The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Classic Liberal Is a Good Blog

Posted on | May 27, 2010 | 13 Comments

Just switched the FMJRA Award to The Classic Liberal, which is a good excuse for a brief Rule 2 seminar. Earlier today, I got an e-mail from a journalist who was doing a story about how the Dale Petersen video went “viral.” The reporter asked me why I called out Gawker for failing to give me a hat-tip on the video:

Adrien Chen at Gawker can’t bring himself to give me a hat-tip for being the first to blog about “The Most American Thing Ever Made,” but I’ll count this as one more uncredited mitzvah for the Clown Prince of the Right-Wing Blogosphere.

I linked Gawker in the process of taking notice of the non-hat-tip, and made a joke of it, because I don’t want to become one of those humorless bloggers — no need to name names — who spend way too much time compiling their Enemies List.

My own Enemies List is extremely short, not because I’m so merciful and magnanimous, but because I did too much dope back in the ’70s and don’t have enough spare memory cells to keep track of every douchebag who has screwed me over. Much less do I have time to keep track of the douchebags who have screwed over my friends. So I’ll sometimes link a douchebag and accidentally piss off my friends who expect me to keep track of their Enemies List.

Lots of my friends consider Dave Weigel a douchebag, for example. But I know Dave, we’ve covered the same stories — including the insane crucible of NY-23 — and he is the only big-time MSM blogger who includes me on his blogroll. Just imagine how that must piss off Charles Johnson, and you understand that Weigel can’t possibly be more than 97% douchebag. So there is at least some hope for his redemption before he reaches Rule 6 territory.

It takes persistent effort to make my Enemies List. Very few people can devote the kind of career-long effort that David Brooks has made toward becoming the Douchebag King and even Brooks occasionally writes something that isn’t completely wrong. The world would still be a better place if Brooks were air-dropped from a C-130 over Waziristan without a parachute, but that’s not necessarily the first thing on my “to do” list when I seize total power in a coup d’etat and become Maximum Leader of the revolutionary junta.

My e-mail reply to the inquiring journalist  involved a brief discouse on Rule 2 as an expression of the beneficial networking effects of reciprocal linkage, my concept of the blogosphere as a collaborative enterprise, “No Blog Is An Island,” etc. When I finished with that e-mail, I resolved to deliver the FMJRA Award to the most recent blog to have trackbacked here.

The Classic Liberal was the lucky linker, and I want to take the opportunity to praise the general design of his site. It’s clean and simple, with a nice overall look. It is easy to read — the type isn’t eye-straining small — with lots of links.

Good blogging, in other words. And he linked here, which is the very essence of good blogging in my book.

After the coup d’etat, there will only be so many crew members on that C-130 to Waziristan, and the Maximum Leader will be in charge of deciding who gets the honor of kicking the payload out the rear door. Keep that in mind.

Category: Blogging, Rule 2

Comments

13 Responses to “The Classic Liberal Is a Good Blog”

  1. Count Vikula
    May 27th, 2010 @ 6:02 pm

    Big fan of The Classic Liberal blog here. Daily visit for the Right-Wing Links end of day post.

    I found out about it via your blog!

  2. Count Vikula
    May 27th, 2010 @ 1:02 pm

    Big fan of The Classic Liberal blog here. Daily visit for the Right-Wing Links end of day post.

    I found out about it via your blog!

  3. Bob Belvedere
    May 27th, 2010 @ 6:21 pm

    Ah…Boss….you still want me to handle the black ops, right?

    Signed,
    Blogwhore Bob

  4. Bob Belvedere
    May 27th, 2010 @ 1:21 pm

    Ah…Boss….you still want me to handle the black ops, right?

    Signed,
    Blogwhore Bob

  5. Hot [Right] Wings « The Camp Of The Saints
    May 27th, 2010 @ 1:52 pm

    […] [Right] Wings 27 May 2010 @ 14:51 by bobbelvedere Over at The Other McCain, Stacy McCain unintentionally reminds me of something I haven’t done for a bit and that’s recommend to you, my faithful readers, […]

  6. theCL
    May 27th, 2010 @ 7:49 pm

    Thank you, thank you! That means a lot coming from the King of the Blogosphere!

  7. theCL
    May 27th, 2010 @ 2:49 pm

    Thank you, thank you! That means a lot coming from the King of the Blogosphere!

  8. Thomas L. Knapp
    May 27th, 2010 @ 10:38 pm

    It would be nice to have a trackback URL to manually ping. Sometimes when I link here I post the link in comments as a sort of pseudo-trackback, but I’d rather do the real thing.

  9. Thomas L. Knapp
    May 27th, 2010 @ 5:38 pm

    It would be nice to have a trackback URL to manually ping. Sometimes when I link here I post the link in comments as a sort of pseudo-trackback, but I’d rather do the real thing.

  10. Adobe Walls
    May 28th, 2010 @ 7:06 am

    Hopefully our maximin leader has more than one item on his “to do list”

  11. Adobe Walls
    May 28th, 2010 @ 2:06 am

    Hopefully our maximin leader has more than one item on his “to do list”

  12. You know what my problem is? « The TrogloPundit
    May 28th, 2010 @ 9:54 pm

    […] You know what my problem is? Everybody loves me. Or at least likes me. I don’t have any enemies, much less an enemies list. […]

  13. I’m the Last of My Kind Still Standing
    May 28th, 2010 @ 10:39 pm

    […] this blog receives on a daily basis, and for the many compliments I've received along the way too. The Classic Liberal Is a Good Blog. That's what keeps me going! It's why I'm typing away posting right […]