"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
Catching up on the usual chores. I’m in Idaho, visiting family, having been delayed due to Heap Big Winds around Denver. United Airlines did a fine job of managing safety and timeliness. We can all gripe about being herded about, but being alive to do the griping is the main feature. Continue reading Flight Made (Grand) Junction Re-direct Adroitly →
“Contrast the Republican concept of a special place called America (with The Constitution as its defining document) against the idea of America as an abstraction; a transient anomaly in a world destined for some type of elite centralization.”
— Howard Towt
Steve Bartin at NewsAlert is evil. I know this because his e-mail came into my inbox with this headline:
OK, it turns out to be a USA Today feature story, and about as interesting as you would expect a USA Today feature story about “topless pools” to be. But it’s evil to put that headline on an e-mail.
There ought to be some kind of special Pulitzer for this:
Clint Dempsey became only the second American to score in two World Cups, getting the tying goal in the 40th minute on a blunder by goalkeeper Robert Green. Howard made six saves, withstanding a second-half barrage by Wayne Rooney and his celebrated teammates. . . .
Anticipation had built for six months for the much-hyped game, the first competitive meeting between the nations since the famous 1-0 U.S. upset at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. There were viewing parties across America, and several Major League Soccer teams opened their stadiums to show the match from across the world on large video boards. . . .
And on and on it goes. Like this was the seventh game of the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NCAA Final Four, the Indy 500 and the Battle of Armageddon, all rolled into one.
A 1-1 tie. In a first-round game.
They didn’t even have a riot. What kind of soccer game is that, huh?
* And by “new,” I mean if you haven’t been at it
since Ace started with a Blogspot site in 2003.
When trying to explain the principle of reciprocal linkage (Rule 2), I’ve often wanted to quote a post Ace of Spades wrote about three years ago, in which he explained how you link somebody so as to throw traffic, how to quote and hat-tip, etc. But alas, I couldn’t find the post.
Now, however, Ace has reprised that theme in a memorable pimp-slapping of Charles Johnson:
Let me talk about “swiping stories.” Johnson believes that if he throws in a lame hat-tip at the end of a post, he hasn’t “swiped a story,” because he’s given you attribution.
That’s not the case. A lame hat-tip at the end of a post covers one’s ass, I suppose, in terms of attribution, but it fails to do what a proper link is supposed to do: Throw some traffic.
Some blogs are deliberately “gateway blogs,” throwing out traffic wide and far in general furtherance of good-guy blogger boosterism. . . .
On the other hand, some blogs are very jealous and ungenerous about throwing links and traffic to “competitors.” Some blogs fancy themselves not “gateway blogs” but “destination blogs,” and attempt to set themselves up as the only blog you need to read.
Not a portal, then, but a terminus. . . .
Anybody who has read this blog long enough knows that Ace is my blogging role model. Back when I was hopelessly trapped in the stifling straitjacket of Washington journalism, I envied Ace because he could say exactly what he wanted — and be hugely successful!
My admiration for Ace is so enthusiastic as to be kinda creeptastic and stalkerish, like a teenage girl chasing the Jonas Brothers. Yet he is so merciful that not once has he threatened to take out a restraining order against me. And he actually links me once in a while.
Uh . . . I’ll be in my bunk.
UPDATE: To put the Ace/LGF situation in context, some explanation is in order. There was a minor media-bias kerfuffle this past week in regard to the Gaza “Freedom Flotilla,” and I didn’t blog about it because the source was Little Green Footballs. But it got picked up in the media and everybody else blogged about it, including Yid With Lid:
Reuters is now doctoring its pictures from the violence aboard the Guerrilla Flotilla.
YWL got linked at Hot Air, and this prompted Charles Johnson to go thermonuclear on Allahpundit:
“So what kind of vindictive, unprofessional, unethical creep would write about a story and give all the credit to other people, knowing full well that the story originated at LGF?
“The dishonest dirtbag goes by the name of ‘Allahpundit,’ and he writes for Hot Air.”
To which Allahpundit replied:
It seems I’m “scum,” a “thief,” and a “dishonest dirtbag” because I thought Sammy Benoit had found the initial photo of Reuters cropping out weapons. Turns out it was Charles Johnson at LGF who broke the story; Sammy’s post only mentioned him in connection with the second photo. So here’s the official correction from a scummy dirtbag thief.
Paleo Pat at Political Byline called attention to this:
Has this man forgotten just how badly he stabbed the right in the back? Has Charles Johnson forgotten how badly that he defamed Pamela Geller, by calling her a Nazi Sympathizer? This happened more than once by the way; the first time almost ruined her blogger career.
OK, then Ace linked Political Byline and pointed out that Charles Johnson has been known to swipe a story without proper credit — citing as one example an occasion when LGF hogged the credit for a Dan Riehl item.
Dan’s thrown a few light jabs at CJ the past couple of days — including one about the Geller PayPal situation — but he hasn’t gotten rough with LGF and probably won’t. But, oh, if he ever did . . .
UPDATE II: Now here we go. I hadn’t bothered to look at the post that provoked Ace’s latest response, but it perfectly exemplifies what went wrong with Charles Johnson:
Johnson recounts a dust-up in which Steve Gilbert at Sweetness & Light accused Johnson of “stealing one of his stories,” an accusation Johnson denied. But when Gilbert, per CJ, “threatened to ‘ruin my reputation’ with other bloggers” Johnson “preemptively wrote emails to several other bloggers.”
Now, I don’t know the backstory there, and Johnson uses it as pretext to publish private correspondence with Ace — a vicious betrayal, and a bell that can never be unrung. Yet that’s not the real “tell” here.
Why on earth was Charles Johnson so concerned about what another blogger might say about him to other bloggers — especially when Johnson himself at that time (March 2008) had been waging a merciless online vendetta against Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer for six months?
Kind of thin-skinned, don’t you think?
Can you say “guilty conscience,” boys and girls?
Proprietary rage over which blogger “stole” what story from whom is a routine fixture of the blogosphere. Being obsessed with one’s reputation to the point where you’re sending back-channel e-mails to other bloggers to “preemptively” defend yourself from an accusation of story-swiping . . .
To quote Allahpundit: Dude.
With the exception of my own reporting, nearly everything I blog about comes from either Memeorandum, Google News or Twitter. How the story gets to those places, I don’t much care. If either Instapundit or Ace links a story that gets picked up by other bloggers, that story will usually show up at Memeorandum — which seldom credits Ace or Insty, who may thereby be cheated out of deserved hat-tips.
Bloggers that big, however, usually have better things to do than to worry whether they get credited for every story they blog. And certainly it would be insanely time-consuming to keep up with the soap-opera plot-twists of which bloggers are mad at other bloggers.
That’s why it’s so bizarre to discover that Charles Johnson was “preemptively” e-mailing other bloggers that way in 2008. Why would Johnson worry that other bloggers might credit Steve Gilbert’s accusations?
With that e-mail, Johnson betrayed a profound narcissistic tendency. For Johnson then to wait more than two years to retaliate against Ace by publishing a private e-mail is unquestionably sociopathic.
Picture it, reader: Charles Johnson, once one of the most heralded members of the blogsophere, sitting there with archived e-mails from years ago, poring over his cache to retrieve and publish this e-mail he solicited while endeavoring to protect his own reputation.
Sick. And not merely sick, but evil.
What just happened to Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs ought to scare the bejeebers out of every blogger:
Paypal is calling Atlas a “hate” site and will close my account if I do not remove the paypal option from my website.
I just got off the phone with Pamela, who explained that this was almost certainly a response to media coverage of her organization’s “Leaving Islam” bus advertising campaign, e.g., the Associated Press:
The questions on the ads aren’t subtle: Leaving Islam? Fatwa on your head? Is your family threatening you?
A conservative activist and the organizations she leads have paid several thousand dollars for the ads to run on at least 30 city buses for a month. The ads point to a website called RefugefromIslam.com, which offers information to those wishing to leave Islam, but some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.
Pamela Geller, who leads an organization called Stop Islamization of America, said the ads were meant to help provide resources for Muslims who are fearful of leaving the faith. . . .
Wait, did you notice that? Guess who the Associated Press quotes as “some Muslims”?
Faiza Ali, of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
One may surmise that CAIR and others complained to PayPal in an effort to eliminate online revenue for Geller and SOIA. And make no mistake: Online revenue is just about all she’s got.
This is the same thing that the Left has done against Glenn Beck’s advertisers: The minute any conservative begins to have any real success — WHAM!
Some are suggesting a boycott of PayPal but — good Lord! — how else am I supposed to pay for my daughter’s wedding next month? I need that money, and since Amazon ended its online payment service, PayPal’s got a monopoly.
Let’s hope PayPal can be made to understand that they’re being used as weapons in a financial jihad against truth and will rescind their fatwa against Geller. In the meantime, those who wish to help Pamela Geller and SOIA can send checks by mail to:
Pamela Geller
PO Box 121
1040 1st Avenue
New York NY 10022
If jihadis can shut down our tip-jars, the independent conservative blogosphere is doomed, people.
UPDATE: Carl in Jerusalem:
Paypal has a subsidiary in Israel. Are they going to cut off pro-Israel speech too?
What is wrong with these people?
If you want to write a persuasive, intelligent and courteous e-mail asking PayPal to reconsider its threat to Pamela Geller, please send it to [email protected].
UPDATE II: Ed Driscoll and Instapundit both relate this to the “We Con the World” video being taken down, but video takedowns are already a too-familiar story in online political combat. A direct attack on a major source of funding for the blogsophere? That’s news.
And I’ve got a wedding to pay for!
UPDATE III: Top thread on Memeorandum, and I felt obliged to do some reporting at The American Spectator:
“What do they expect me to do, stop blogging about jihad?” said Geller . . .
Which was linked by Instapundit. Pamela rolls hard, as they say, but the Jawas note that the pro-jihad Revolution Muslim site still has a PayPal button.
Thanks for the linkage at Soylent Green and Bread Upon the Waters, while Pamela also gets a shout-out from Kathy Shaidle’s sweetie Blazing Cat Fur. As Pamela told me, this incident came in the immediate aftermath of her recent high-profile media appearances, such as this appearance in a Reuters news video:
Notice that the spokeswoman whom Reuters chooses as “balance” to Geller is Daisy Khan, whose organization is behind the “Ground Zero mosque” idea. And who is footing the bill for the American Society for Muslim Advancement?
Moreover, financial records show that in fiscal year 2009, ASMA collected a number of international donations that totaled, collectively, at least $1.3 million. The largest sum, $576,312, came from Qatar. ASMA also received $481,942 from Holland’s Millennial Development Goals Fund; $144,752 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York; and $53,664 from the United Nations Population Fund.
Read the rest of that — not just the foreign money, but Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, a veritable Who’s Who of elite philanthropic foundations, none of whom ever gave a penny to any conservative group. And what kind of religious organization would accept money from the United Nations Population Fund? They’re WorldWide Abortion Inc. Their motto might as well be “World Peace Through Dead Babies.”
So the Ground Zero mosque people get millions from big-time foundations, plus the United Nations and all kinds of foreign money, and Pamela Geller can’t be permitted to push back with a few thousand bucks raised via PayPal?
Hello?
People are calling for an immediate boycott of PayPal, but as I pointed out in the comments below, this “usage” notice was sent to Pamela on a Saturday morning. Executives at PayPal haven’t had a chance to realize what a P.R. disaster they’ve got on their hands here, once the major media are forced to start reporting this story.
The person in the PayPal “Acceptable Usage” department who threw the word “hate” at Pamela Geller is likely to have a very bad Monday at the office.
Not that I would ever consent to work for the company that employs Andrew Sullivan, of course:
Atlantic Media, a national news publisher in Washington, D.C., is beginning a search for two dozen reporters to join its editorial ranks. Our current effort includes recruiting exceptional reporting talent already well-proven in covering the nation’s capital.
As background, Atlantic Media is the parent company for The Atlantic magazine, National Journal magazine, Government Executive magazine, CongressDaily and The Hotline. In the moment, our recruiting is focused on the National Journal magazine, its website and related publications.
In all of its hiring, Atlantic Media seeks two pillar qualities – force of intellect and a personal spirit of generosity.
(“Pathological obsession with obstetric issues of Republican politicians is helpful, but not required.”)
Recruiting down two paths:
Recognizing that these gifts may not present in the same individual, Atlantic Media is recruiting for individuals working down either of two paths: relentless breaking news or original, rigorous commentary.
(“Israel-bashing and paranoid fear-mongering about Tea Party activists counts as ‘rigorous,’ if not exactly original.”)
Breaking News – especially web savvy: The intention here is to identify reporters made for – naturally wired for – breaking news. High metabolism. Relentless. Unstoppable. Prolific.
Original Insight: The intention here, harder to realize, is to identify individuals made for – naturally wired for – original insight, original frames for comment on the large, national issues. Economist rigor; Tom Friedman insight.
Please send resumes – or refer strong candidates – to www.nationaljournal.com/talent.
Atlantic Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer
Wonkette had a laugh because of the expressed interest in “Tom Friedman insight”:
Wonkette also pointed out that “Atlantic Media Group’s National Journal just got rid of thirty (30!) journalists through buyouts, so the net gain of Journalism Jobs is zero (0).”
This is how the cookie crumbles in the collapsing world of Old Media — experienced journalists are laid off and replaced with low-paid new hires. And, hey, it’s a recession, so . . .
Dear Editor:
You won’t hire me. I’ve been a professional journalist since 1986, I’ve won national awards, been praised hither and yon, achieved remarkable success as an independent blogger, excellent references, etc.
This online application form requires me to attach a resume, and you’ll notice it’s nearly two years out of date. I haven’t bothered to update it, because you won’t hire me. You won’t bother to interview me nor even send so much as an e-mail to say “Thanks but no thanks.” That’s because you’re aiming to hire a bunch of 20-something kids who’ll work for next to nothing, and who can blame you? I’d do the same thing if I were in your shoes.
Nevertheless, I felt obliged to make a gesture, so at least my wife can’t accuse me of not trying. No hard feelings. And good luck finding the next Tom Friedman, although it seems to me that one Tom Friedman is more than enough.
— Robert Stacy McCain
http://theothermccain.com/
It felt good to hit the “send” button on that one.
UPDATE: James Joyner at Outside the Beltway mentions that Andrew Sullivan’s employer hopes to tempt aspiring Friedman wannabes with what “is purported to be a salary . . . in the low $30,000s.” This is presumably more than they’re paying Obama stooge Linda Douglass:
Completing a full spin through the revolving door, Linda Douglass, a long-time CBS and ABC correspondent before jumping aboard the Obama campaign in 2008 . . . has re-joined The Atlantic as a Vice President who “will concentrate on company strategy and communications,” the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reported online Thursday morning.
Before joining the Obama campaign as senior strategist and senior campaign spokesperson on the road, Douglass toiled for National Journal . . .
.
Atlantic Chairman David Bradley recognizes the conflict between her political agenda and being a journalist, but he told Kurtz “she’s too big an editorial talent for us to keep her out of the editorial product.”
David Bradley might as well hang a sign on the front door: “Help Wanted. Democrats Only. No Conservatives Need Apply.”
UPDATE II: Ah, yes, the auto-reply e-mail:
From: “[email protected]”
To: [email protected]
Thank you for submitting your resume. Our management team is reviewing your qualifications and will contact you if there is a match with our current open positions.
Meanwhile, using your email address and password, you can login to our careers website anytime to update your application information.
We appreciate your interest in Atlantic Media and wish you the best of luck in your job search.
The Recruiting Team
Atlantic Media Company
When you care enough to send the very best . . .
Frustrated and lacking agreement on what to do next, self-identified tea party leaders say the movement may be in danger of breaking apart before it ever really comes together.
Bill Dupray at Liberty Pundits calls this article by the Post‘s Amy Gardner an attempt to write a premature obituary on the movement. Regardless of its intended purpose, however, there was some information of interest in the article:
“We don’t want a leader,” said Barbee Kinnison of Henderson, Nev., who supported one of Angle’s Republican opponents, businessman Danny Tarkanian. Kinnison’s testy e-mail exchange with organizers of Tea Party Express was published in the blogosphere last week. “We like it being a collective group of voices. This is the first time in a generation when we feel like our voices are being heard.”
Who is Barbee Kinnison? She was quoted by the New York Times at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville in February:
At a panel discussion titled “Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process,” the room erupted in a standing ovation when Barbee Kinnison, a delegate from Nevada, stood up and declared her intention to unite Tea Party groups behind a candidate to defeat Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader.
Evidently, the candidate around whom she hoped to unite Tea Party groups was Danny Tarkanian, and as soon as the Tea Party Express endorsement of Angle was announced in April, Kinnison expressed her dissatisfaction:
The Tea Party Express endorsement provoked a backlash of sorts among some conservative activists, who accused the California-based group of carpetbagging in Nevada and inserting itself into a competitive Republican primary.
“They are drastically overstepping their boundaries,” said Barbee Kinnison, a retired Las Vegas businesswoman and activist who supports Tarkanian. “Anger is brewing. This is not how it is supposed to work.”
Kinnison said she and friends e-mailed the Tea Party Express on Thursday asking for a return of money they had donated.
Why did Kinnison support Tarkanian and not Angle? Why did the Tea Party Express support Angle and not Tarkanian? We don’t know. However, I’m intigued by Kinnison saying she wants to be part of “a collective group of voices” and to “feel like our voices are being heard.”
At the end of the day, making your voice heard in politics — in any really effective way — requires winning elections. Winning elections at the level of a U.S. Senate race isn’t easy, and depends on a lot of details that have nothing to do with national trends, so that the success or failure of any one campaign cannot automatically be taken as evidence of a trend.
Neverthless, if Kinnison and others cannot accept the nomination of Angle as legitimate, that’s a real problem. And if the Tea Party movement ends up encouraging people to be soreheads when they lose a primary, that’s a real problem, too.
The Democrats and their labor-goon buddies are going to pull out all the stops to re-elect Harry Reid in November. In fact, they’re already doing so. If Barbee Kinnison is still committed to uniting a movement to defeat Harry Reid — the sentiment that got her a standing ovation in February — she’ll have to get over her disappointment at Tarkanian’s defeat in the primary.
Let me explain it this way: Everybody knows about D-Day on Omaha Beach. Most people, however, don’t know the story of what happened on Utah Beach.
When the first-wave assault troops of the 4th Infantry Division hit the beach on June 6, 1944, the officers consulted their maps, trying to locate the places they were supposed to attack. It took a few minutes before they figured out the problem: They were on the wrong beach.
Because of an unanticipated cross-current in the English Channel, the first wave had been put ashore more than a mile south of their planned objective. The second wave was due to land in a few minutes, to be followed by more and more troops — and all of them were heading for the wrong beach, a mile away from where the division was supposed to be landing.
The officers were in a quandry. In all the planning for D-Day, nobody had planned for this. The success of the entire operation was at stake.
Fortunately for the troops, there was one man on that beach who knew what to do: Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Roosevelt conducted a quick reconnaissance of the area, then returned to the beach and told the battalion commanders, “We’ll start the war from right here!”
And so they did, attacking inland to outflank the positions they originally had been assigned to take by frontal assault.
Barbee Kinnison says people in the Tea Party movement “don’t want a leader.” Fine — be your own leader. And if you’re going to be a leader, you’d better be an effective leader, or you’ll never acc0mplish anything.
Effective leaders don’t waste time worrying about what might have been. If conservatives in Nevada sit around moping and malcontented because their favorite candidate didn’t win the primary, the result will be the re-election of Harry Reid in November. Complaining to the Washington Post sure as hell isn’t going to make things any better.
“We’ll start the war from right here!”
That’s still good advice.