made unique and important contributions to American popular culture through jazz, literature, and countless other forms. In fact, it's probably had the biggest impact on American culture of any city save New York, and at a fraction of the size. So anything that so damages New Orleans damages America in profound ways that frankly wouldn't obtain if we were talking about some other small city.

Part of the charm, the character of New Orleans was always the unique sensibility of the locals, a laidbackness that ultimately lead to a dysfunctionality, all rooted in the rhythms of living in a subtropical climate probably. Another factor in this laid back, devil-may-care culture was probably the fact that there was always the ready prospect of death by hurricane, leading to a constant "party like it's 1999" vibe. Consider the dark humor of calling the local drink the "hurricane". (This Michael Ledeen column about cities like Venice, Naples, and New Orleans whose culture is rooted in the constant possibility of destruction is excellent.) There have already been calls by various conservative grumps to either not rebuild New Orleans because it's too dangerous or to try to now reform it into some efficient, boring paragon of the New South like Houston or Atlanta. Both of these ideas miss the point. New Orleans must be rebuilt. There's too much cultural significance there not to. It also needs to remain New Orleans or what's the point?

The political response to Katrina's aftermath has been depressingly predictable. While Democrats all but blame Bush for the hurricane itself, the right blogosphere seeks to insulate anyone in the federal government from any possible criticism. The template here is Iraq - the idea being that things really weren't that bad it was just the "MSM' blowing things out of proportion again. Never mind that the "MSM" in this case was actually on the scene and there was no equivalent of Iraqi or soldier's blogs telling a different story, while most of the bloggers commenting were thousands of miles away with nothing to go on but their relentless hatred of the "MSM" , the same "MSM" that was basing their information on actual first-hand observation or on interviews with survivors from the Superdome or the Convention Center, our American concentration camps.

The most perceptive thing written about Katrina has already been linked to by David Brooks in his column, Ross Douthat's brilliant post on Katrina as the "Anti-9/11". I think it's more than that just that though. I think Katrina represents the end of the post 9/11 consensus.

Fourth Anniversary of 9/11

The post 9/11 consensus was really extremely brief but it did get us to Afghanistan. I still lived in Brooklyn at the time, surrounded by the most bohemian lefty people you can imagine, and I didn't know a single person who didn't want us to invade some country, it almost didn't matter which, the second after the second jet hit. The minute the debate over going into Iraq started though, this national consensus was really lost. Vestiges of it remained but now it's lost completely and utterly. It's somewhere in the toxic sludge of New Orleans.

We've now faced another cataclysm of equal power and damage to the psyche as 9/11. Though it pains some people to hear the comparison made, the feelings and images are eerily familiar. Where they are different they are worse in the case of New Orleans: eerie images of a city unlike you ever thought you'd see it, horrible unspeakable things happening that aren't supposed to happen in a major American city, missing posters and attempts to find loved ones, the entire country transfixed by the drama. Only in New Orleans you add the 80% of the city underwater, the lootings, the rapes, the lawlessness, the complete breakdown of local, state, and federal officials, the total lack of a Giuliani figure, the lack of any inspiring "I hear you, America hears you, and the men who knocked down these buildings will hear from all of us soon" moment from President Bush.

We come out of this cataclysm not a unified nation inspired by America's Mayor and America's President and by the heroism of the FDNY but a divided nation in which half of the country views the tragedy of the flawed response as a political opportunity and half of the country doesn't even acknowledge that the response was flawed to begin with. The political blogosphere has split once again exactly in two along these lines.

In the post-9/11 consensus era blogs provided welcome straight talk about terrorism and everything related to it. They provided a corrective to an "MSM" that really was too politically correct, too ignorant of world affairs and history, and too unwilling to acknowledge the existence of real evil. In this respect, a website like LGF, or I should say the far different incarnation of LGF that existed around this time, was invaluable. The simple act of linking to MEMRI's translations of the Arab press was incredibly informative and relevant, and something you'd never see done in the "MSM", even on PBS or the BBC. Blogs also provided a lot of fresh, idiosyncratic voices that couldn't be easily pigeonholed into the usual right/left Republican/Democrat categories that most pundits can.

Clearly, that was then and this is now. While in the post-9/11 era a host of blogs of all different stripes were unified around support for the War on Terror if nothing else. Now, you have pro-Bush blogs and anti-Bush blogs. I would call them conservative and liberal blogs or Republican and Democrat blogs, but really it's hard to detect an ideology beyond like or dislike (really love or hate) of the current president. Pro-Bush blogs stand by their man no matter what. And here's the strange part, they do so even on issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the War on Terror, the grand post-9/11 blog consensus issue. They back Bush on his out-of-control spending, on Teresa Schiavo, on his abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina. And here's the even stranger part, the most gung-ho, vehement pro-Bush bloggers are nearly all post-9/11 Bush supporters, those very people who started their sites in the aftermath of 9/11 and came to support Bush solely because of his handling of the war on terror - so they said - even if they weren't easy to pigeonhole as liberals or conservatives. These same people have gone from supplying unpredictable, fresh voices to being robotic, knee-jerk pro-Bush partisans.

Maybe the blogosphere needs a single big topic to organize it or maybe 9/11 was a singular event and it could only be that. Maybe this shift in the blogosphere from unity and independent thought to rank partisanship is simply a reflection of the shift in the country or maybe it's its own development. At any rate, Katrina and blog response to it coming on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 signals the end of an era. On this fourth anniversary of 9/11 the country has now seen something roughly as terrible as that day, if not worse, and it's not something that will unify us but something that will tear us apart even further.

 

 

 

And Another Thing About That Weird Kurt Andersen Piece

His whole argument comes down to this one disingenuous paragraph, which I'll quote at greater length than I did below here:

Deadwood is great, yet it has not yet achieved a critical mass of buzz, maybe because the Western really is dead as a mass entertainment, or because the show is too much in the mold of The Sopranos. Six Feet Under had a buzzy launch and came close to must-see status, but the final-season plunge of pretty much every character into anger, depression, hopelessness, or insanity has alienated even cultists (ratings are down almost 18 percent from last year). The Wire is a remarkably excellent drama about drugs and corruption in Baltimore, but in the three years since it premiered, no one has ever mentioned it to me. Buzz can’t be quantified, but the HBO metric that most closely tracks it, perhaps, is the percentage of a show’s audience eager enough to watch each episode the first time it airs. For The Sopranos, it’s 60 percent; for Entourage and Deadwood, it’s closer to 40 percent.

What is it about TV critics that they have to compare every HBO show to The Sopranos? In what way is Deadwood like The Sopranos? While Swearengen is a very, very rough approximation of Tony Soprano, where is the Sopranos analogue to Seth Bullock or Sol Star or the Widow Garrett or any number of characters from the far deeper, richer Deadwood? In Deadwood all the action takes place in an entirely violent, savage, and corrupt outside world. The characters have no choice but to act in the violent, savage, and corrupt ways they often do, and nearly all of them have some amount of sensitivity and tenderness in them despite some of their actions. Those who don't - Farnum, Tolliver, are presented as out and out villains or fools. The Sopranos takes place in our world, in modern day New York and New Jersey where the vast majority of people don't act antisocially, violently, or criminally. The characters have the choice not to act the way they do, which is why their dysfunctional and criminal behavior is so depressing and alienating for the viewer. And, it's made all the more so when some characters try to escape the life and inevitably fail, like Steve Buscemi's character last season. The Sopranos asks to care about (and root for?) people who are acting like we're still living in the newly settled frontier of Deadwood when we're not. While The Sopranos tackles the petty squabbles of  a New Jersey mob family that causes most of its problems itself, Deadwood portrays complex, sympathetic characters contending with fate, government, big business. It portrays the struggles of America itself.

And if we're saying that Tony really is an analogue to Swearengen do we really want to make that comparison? Either as characters or as mob bosses? Swearengen eats Tony alive on all counts. While Tony's off acting like some mopey Gen-X gangster, snorting cocaine and almost sleeping with his soldier's woman, Swearegen is on top of his game mere days after having a stroke and passing gall stones, always on point, always making plays and giving orders. And would you rather listen to Tony whine or Al give one of his brilliant profane-yet-grand speeches?

As for the rest, I'd given up on Six Feet Under last season with the ridiculous David gets kidnapped and tortured plotline, but they won me over with their brilliant season opener this year and so far have had a surprisingly strong final season. I know many people who feel the same way. I don't know why he mentions the ratings figure for Six Feet when elsewhere he admits that ratings don't matter because HBO sells subscriptions not ads. I've already tackled his ridiculous statement about The Wire, which reveals more about the bizarrely close-minded HBO habits of the cultural elite than anything else.

The part about buzz is really the point of the entire piece. Namely, that HBO is losing it. Yet, it's confusing because sometimes buzz seems to mean popular appeal and sometimes it seems to mean artistic quality. He shifts every time it's more convenient for his argument. He admits that HBO's business is still profitable and that its still showing great stuff like Deadwood. He also admits that ratings don't matter for HBO and that ratings don't equal buzz, yet then he throws in some bullshit metric for buzz that essentially amounts to buzz being ratings. By the end of piece he's saying we should take heart because there's good stuff coming like Rome and Ricky Gervais's Extras and  that  Entourage is catching on with the chattering classes (his real definition of buzz, but he's apparently too ashamed of his elitism to admit it). So, what was the point of this column again? Oh yeah, that HBO is losing its buzz - even though he can't explain what this means other than that his friends aren't talking about The Wire - but the buzz will be back. Even if he could prove the momentary dip in buzzworthiness it this really a substantive enough issue to drive a column, even a media column? God I wish I had Andersen's job. I can write unsupported drivel about unimportant stuff too. Where do I apply?

 

Longer Form Review of 2046 (UPDATED)

Last night I did a synopsis. Today, in the time for the weekend, I'm going to do a somewhat longer review.

2046 picks up the character that Tony Leung played in In the Mood for Love a few years down the road. At the end of the last film he had left for Singapore a broken man. At the beginning of this one he's returned from Singapore even more of a lost soul. While in the last film he was a sympathetic character as a sensitive, cuckolded husband, in this one he's become a sleazy womanizer, gambler, and drunk. He also is writing differently now. While he also does work for newspapers and still writes some martial arts stories, he is becoming mostly a writer of soft pornography, much of it with a science fiction bent. The film pretty much consists of Tony Leung's character drinking, gambling, treating various women (for the most part) badly, and writing his increasingly erotic, increasingly science fictiony stories. These stories are the basis for the approximately 10% of the film which takes place in the year 2046 or on a train returning from that year. So, all of these portions of the film have a framing fiction and it's not some sort of artsy/surreal time travel movie as I'd thought it would be.

While very little "happens", as in most of Wong's films the real action is in the creation of haunting moods, moments, and imagery. The created world of 60s Hong Kong, especially the hotel where Tony Leung stays, is impossibly rich, dark, sensuous, textured, and detailed. The 2046 scenes are brighter and cleaner, with motifs of oranges and whites.

While the film's predecessor, In the Mood for Love, was a perfect, circumscribed non-love story love story, as compact and beautifully wrought as a great short story, this sequel is meandering and languorous, more like Wong's previous work. It shows the messy after-effects of not getting to have the one you love. At times Tony Leung's behavior towards women is so callous as to be appalling, while at times it's quite tender. All the while his deep stares haunt you. It's probably one of the best portrayals of being haunted by a lost love ever. The film also touches upon another one of the great Wong themes: the difficulty of communication. The film is in three languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese and all characters speak their language all the time, even when another character is speaking another language to them.

Much has been made of the fact that the film has performances by both Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, Wong Kar-Wai's past and present muse. Even more exciting to me is the presence of Faye Wong, Tony Leung's co-star from Chungking Express. All three women are great and bring their unique acting styles and presences to bear in their roles: Gong Li severe and strong, Zhang Ziyi soulful and tortured, Faye Wong pixyish and mischievous. It's one of Zhang Ziyi's best performances in her already storied career. She can say more with her deep, soulful eyes than most actors can in speech.

So much has been made about the film because of production difficulties, extensive editing, hype about it being some sort of Blade Runneresque future film noir etc. that the real truth of it, that it's really a rather straightforward meditation on the aftermath of lost love, has been obscured. While it's not as essential and perfectly realized a piece of filmmaking as In the Mood for Love, it's probably more compact and focused than Wong's 90s work. Just by virtue of being Wong, it's a more flavorful, glorious evocation of decay and loss than virtually anything else on film the world over.

UPDATE: I should also add a link to Mahnola Dargis's (God I love that name) excellent, perceptive review in the Times today. While I think she's slightly too hyperbolic in her praise, this is uncommoly sharp, beautifully written film criticism, a critic at the height of her powers talking about something she loves and making you understand it. Great stuff, and I mostly agree with her take on the film.

Kurt Andersen's Friends Live Among the Wolves, in Finland

 
"The Wire is a remarkably excellent drama about drugs and corruption in Baltimore, but in the three years since it premiered, no one has ever mentioned it to me."

-From Andersen's bizarre attempt to take HBO down a peg. So, he's supposedly the most media savvy and media-connected guy in town and he doesn't have a single friend who watches the best realistic drama in television history! And doesn't he remember all the press coverage of the show? That counts as someone mentioning it doesn't it? He really needs to find some friends who are more into pop culture. That is, if he really wants to keep being considered a media and pop culture guru.

2046

Over last weekend I saw 2046 from my Netflix queue. It's strange that it's already been to Cannes etc. and I can actually see it on DVD, but it's only being released in US theaters this weekend. I don't know if the version that people will be seeing in theaters is edited the same way. Since the film was edited so up to the last minute that it caused its' premiere at Cannes to be delayed for three hours, I wouldn't be surprised if Wong Kar-Wai has been doing a lot more editing since then.

While most of the press coverage of the film focused on the science fiction elements and made the film sound like it was going to be quite difficult, it actually functioned mostly as a fairly accessible sequel to Wong's critical and popular breakthrough In the Mood for Love. The futuristic elements only occupied a small portion of the film. 2046 stood most often for the number of a hotel room, not a year.

As in In the Mood for Love Christopher Doyle's cinematography was sumptuous and the music was beautiful. Another haunting, stylish, downbeat, but ultimately unforgettable mood piece from Wong Kar-Wai. Highly recommended, in whatever form you can see it.