“Glenn Reynolds”:http://instapundit.com/archives/018780.php and “Roger L. Simon”:http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2004/10/prediction.php tell us that if Kerry wins, it will be the fault of the mainstream media, and that the blogosphere will have its revenge. Simon’s post is especially creepy.
bq. If the Kerry does win, the mainstream media will have gotten him elected with their biased coverage and they will pay for it more than they could imagine. And it will be the blogosphere and you, our supporters, who will make them pay. Our strength will grow incremently [sic] with a Kerry victory in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media. Yes, we too have “plans.”
This is surely the blossoming of blogosphere triumphalism into a fully-fledged pathology. A self-sustaining narrative about the perfidy of Big Media is allowing certain bloggers to “explain” why their preferred candidate might be defeated, without any uncomfortable re-examination of prior beliefs that have turned out to be wrong. As a bonus, this provides them with a sort of tinpot revanchist mythology. If Kerry does indeed win, I’ve no doubt that Reynolds, Simon and company would be able to maintain a Regnery Publications-style alternative narrative about how they were robbed, how the invasion of Iraq really would have been a success if it weren’t for those perfidious newspapers’ insistence on ignoring “adorable little kitten stories”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002273.html etc etc. But given that warbloggers, like the rest of us, aren’t great shakes at going out there and digging up actual new information, the best they can realistically hope for is to become a distributed version of what the Drudge Report was during the Clinton years, dishing out dirt, conspiracy theories and the odd bit of useful information, but fundamentally parasitic on the mainstream media that they claim to despise.
Update: see “here”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_10_31_fafblog_archive.html#109935816604258290 for the unmissable Giblets remix.
{ 45 comments }
jif 11.01.04 at 7:36 pm
I think he meant “excrementally”.
Paul 11.01.04 at 7:38 pm
More like where blogger triumphalism meets the not-so-scary villain from Scooby-Doo. “Yes, we too have ‘plans'” is a pretty silly thing to say for adult who wants to be taken seriously. I can only guess is that Simon thinks there’s a payoff–I can’t imagine what–to playing a “character” to a particular kind of disaffected readership. I’m not sure that has much to do with “politics” at all in Simon’s case, maybe just a bit more in Reynolds’.
Matt McGrattan 11.01.04 at 7:40 pm
David Neiwert (http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/) has been running a long-standing series on pseudo-fascism on the American right and he’s been talking about precisely this kind of thing.
john 11.01.04 at 7:47 pm
If I’m not mistaken, the right has been just on the verge of teaching that liberal media a lesson for at least a decade.
Brian 11.01.04 at 8:01 pm
I think Hannity/Newsmax/Rush/Drudge/Instapundit will actually enjoy a Kerry presidency more than they have enjoyed constantly propping up Bush and apologizing for one dubya turdburger after another. (I don’t mean apologizing as in “I’m sorry” but as in spinning every negative into a implausible positive).
They’ll have to do nothing but attack, and spread weird rumors about black love children and murders and all sorts of stuff. It will be like the 90s all over again.
These guys can’t rule but they’re really good at throwing mud and they’ll probably have more fun going back to doing that.
mcm 11.01.04 at 8:01 pm
Creepy? Yes. But there’s something almost comical in such overblown, cartoon-character rhetoric. In particular, Roger L. Simon sounds like Hacker, the dastardly villain from Cyberchase.
It’s clear they’re preparing themselves and their loyal readers for a Bush defeat.
Lee Scoresby 11.01.04 at 8:18 pm
Roger L. Simon is always creepy. The comments section on his blog is even creepier.
The fact is that Bush has had all the advantages of incumbency, an incredibly secretive administration, and a press that has shown little interest in scrutinizing his claims. If a plurality of voters want to get rid of him, it is because they disagree with Simon’s worldview. Maybe that’s what freaks him out so much.
abb1 11.01.04 at 8:18 pm
Actually, it’s pretty clear that the media haven’t done to Kerry what they did to Gore four years ago.
So, if we mark the 2000 coverage as ‘neutral’, then 2004 is, indeed, ‘biased’.
And I don’t doubt for a second that most of the media do want Kerry to win, because they are a tad smarter than your average regular-church-goer and they can smell a calamity-in-the-making.
So, this Roger Simon guy does have a point. Sort of.
cleek 11.01.04 at 8:23 pm
“If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
cleek 11.01.04 at 8:26 pm
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
ben wolfson 11.01.04 at 8:27 pm
James Wolcott has been on this.
cleek 11.01.04 at 8:45 pm
sorry. it just sounds better if it’s repeated.
thomas 11.01.04 at 8:59 pm
I went to the Simon site and one of the comments regarding a Kerry win was this…
“If Kerry wins, it’s because the voters preferred him.”
to which another writer responded with…
“This presumes no voter fraud, and no legal shenanigans.”
So the tactic is massive voter suppression through every means available and at the same time accuse the other of voter fraud. It would be funny if it were not real.
Ted Barlow 11.01.04 at 9:23 pm
Good post. Extra points for avoiding using the word “douchebag”, which would be beyond my powers.
Terrier 11.01.04 at 9:37 pm
Sounds like – desperation!
Smells like – the stench of a loser!
Barry 11.01.04 at 9:40 pm
Thomas, that’s been one of the standard tricks of the right for quite a while. Accuse the left of what the right is already doing. That way, the left is reduced to what the the media will interpret as a child saying ‘you too’. Then, as both sides are presumed to do it, the side which is actually doing it profits.
Scaramouche 11.01.04 at 10:01 pm
Because of the pathological triumphilism you described I think there will be blogger die-off, because carrying on with so much vitriol will make a Blogger’s head explodes
LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a blogger whose head literally exploded in the final week of the election!
No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but a small room at the blogger’s residence was sprayed with blood and brain matter when Gerard Van der Leun’s head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Blogosis or HCB …
bryan 11.01.04 at 10:07 pm
strikes cleek down while imagining an elephant with a nuclear powered trunk that solves murder mysteries.
jl 11.01.04 at 10:13 pm
He’s upset with the same media that has not corrected the Saddam – 9/11 link. What kind of fantasy world does he live in.
Scott Lemieux 11.01.04 at 10:40 pm
Yep–after Kerry wins tomorrow, we can expect these hacks to be firing up their “stab in the back” engines. What I want to know is, what’s the evidence that the New York Times influences swing voters in Ohio? Leaving aside the transparent idiocy of the claim that the Times is “in the tank” for Kerry, what kind of Grade A moron do you have to be to think that the Times can throw an election in a swing state among voters who don’t read it?
Patrick 11.01.04 at 11:31 pm
That’s the beauty of the conservative frame set…no matter how reality kicks them in the pants, no matter how much the facts disagree with their ideas, there’s always someone or something to blame other than the obvious: Their ideas are inferior.
HP 11.01.04 at 11:57 pm
You know, if you assume that a “blogosphere” is a device that uses spinal fluid from beautiful women to create an army of radium-powered gorillas, that Simon quote sounds just like the kind of speech that George Zucco would’ve given Glenn Strange in an old Republic Pictures horror movie.
HP 11.02.04 at 12:18 am
Sorry, I can’t resist:
“They laughed at our ideas at the University. They called us mad! ‘Mad’? Why, we see more clearly than we’ve ever seen before! Yes … we too have ‘plans.’ Soon, with the acquisition of the radium under the Stevens’ ranch, and another extraction of spinal fluid from the lovely Miss Baxter, our blog-o-sphere will be complete! We’ll see who laughs when our radio-apes crush their very marrow! Nothing can stop us now! [knock at door] What’s that? Quick, Glenn, see who’s at the door, and send them away. I must not be interrupted.”
yabonn 11.02.04 at 12:21 am
Yesterday presidency was an anti evil doers magical totem that only traitors would question.
With the last polls, it seem that the presidential function, after all, sucks. One of these meaningless evil media creatures that every good patriot should regard as highly questionnable.
Sheesh. These wingnut flipflopers.
A New York City High School Math Teacher 11.02.04 at 1:40 am
Ach, Ludendorff:
This must not be.
Randy Paul 11.02.04 at 1:47 am
Denial must be a huge river as it runs through both Knoxville, TN and Los Angeles.
Now they have sunk to the level of whining. They should all grow up.
Randy Paul 11.02.04 at 2:33 am
Yes, we too have “plans.”
Ohmigod! Does this mean Scenes From a Mall II? Son of My Man Adam? Jennifer Still on My Mind?
The horror!
Tom T. 11.02.04 at 3:02 am
This sort of over-the-top rhetoric is simply the right-wing equivalent of the occasional remarks by various Hollywood actors that they will depart the country if [that year’s Republican candidate] is elected President. Heartfelt, but embarrassing.
Paul 11.02.04 at 4:32 am
George Zucco? Worse than that.
Other Lisa 11.02.04 at 6:41 am
Yikes. “Tomorrow belongs to me,” indeed…
Boronx 11.02.04 at 6:45 am
They’ll never match drudge, who at the very least is a great clearinghouse for timely information on earthquakes and other disasters.
jay boilswater 11.02.04 at 7:07 am
“So the tactic is massive voter suppression through every means available and at the same time accuse the other of voter fraud. It would be funny if it were not real.”
Yes that is the tactic, always has been. There are variations on the theme, but you have indentified the mechanics correctly.
Buck 11.02.04 at 7:14 am
Nice catch! But Simon is just one of a whole bunch. Just scroll down a bit for comments and you find some like this:
“My take is the MSM will see a Kerry victory as validation for their Soviet style tactics and it will only further encourage their perfidy. A Bush defeat will signal that the Gramscian left is winning by installing a fifth column in the fourth estate, Hollywood, and academia. I believe it will mean that the wheels will be set in motion for an almost unimaginable catastrophe. This is the seed of the internal defeat of America in Viet Nam come to fruition.”
There is a certain perverse irony in this lunatic refering to “Soviet style tactics” for “MSM”. If anyone’s been guilty of Soviet style tactics for the past five years, it is the Bush 2000 campaing and the presidency that it gave birth to. Let’s hope today will put an end to this.
um 11.02.04 at 7:46 am
Maybe what they have in mind is a reverse of the Sinclair boycott.
um 11.02.04 at 7:47 am
Maybe what they have in mind is a reverse of the Sinclair boycott.
mona 11.02.04 at 8:00 am
Play it backwards and you get, “If Bush wins, we the warbloggers will have got him elected on the basis of our convincing suave manners, flawless logic and intellectual honesty…”
Speaking of intellectual honesty, is that Glenn Reynolds moaning about big liberal media the same Glenn Reynolds who got his little lunatic piece on the ‘anglosphere’ published in the Guardian?
Sam Boogliodemus 11.02.04 at 8:20 am
Kerry has no prostate gland and is on estrogen therapy to prevent the cancer from recurring. He’s less potent than a popcorn fart. We need a President with SPUNK. Vote Bush!
BigMatt 11.02.04 at 10:21 am
Some months ago, in an effort to balance my left-heavy blog reading, I started reading Reynolds and Simon. Hoping for intelligent analysis from the right, I instead read screed after screed attacking the media bias of the left, adding fuel to the fire to any possible anti-Kerry story, and generally staying aloof from any substantive analysis whatsoever of pro-war, conservative values.
Simply put, Simon and Reynolds are pompous, self-righteous blowhards. Incessantly harping on the media gives them an excuse to not examine their own biases and to feel that anyone who disagrees with them simply lack the relevant data.
There are enough good conservative and hawkish blogs out there to leave Simon and his creepy, echo-chamber commenters in their own corner of the web. As for Reynolds, well, he at least occasionally has nice photographs.
derek 11.02.04 at 10:55 am
I have a lot of sympathy for the Republican party supporters who feel frustrated that the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, and the concentration of the media into the hands of a tiny number of extremely wealthy men, has enabled those men to use their ownership to corrupt the noble profession of journalism and set it to blasting their propaganda across the country (propaganda which is really grossly unrepresentative of the way Americans actually feel).
I look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with them as we bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and break up the media oligopolies into small independent companies staffed by genuinely professional journalists, reporters and editors!
What a great day that will be.
Jadegold 11.02.04 at 2:18 pm
Yes, we too have “plans.â€
Perhaps these “plans” involve losing the ridiculous fedora in favor of a Reynolds Wrap chapeau.
Sparkie 11.02.04 at 4:22 pm
Is anybody else getting an image of Dr Evil and his “plans”? What’s really scary is that the Republicans think that people are gullible enough to believe some of the BS that they have been peddling.
Threegoal 11.02.04 at 6:21 pm
It looks like all those whining right-wing bloggers got used to a predd tht did not question anything Bush & Cheyney did, and are having probems when their words and actions are subjected to the fact test.
You’re pretty weak when you can’t handle your guy being tested against reality. Deal with it.
VeniVedi 11.02.04 at 7:41 pm
Yeah what this reminds me of are the “New Economy” internet boys of a few years back. Brick and mortar is dead; long live the internet.
Blah, blah, blah.
Michael Uman 11.03.04 at 12:10 am
Looks like Bush is toast…
HALLELUJAH!!!!!
Goodbye to the worst president in history and hello to opportunity and hope. Bush was aweful and Kerry will remind us why we voted for him instead of Bush. The difference will be felt by the end of next year…
Lets get over this and work together to make America stronger and an enviable leader in the world.
Michael
jvp 11.03.04 at 2:18 am
My god…could you write any less clearly?
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