The Other McCain

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

The Familiar Pattern Emerges Again

Posted on | January 2, 2012 | 66 Comments

JOHNSTON, Iowa
Today I published another column from the campaign trail here in Iowa:

Rick Santorum made a bold prediction here Friday night: The Pittsburgh Steelers will go all the way to the Super Bowl for a rematch with the Green Bay Packers.
The former Pennsylvania senator was enjoying a rare moment of relaxation on the campaign trail here in Iowa, where voters will gather Tuesday night to cast the first real votes that count toward the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Santorum was wearing a University of Iowa Hawkeyes cap at the Okoboji Grille, where he gathered with supporters to watch the Hawkeyes play the Oklahoma Sooners in the Insight Bowl. When he arrived at the restaurant in Johnston, a suburb of Des Moines, Santorum was swarmed by reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen who have swooped down on his campaign in the past week as polls began indicating that he was surging ahead in the pack of GOP candidates.
Most of the reporters had left the restaurant (and the Hawkeyes were well on their way to a 31-14 loss to the Sooners) by the time I had the chance to ask Santorum about his beloved Steelers. “We will beat the Browns this week,” he said, sitting in front of a half-finished platter of nachos. “My prediction is, both the Patriots will lose to the Bills and the Ravens will lose to the Bengals and we will be the Number One seed in the AFC playoffs.”
But while the underdog-turned-contender was willing to risk prognosticating the NFL all the way to the Super Bowl, he has remained hesitant to predict how he’ll finish in Tuesday’s caucuses. Santorum obviously wants to exceed expectations, but the poll numbers and media buzz surrounding his campaign are making it hard to suppress those expectations. . . .

You can read the whole thing at The American Spectator, and I hope readers are not offended by my practice of linking my columns here, but I sometimes get the feeling that if I didn’t link and quote my own columns, no one would. Here, for the record, are my previous four columns from Iowa:

God knows that, having started reporting the “Santorum Surge” weeks before anyone else noticed it, I certainly don’t deserve any credit for my foresight now that the surge is headline news all across the country. In fact, conservative bloggers who ridiculed me for writing about Santorum a month ago are now linking and quoting MSM reports about the Iowa caucuses rather than quoting anything I’ve written.

Even before Tabitha Hale made a point of excluding me from the BlogCon agenda, I began to suspect that rather than being hated for anything I’d done wrong, I was being hated for my successes. One might think that a track record of success would count for something in the political blogosphere, and yet the more often I’m right, the more profoundly I’m hated. This problem was once more brought to my attention last night when Smitty e-mailed me a post Professor William Jacobson wrote at Legal Insurrection, which touched a raw nerve.

It seems there are people who resent my very presence in the conservative blogosphere, who feel that I am an unwelcome interloper, intruding on a private party to which I was not invited. These people apparently hope that, if they can ignore me long enough — and persuade others also to ignore me — maybe I’ll just go away. Being treated as persona non grata by those who profess friendship is a bewildering experience, one which permits only two possible explanations:

  1. The professions of friendship are false and these people who say they harbor no animosity toward me are concealing a profound hatred toward me which, for some reason, they are unwilling to admit; or
  2. My work is utterly worthless, and therefore undeserving of recognition.

Neither explanation is comforting, for either I have spent the past 25 years pursuing a career for which I lack any aptitude, or else I have somehow managed to inspire intense hatred from these people who, for some unexplained reason, prefer to conceal the motives of their hatred. Such relentless discouragement from my “friends” is particularly distracting at a time when I have traveled to Iowa in hopes of doing some work that might be regarded as useful.

In the case of Professor Jacobson, I suppose his evident delight in heaping scorn on me is related to his undisguised opposition to the candidacy of Rick Santorum. And thus does the bearer of bad news (from the perspective that good news for Santorum is bad news for the professor’s favored candidate) become persona non grata.

People who tell you that honesty is the best policy are wrong, if the object of your policy is to become popular. To say honestly what one believes is viewed by sophisticated people as foolishness, and to admit doubt or discouragement is considered an expression of self-pity. So it is that, desiring to be thought wise and strong, we are led to care more about seeming virtuous than actually being virtuous.

Bite your tongue and hide your motives, for this is wisdom. Never acknowledge that you have been hurt, for there is strength in denial. Such are the implicit maxims of the Cult of Seeming.

The incentives to be concerned chiefly with seeming are very powerful, in a world where people are often judged more by perception than reality. Yet that temptation must be resisted, because it can lead to a life based on falsehood, and those who attempt to live a lie are never completely successful in their deceptions.

Take a step down that path, and then another and another and, before you know it, you’ll be lobbying for Freddie Mac, recording a video with Nancy Pelosi, running up a million-dollar tab at Tiffany’s and cruising the Aegean with your third wife, all the while expecting the good people of Iowa to support you as an “outsider” who is going to clean up the mess in Washington.

I believe it was a Republican who once observed that you cannot fool all the people all the time. And we have reason to believe that not many Republicans in Iowa have been fooled this time.

Yet to point out the imposture, to say that the transparent phoniness of Newt Gingrich is the direct cause of his failure, is to alienate those who believed that Newt could get away with it. I think they underestimated the good folk of Iowa.

Maybe Professor Jacobson doesn’t like me, and certainly he doesn’t like Rick Santorum. But at least Santorum is who he is, and doesn’t try to substitute seeming for being.

Category: American Spectator, Fear and Loathing in Iowa, Iowa, Legal Insurrection

Comments

66 Responses to “The Familiar Pattern Emerges Again”

  1. smitty
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 9:10 am

    In the case of Professor Jacobson, I suppose his evident delight in heaping scorn on me

    I’m not seeing much delight evident in Prof. J’s post, nor gleaning any motive for such from the man.

  2. Mike G.
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 9:11 am

     Good article and you hit the nail on the head-people are more concerned with others’  perception of them than they are with the nitty gritty truth of the matter and will fight you tooth and nail to change your mind over to their way of thinking.

  3. The Familiar Pattern Emerges Again « That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 9:27 am

    […] The Familiar Pattern Emerges Again. […]

  4. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 9:57 am

    So a college professor with what I am presuming to be a comfortable sinecure and a grad student make mock of someone huckstering his sole source of income, while praising a blogger who makes much of his iconoclastic in your face blog publicly while telling his contributors and readers to tone it down because too much profanity is bad for his bottom line.  And said grad student certainly wasn’t around back when Ace was bemoaning his own money worries.

    On the other hand, it probably IS an impedance to linking you when you mix your serious content with the whole  “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?” lament in the same posts.

    Maybe give the jeremiads their own posts and leave the nuts and bolts blogging in the nuts and bolts posts?

    The other thing you’re overlooking is the schoolyard sensibility of too much of the conservative blogosphere, no matter how edgy.  Even the mighty Ace knows he can’t really influence a Sarah Palin or even a Rick Santorum, much less a Ron Paul, so he like many bloggers will attack the supporters of the victim they wish to bully, to isolate their victim.  It’s one thing to be disagreed with on substance, but vitriolic attacks such as those Ace dumped on Palin’s fans are not about persuading anyone but intimidating them.  Given your repeated championing of underdogs, I suspect you’re catching your unfair share of that.

    Also, consider that you’re both older and more experienced with more legitimate journalistic credentials than most of these bloggers.

  5. KingShamus
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:06 am

    Haters gonna hate.

  6. Dcmick
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:24 am

    Typical RSM, teasing more out of a piece than is really there.

    Sorry RSM, but Jacobson has better things to do than obsess over your place within the blogging and reporting universe. 

    Rob sees himself as one of the main players in some Byzantine passion play, where nothing is what it seems, hidden motives abound and hole cards are always on the verge of being dropped.

    Jacobson probably views you as some overenthusiastic type who just weeks ago was all eager to go to the mattresses for the obviously unready Cain, and who now has bounced off of those very same mattresses right on up aboard Rick Santorum’s bandwagon.

    Such displays of intellectual agitation doesn’t do much to demonstrate intellectual seriousness.

    Though those of us who frequent your blog DO perceive a seriousness, ————— though sometimes it’s not always on display.

     

  7. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:26 am

    Linked, ya big sissy.

    http://tinyurl.com/79broaw 

  8. Dcmick
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:29 am

    And one more thing Rob,

    Could you explain how you managed to make your peace with Santorum dragging Specter over the finish line against Toomey, ——— while simultaneously remaining in high dudgeon over Gingrich’s activity up there in NY ?

    Would you please address too the relative unimportance of NY 23 in the wider scheme of things compared to the HUGE importance of a Senate seat, particularly in light of judiciary battles.

    I’m not saying by the way that there isn’t any rationalization possible.

    I’m just asking that the guy who flipped out, whigged out, what have you over NY 23, DOES need to address why he’s waxing rhapsodic over Santorum who has a much more problematic record in that specific regard.

    Just askin’…………

  9. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:41 am

    Because, as Stacy has said repeatedly  but I will repeat for the benefit of the hard of reading, the White House ASKED Santorum specifically to endorse. Because Toomey sucked pondwater.  Because Specter had helped Santorum when he was just starting out in politics (remember, like Palin with Mccain in ‘1o?) Because Santorum never went on to directly attack and slander other Republicans and conservatives, as Gingrich did.

    Cut and paste this if you ever need the question answered again.

  10. smitty
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:43 am

    Could you explain how you managed to make your peace with Santorum dragging Specter over the finish line against Toomey, ——— while simultaneously remaining in high dudgeon over Gingrich’s activity up there in NY ?

    I’ll venture physical proximity. Stacy blogged NY-23 extensively, but didn’t do much in PA.

    The other point is that Specter is, AFAIK, the only major ‘sin’ Santorum has committed. NY-23 lands somewhere on page 17 of Shorter Collected Ooopses of Newt Gingrich.

    That said, I’d still take Newt over Mitt, but cast both aside for Santorum, given my druthers.

  11. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:52 am

    The grad student was trying to describe the style of said blogs
    like describing water to a fish, now Jacobsen has been on the same  wavelength as you, although he didn’t go on an imminently Delta move as to vote for Barr, in order to spite your cousin, but actually ended up injuring the candidate
    that really gave a darn that time.

  12. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 10:55 am

    OK, you shamed me into a “Stacy predicted this” addendum to my Iowa Caucus Predictions post.

    I’ll apologize in advance for the fact that a Kn@ppsterlanche probably looks like one or two hits.

  13. Sissy Willis
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 11:12 am

    Like Smitty, I sensed no scorn on the part of Prof J. In my reading, he was understandably delighted to be apprecciated by the young hussy. She, in turn, was attempting to signal her membership in “the tribe” by stroking his ego. A whiff of Codevilla’s Ruling Class vs Country Class social dynamics.
    Bottom line for me though — beyond the necessary intelligence, insight and writing prowess — is the authenticity of a blogger’s voice. You and the Prof have that in spades. Stop worrying and keep on doing what you’re doing. That’s why we keep coming back! I say vive la difference!

  14. Sissy Willis
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 11:15 am

    I’m thinking, too, nothing so wrong with a bit of “hydrant peeing” between two alpha dogs.

  15. Jack
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 11:45 am

    Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your friends, up there on the sanctuary moon in Virginia and Maryland, are walking into a trap, as is your Rebel fleet American Spectator. It was *I* who allowed the Alliance Other McCain to know the location of the shield generator Blogcon Agenda. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops Bloggers awaits them. Oh, I’m afraid the deflector shield New-blogger Perma-ban will be quite operational when your friends arrive.

  16. Dcmick
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 11:55 am

    Recall, Specter provided political cover to those smearing Bork, and afterwards, to this day in fact, Specter BRAGS about him having “borked” Bork.

    The smears against Bork were despicable.

    There’s a good case that the level of hyperpartisanship that some decry today commenced with the Democrat party destroying the reputation of Robert Bork, a guy who sailed through to the DC Court with hardly a vote against him.

    God that was bad…….

    As for RSM’s proximity, yes there’s certainly that.  He was right there, battling and reporting.

  17. Dcmick
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 11:59 am

    It was Rove that asked, who was a functionary in the White House.  We’re not talking here about the President asking for support for some legislative matter, or some SALT treaty vote.

    We’re talking inner party stuff.

    And Santorum would have been better off asking Rove where he got off trying to force Pennsylvanians to vote in accord with Rove’s whims and desires. 

    Whether Toomey would have prevailed in the general is unknown, I for my part think Toomey was unelectable in a Pennsylvania general until after Obamacare and the first two years of Obama.  Even then he barely edged out Sestak; it was the Pennsylvania Republican Governor Corbett who dragged Toomey across the line to victory.

  18. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:08 pm

    Certainly the Professor cited the grad student’s paper because it praised his. But it also derogated our blog, and thus my imputation of “evident delight.”

    Am I too sensitive to perceived slights? Perhaps, but negative perceptions have a way of snowballing, and when your friends exult in mocking you, it tends to invite others to jump on the dogpile.

  19. Multimedia Group
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:08 pm

    “was all eager to go to the mattresses for the obviously unready Cain”

    ALL of the candidates are showing that they are “obviously unready” so what’s the point of that jab?

    It would be easy to go through the list of candidates and show the numerous ways that each are clearly “unready” by the standards you seem to be applying to Cain.  

    Romney? How long has he been at this and still can’t close the deal? He’s the poster boy for “unready” by the standard that he has had the second longest unsuccessful campaign of any of them (behind Paul).

    Perry? Obvious that he was unprepared in a variety of ways from the beginning. Hey, I wouldn’t mind a President Perry but he has certainly shown an amateur quality to his leadership thus far.

    Paul?  Why is he even running when he has the baggage he has? He’s not only “unready” he’s clueless.

    Newt?  Probably the most “ready” but that’s only because he and everyone else knows that Newt is what he is (a political opportunist), take him or leave him. But he really doesn’t have an answer for his past sins and he really should have figured out how to defend himself by now.

    And so on.  

    I think I could make an argument that Cain was just as “ready” as anyone else in the field but how do you combat slander on the grand scale that was leveled against Cain?  I submit that NO ONE can be ready to defend themselves against such an attack, especially if your own side joins the other side against you.

  20. Multimedia Group
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:18 pm

    I believe Santorum defends his support of Specter as the result of a negotiation.  Specter asked for his support and Santorum agreed if Specter would guarantee support for Bush’s SCOTUS nominees (which Specter did).

    Of course, Toomey would have supported Bush as well so I’m not sure I totally understand Santorum’s reasoning.  I’m guessing that Santorum had a political reason for supporting Specter as well. Maybe he figured Specter was going to win anyway and wanted to extract something from him in return for an endorsement.

    Santorum is a pretty strong, principled guy but he had to weigh his options and he made a choice. One that, to this day, he says is one of his “warts”.

  21. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:27 pm

    The Sitemeter went backwards.  I’ve never seen that before.*g*

  22. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:29 pm

    On a brighter note, Ace is warming up to embrace his inner Joan Crawford on Twitter again: “If this is the best we can do, we deserve to lose.”

  23. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:30 pm

    Oh, and by way of further complaint, I’m deeply concerned by the abence of inappropriately dressed young ladies selling questional relationship services in your sidebar lately.

  24. Dcmick
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:36 pm

    I completely disagree with that.

    I don’t like Romney.

    Not at all.

    But Romney is more than capable of hitting the ground running were he elected.

    Likewise Gingrich.

    As for the rest, there are serious problems about Santorum for instance because of the lack of executive experience. 

    Likewise Bachmann, likewise Paul.

    Gingrich ran the legislative affairs and committees of the whole House.

    Romney ran a state.

    The others ran nothing more than their offices, and their mouth………

    Moreover, notice that I prefaced my comment about Cain being unready by tossing in “obviously.”

    There’s a quantum of unpreparedness present with Cain, also with Bachmann and Paul. that isn’t present with the rest of the candidates.

    Beyond his 999 plan, Cain wasn’t prepared to discuss much at all.  Bachmann hasn’t ran so much as a committee let alone anything so complex as a federal agency or the federal government.

    People often short the complexity of our government, and the level of intellectual force and nerve necessary to change its course.

  25. Dcmick
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:39 pm

    You sensed no scorn because there was none present.

    Jacobson merely noted RSM obvious glee.

    If a rather obvious observation is enough to set RSM off, ——– then that’s a prob……….

  26. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:43 pm

    Yeah, I’m a traffic juggernaut in much the same way that a Yugo is an SUV.

  27. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 12:48 pm

    Gingrich has precisely 0% more executive experience than Santorum.  For that matter, since Santorum was actually working the floor and closing the deals while Newt was waving his big ideas in front of the cameras, he’s arguably more prepared from an experience standpoint.

  28. L_C_R
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:05 pm

    William A. Jacobson |
    January 1, 2012 at 7:29 pm

    I didn’t take it as an insult to T.O.M., I think it’s part of
    the blog’s persona that it’s a bit over the top in terms of “hit the tip
    jar” etc. I wouldn’t have printed it if I thought it was intended to
    be derogatory. Taxpayer1234 |
    January 1, 2012 at 10:07 pm

    No, it wasn’t meant to be a diss at all. The paper was an
    analysis of the use of ethos in political blogs. TOM’s is more Platonic
    in nature, while LI’s and Ace’s is more Aristotelian.

  29. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:07 pm

    Don’t bother.  It does get rather tiresome at times.  State politics (yes, politics has chits) is a whole different animal than a free agent like Newt doing his own thing.

    I have explained this ad nauseusm, but people want to stick with their purist codes.  

    It also shows the lack of foresight of many in the conservative movement with Justices Alito and Roberts on the bench who are about to decide the fate of the AZ law and Obamacare.

    Obviously, it doesn’t bother someone like Mark Levin.

  30. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:11 pm

    Exactly!  If Santorum went on to “endorse” Toomey and let’s say he won the nomination, he would have lost the general.  Like you said, Toomey barely won in a wave year, it was close to the bitter end.

    So, what would have happened?  A Dem pick up, and possibly a Senate change to the Dems … and then no Judiciary Committe Chair to “usher” through Alito and Roberts.

  31. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:14 pm

    Yes, Specter sucks.  No one is defending him.

  32. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:21 pm

    Actually, Romney ran a state very poorly, so I wouldn’t use that to qualify for “experience” considering that MassCare is bankrupting MA.

    Just b/c one has “experience” doesn’t automatically qualify them.  What did they do with that “experience?”  And, if his MA tenure is any indication, I would expect a President Romney to be chumming it up with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid while throwing his own party under the bus.  After all, he absolutely loved Teddy Kennedy.

  33. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:31 pm

    Uh-huh, that’s nice.  Hey, what’s that down there in the power chute.  C’Mere, take a look… 

  34. Zilla of the Resistance
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:44 pm

    Stacy, the only reason why “conservative bloggers” are dissin’ you is because they’re jealous of you prowess and legions of die hard fans. They secretly wish that they could be gonzo like you & road trip all over the country on Tip Jar Hits to give the best damned political coverage that the world has ever seen, but deep down they know that they don’t have what it take and you do. So fuckum, seriously, fuckum, they are envious of your awesomeness and envy leads to assholery, so I repeat, fuckum. We know who you are & you know who you are, and more importantly, the future President of the United States of America knows who you are – and if you think people hate you now, just wait to see how much they really hate you once you are the Ambassador to Vanuatu, and again I will offer you the same sage advice: fuckum.

  35. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:46 pm

    RSM, you seem to take personally any success that Newt achieves, primarily because of Newt’s admittedly dumb mistake in supporting a twit by the name of Dede.  And your attacks on Newt take on a certain harsh tone, which is disconcerting, because Newt might win, and I’m sure you don’t want to prepare the battleground too much for Obama’s defamers. 

    As to the “might win” part, take a look at 2 polls that came in this morning.  While I don’t expect Newt to overtake Santorum in the Iowa Caucus, he seems to be creeping up again:

    American Research Group
    http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres2012/primary/rep/ia/
    Romney 22
    Paul 17
    Santorum 16
    Gingrich 15

    Insider Advantage
    http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/santorum-gingrich-romney-insider-advantage/2012/01/02/id/422753
    Romney 24
    Paul 22
    Santorum 18
    Gingrich 16

  36. Multimedia Group
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 1:57 pm

    “Quantum”.  Nice hyperbole there.

    The guy with the most real executive experience in the race was OBVIOUSLY Cain. And it was successful executive experience.

    Romney has been pretty much a dud from day one.  He was a poor governor and even a worse candidate. Maybe not as bad as Cain was as a candidate but then, it appears that success as a candidate is how we are judging our guys these days so by that measure, Romney is a big fail.

    The bigger problem with Romney is that

    a.) if he wins the nomination we get a likely loser in the general.

    b.) if he happens to win the general he destroys the conservative movement because he will likely govern the US like he governed MA.  We have no other history to prove otherwise.

    So its a Hobbsen’s choice at best.  Interestingly enough, I know several strategic minded conservatives that argue that every time the GOP chooses a moderate, it further buries conservatism since the typical progressive GOP nominee runs as a “conservative” and sullies the name for the unwashed masses. So their argument is that it is better to vote AGAINST the CINO because they are a greater danger to the country than the true Democrat/Socialist.

  37. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 2:45 pm

    It was my paper that Prof. Jacobson quoted, and unfortunately the parts quoted appeared to be critical of TOM.  That was not my intent at all when I wrote the paper.  I analyzed TOM, LI, and Ace for the type of ethos each blog employs.  My conclusion was that the ethos of LI and Ace are more Aristotelian in nature, and TOM’s is Platonic in nature.  There was no attempt to imply that one was better or worse than the other.  In fact, the overall purpose was to demonstrate that, contrary to liberal relativist critiques, these blogs have a definite and strong moral imperative within their ethos.   In other words, TOM, LI, and Ace are not cardboard personas but genuine and influential contributors to political debate.

  38. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 3:15 pm

    This grad student and author of the paper is a Reagan Republican who’ll turn 50 next month.  I work full-time and raise a family while pursuing additional education.  I’ve been around the political block more than a few times.

  39. Zilla of the Resistance
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 3:24 pm

    I may be a little too dumb to understand all the big words, but your comment seems like a good answer to me and hopefully will make Stacy feel better. 🙂 
    He does get a lot of crap from other bloggers, though, and even if it wasn’t your intention, the wound was already there and it looks like you may have inadvertently gotten some salt in it.

  40. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 3:40 pm

    Fair enough.  Then you ought to understand the man’s gotta move his product.

  41. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 3:42 pm

    Concern addressed.  Well done, that man.

  42. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 4:43 pm

    Good thing Professor Breitbart didn’t hear your dissertation. He’d have noted that you read and analyzed the wrong parts.

  43. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:03 pm

    Yes, I do. I’m a capitalist.

  44. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:03 pm

    Stacy is a flak-catcher of the highest order. That speaks volumes to his effectiveness, wouldn’t you say?

  45. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:05 pm

    Single-owner and single-site political blogs were my criteria for this particular study. I luvz the Bigs, but they didn’t fit the criteria.

  46. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:30 pm

    I told the joke poorly.

    I meant blogumentary versus commentary as opposed to Big versus Little.

  47. Anonymous
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:32 pm

    Ooops. Sorry I didn’t catch it. My wit is not quick enough to be a blogger, so I merely write about bloggers…. 😮

  48. Bob Belvedere
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:39 pm

    In the comments over at LI, the author, Taxpayer1234, says that he was not putting you down: No, it wasn’t meant to be a diss at all. The paper was an analysis of the use of ethos in political blogs. TOM’s is more Platonic in nature, while LI’s and Ace’s is more Aristotelian.

    Can’t you two be non-physical, asexual, chaste, dispassionate, detached, spiritual friends?

  49. richard mcenroe
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:42 pm

    Duly noted, and appreciated.

  50. Bob Belvedere
    January 2nd, 2012 @ 5:46 pm

    Are you intentionally addressing Stacy as ‘Rob’ so as to show how sarcastically clever you are?  No one in The Blogosphere calls him that.