Comments on: Does Noise Trump Contemplation In The Blogosphere?

[ahaggert99]

Liberal blogs are no worse than the cesspit that is conservative talk radio. A cesspit that the vice-president regularly descends into, by the way. Are you aware by the way that Michelle Malkin wrote a book justifying the internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII, an historical outrage that all responsible scholars consider to be a disgusting racist blot on American history? Are you aware of how deeply dishonest that book is? are you aware of how slipshod and dishonest her book about "liberal incivility" actually is? Are you aware of how she routinely plays the victim after deliberately creating incitement? When the media stops coddling lunatics like Malkin and offering them a platform for their destructive movement, maybe people will stop yelling at you for doing so.

[bonzo00]

Ummm, the jaw-dropping imperceptiveness of contemporary journalists does tend to illict rage if you're semisentient. There you sat, with a man who out-nixon's Nixon, more concerned about the cocktails and munchies and who brought the coolest guest. You got called on it. No, that wasn't satire, that was irony, and masterful delineation of both the President's ineptitude, never mind the criminality, and your, the journalists', timidity. Were you practicing during the Viet Nam War

[leftylimblog]

Well, it was a blog that sent me here. I don't watch any of the broadcast or cable "news" shows anymore. No Need. They won't cover the stuff I am interested in anyway... and if they do, they will do a very poor job of it. I am sorry the overly self-important White House Correspondents Association was miffed by somebody asking a few embarrassly hard questions... but since they don't ask them somebody has to do it. And Stephen Colbert stepped up and hit the ball out of the park! I can watch Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report" along with reading a few blogs and find out if there is anything of interest over "here" in the corporate controlled media, and follow the links to it if I want. Sooo, keep grumbling about those fast moving furry little creatures who are seemingly everywhere. We will get along fine without the corporate media. Lefty!

[kaymaxwell-2009]

Oh geez, do you guys actually read blogs before you criticize? Go read the archives over at least the last year for Hullaballo, Whiskey Bar, Fire Dog Lake, Riverbend, AmericaBlog, The Poor Man, First Draft, Talking Points Memo, as well as, naturally Daily Kos and Eschaton-- and pick any other 20 liberal blogs at random off the blog rolls at any of the above sites. Do that and come back here and talk to us all about "blog rage". While your at it, take a similar - but much darker and wilder - journey through the right side of political blogs. What I see here and what I read so much of about the much vaunted *scary* left side of the "blogosphere" is like some paranoid fantasy. What's actually out there is a forum for informed dissent which has openly embraced eloquent irony (eg snark) as its most potent weapon. The world of liberal blogs has only just begun the journey toward genuinely radical disapproval whi. Give this administration another year without any accountability and you will either hear it much louder and more clearly or you will hear nothing at all. We're a civilized group. We'd rather not give this administration that extended pass on accountability or truthfulness. The point is really simple. Colbert made us laugh. He made us think. And for one brief comic moment he held Bush accountable face to face. What you all really don't seem to want to talk about is what made Colbert's performance both necessary and brilliant.

The most comprehensive, insightful journalism about the Plame investigation is coming from Firedoglake. The most comprehensive, insightful journalism about current constitutional issues is Glenn Greenwald. The most comprehensive, insightful journalism about polling and congressional races is Daily Kos. The most insightful editorial commentary regarding the current congress and administration comes from Digby and TBogg, among many others. But for some reason, the traditional media is focusing on "shrillness" or "ranting." The human brain has evolved to discern patterns where they might or might not exist. I think it's an interesting Rorschach that the media, whose (traditional) job it has been to pull stories from a cacophony of of voices, has chosen to filter the data coming from blogs as some variation of "Are the Blogs Doing Themselves a Disservice?" or "Blogs: Free Time in the Basement." Something tells me an enterprising journalist would find a real story, rather than jumping on a demeaning CW bandwagon.

[leftylimblog]

Well, it was a blog that sent me here. I don't watch any of the broadcast or cable "news" shows anymore. No Need. They won't cover the stuff I am interested in anyway... and if they do, they will do a very poor job of it. I am sorry the overly self-important White House Correspondents Association was miffed by somebody asking a few embarrassly hard questions... but since they don't ask them somebody has to do it. And Stephen Colbert stepped up and hit the ball out of the park! I can watch Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report" along with reading a few blogs and find out if there is anything of interest over "here" in the corporate controlled media, and follow the links to it if I want. Sooo, keep grumbling about those fast moving furry little creatures who are seemingly everywhere. We will get along fine without the corporate media. Lefty!

[elan6]

Vaughn, It's important to understand that the blog world is a new medium- it's still sorting itself out, so it's no surprise that there are some rough edges. The incivility that we sometimes encounter in the blogosphere is a very small price to pay IMHO for the fact that we now have a venue where ordinary citizens can be heard, can mingle, and can provide a counterbalance to the corporate-generated pablum that is dispensed by our traditional media. The extent to which the crimes of the Bush administration have been enabled by our pathetic mainstream media is a national scandal. Without blogs, we would be a lot closer to outright fascism in this country.

[allun-2009]

...oh, and thank G_D for people like Stephen Colbert, who have the balls to speak truth to power, even when the MSM only understands truthiness!

[allun-2009]

Seems to me the answer to your question is, NO. I read blogs because they, like you say, connect the dots. They ask/answer questions the MSM stopped or forgot to ask. The blogs that don't measure up get skipped, (limited attention span on my part), and i return day after day to those that do. (I think it's called free market capitalism?)

[sandykoufax2]

Why is it, that every major corporate media outlet thinks the reaction from the left is more newsworthy than addressing the content of what Mr. Colbert said? Defend yourselves if you think he was off base for calling the white house press corp stenographers. We are angry because you guys don't seem to care. This cannot be the first time you've heard this criticism and yet, there hasn't been a single big name journalist that addressed it. Big media wants the legacy that was created by those that went before it is not interested in doing the hard work of alienating the powerful by digging for the truth and telling the world what you learned. Heal yourselves before casting about for victim status.