I had taken my parents and son to the airport and had come home. I printed out some political articles and blogs by the MSMers who've just taken up blogging to read while I ate the breakfast of champions I was planning to prepare: A bagel from Mercado SuperKosher, some lox, and a cup of tea.
The articles were interesting enough, I suppose, though nothing special. When I got to the blogs, however, I was really struck dumb. These folks DO NOT KNOW HOW TO BLOG. These are famous journalists who make lots of money and appear on chat shows and have important bylines and all of that crap, but THEY CANNOT BLOG TO SAVE THEIR LIVES. Not only can't they do stuff like (please, please, please excuse me if I forget you) put you right in the game like Barry Max/Dave http://dancyscorner.blogspot.com/ and http://fairlane.wordpress.com/ does. They can't make you stiff and wet and at the left-wing vanguard and wholesome all at the same time like D-CUP http://politits.blogspot.com/ and http://fairlane.wordpress.com/does. They can't ponder the weighty cultural and political questions without coming up with any answers yet doing it all with aggression and kindness like Spartacus http://mysaturdayeveningpost.blogspot.com/ does. They don't unite at the deepest level like FranIam http://festinalente-franiam.blogspot.com/ does.
They don't blend entertainment with mordant politics like D-CAPny http://distributorcapny.blogspot.com/ does. It's ironic that his most recent post is about the Tissue Of Lies because if Maureen Dowd wanted to learn how to think and write let alone blog, she could take a few lessons from D-CAPny. Fuck Maureen Dowd and the Tissue Of Lies sideways. Read DistributorcapNY right this very minute on the Kristol hiring.
George Will and William Safire think they are "libertarians". Let a real one, the "Hungry Mother," http://www.capemaybeach.net/randomthoughts.html show those half-wits how it's done. Like quantitative finance with a caustic and iconoclastic chasher, try the Dark-Wraith http://dark-wraith.com/ For some reason I've yet to discover, another of my favorite finance bloggers, "Harvey" http://minskandpinsk.blogspot.com/ has abandoned the game. I'm going to endeavor to add him pseudonymously to Kelso's Nuts.
Perhaps, the GZA or more fittingly, the J.D. Salinger, of this little corner of Blogovia (more on that in a bit), Anitaxanaxnow, is also hors-de-combat. OK, she didn't know sports, but that was the only subject beyond her ken. She had a marvelous opinion about everything else. I am not exaggerating: the Arts, Business, Finance, Politics municipal, state, national, foreign, Poetry, Music, Architecture, Mathematics, Philosophy and cats. I sure would love to get her as a regular on Kelso's Nuts, as well, although she has refused all of my entreaties to guest blog dating back at least to Hurricane Katrina or Felix Hernandez's first pitch for the Seattle Mariners, whichever came first.
Let's not forget working-class hero The Cunning Runt http://littlebangtheory.wordpress.com/ or the master of the one-line comment quip, Tengrain, http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/
To this fine list, the erstwhile self-deprecating wallflowers, Madam Z http://z-to-u.blogspot.com/ and SuziRiot http://suziriot.blogspot.com/ and http://fairlane.wordpress.com/ have emerged. Z was all "I'm no good at this. Why do I bother? My husband's a Republican," and then one day last summer she put together a list of 100 things about herself that was one of the most mind-bending blogs I'd ever read. Number-I don't-remember-which was "I cooked a man in Crisco/Just to watch him fry," which is my nominee for blog pun of the year. She keeps getting better and better. SuziRiot, one of the most personable writers in blogovia, also went through the gut-wrenching Z and, yes, Kelso, have, and what do you know? She's now part of the Jonestown Super Team http://fairlane.wordpress.com/.
What's a Jonestown Super Team? Well, let's start with (more apt with him) the GZA of the team, Fairlane. How to describe Fairlane? What if you were a Kentucky semi-aristocrat yet you'd seen hell, saved souls, gotten cynical, stayed compassionate, had a great sense of humor, knew music better than Nick Hornby and could lead a disparate crew of brigands without seeming to? And were a Cleveland Indians fan? That's Fairlane. And my one of my predictions for 2008 is that his Jonestown Super Team will be to the modern blogosphere what the Huffington Post and Salon before it have been so far. Only better. And without the shortcomings I alluded to earlier. All of those fuckers, D-CUP, DAVE, DASH, JOHNNY WINGNUT (the token wingnut) and SUZIRIOT can not only flat-out write, they can also blog and that's the point. The ersatz MSM blogs fail because they condescend. Every blogger I've alluded to here engages his or her commenters with humor, reason, bonhomie or disagreement. We'll curse in many languages, speak frankly about every hot-button issue there is, talk about sex, argue like crazy and nobody gives a fuck. And yet for some reason a spirit of what's-so-funny-about-peace-love-and-understanding prevails? Try that on for size, Jonather Alter. Hijoputa.
For the last few months I've been feeling something really good around blogland. If you check the blogrolls of all of these sites you'll find tons more great ones. We are all as different as can be but if there's one thing that unites us, it's that we're a little older than you'd expect. Our average age is probably around 40 which as we know is "the old-age of youth" and thus the perfect age for blogging, old enough to have a little wisdom, young enough to have a lot of immaturity.
This little corner is going to break through in a big way in 2008 and the fake-ass MSM bloggers will never be able to catch up because they'd rather fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally. There's no secret as to why. It's all about the money, Lebowski. If a guy like Jonathan Alter or Howard Kurtz writes something like "I cooked a man in Crisco/Just to watch him fry," that yidl's out on his ass with the $500,000 salary and stock options gonzo. So, their thing will always be "harumph....your taxes..." or "Is the country ready for a man whose middle name is Hussein?" or "Is John McCain at age 87 'The Comeback Kid?'" and all sorts of irrelevant horseshit like that. Their sites get zillions of comments and commenters get bupkis for responses. You call that blogging? The Dark-Wraith will tell you why Sweden has a lower effective tax rate than the USA does. Kelso will tell you that Obama's middle name doesn't mean shit anyway because Bobby Rush beat him for a House seat by 35 points. God only knows what DistributorCapNY would cook up about McCain. I really don't know how many of this "new wave" are making money off the blogging. If any are, it can't be that much, so they (we) don't have much to lose. That's the secret ingredient of exceptional blogging.
Like it raw? Try the Jewgirl at All The Way From Oy To Vey. http://katieschwartz.blogspot.com/ She's a writer, essayist, stand-up comic, and a psychopathic thinker.
And then there is the baroque palace of HELL. http://thedisbrimstone-dailypitchfork.blogspot.com/ Visit, read and learn from the Living Dead. Crying crocodile tears like Tim Russert does because Robert Gates isn't getting heard? Go over to HELL and read about today's politics from the point of view of a living-dead Secretary Of Defense who had to walk the finest line in the history of the cabinet post. Oh Christ, they're all good over there. You've got a proud lesbian boxing handicapper who is to teacher-student child abusers what Mayweather is to everybody. And she actually knows who Carl Rosen was! You got a NYC Vietnam vet who take no shit. An Oracle who can make a fool of Kelso. A master chef who cooks up some marvelous shit to make your mouth water (Wu-Tang Clan, I'm no plaigiarist). A copy-editor who spends a little too much time marinating in the Laphraoig. He does it on purpose, I think. He wants to get some exurban office-park dildo busted for checking out an NC-17 site. There's a living-dead economist. A living-dead nuts-and-bolts political analyst. AND THEN THERE'S "PAIN". It can be "pain" as in French for bread. It can be "pain" as in half of "painache," Panamanian slang for Sista, or it can be Pain as in Suffering. Your choice.
2008 is the year it happens. It's the year the real bloggers "frame the issues" and the poseurs follow or get the fuck away. I did the hard thing a year ago, so I have the easy job now, Bill Clinton being to Panama what Marshall was to Germany. I'll hold down the Southern Front as all of these fine folks and the many, many I forgot step forward and take away at least the media leg of Uncle Sam's fascist stool. If a few "do-gooders" like at Salon or Slate get an ass-kicking, so be it. The MSM is going to hear Jack Tatum's footsteps starting now. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/T/TatuJa00.htm
OK, no more bullshit. I'm worked up about this Kristol hiring at the Tissue Of Lies. I'm sad because my parents and my son are back in New York. And I'm having a sinus attack. I want "Harvey" and "AnitaXanaxNow" to join Kelso's Nuts forthwith. And I'm not taking no for answer. We have to get the right people to push this shit forward. You two are among the best and you are doing nobody any good on the sidelines.
Kelso's Nuts love you
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9 comments:
thanks for the props kelso !!!
but my thinking is that you and ALL the great bloggers you mentioned above do such seriously good, seriously diverse, and seriously entertaining work that i simply cannot, at this time, walk in their midst. honestly, i'm a little intimidated. AND i'm enjoying just reading and learning from you, them, and all the other great bloggers out there. (and i think you are absolutely right about how the bloggers are giving the MSM talking heads a run for their money ... and i think that's great).
perhaps in the spring ... when my head is a little more together, we can talk about it.
in the meantime ... keep up the exceedingly good work. it ain't easy. i know.
Anita:
You of all people do not have to be in mid-season form to do this well. I think you really fit what Clark Clifford over at HELL was on about today. You are the true polymath. The radical left-winger and radical right-winger. And there's nothing you don't know about.
Does the name John O'Hara ring a bell?
You asked me for a writer you might like. I mentioned O'Hara and within a month you had read the entire oeuvre, the biography and all the literary criticism.
If anybody these days is familiar with your work, I don't think you'd be the one intimidated. And I'll only make an oblique reference to a certain literary prize won and defended 4-years running, while deeply in your cups.
This is why I keep encouraging you to stay out of that kiddie pool and jump in the deep end.
I will respect your wishes, however, and we will revisit the issue in the spring.
You are far too kind my good friend. I think when Tomlinson comes to [she was just promoted to Editorial Page Editor] she might be bringing forth something about how Hell and the bloggers you've mentioned will work to shape political discourse in a general elction year for the first, but definitely not the last time.
Qu'ul cuda praedex nihil!
Really, really cool.
SR:
I think "our way" of blogging will be huge in 2008 because it fills a natural void. The MSM, obviously, has disgraced itself, was complicit in many of administration misdeeds, lost its relevancy and viewship, proved itself to be awful in its efforts at catch-up blogging, and deceived itself into thinking the "internets" were a mirage because Howard Dean didn't win in Iowa. Dean lost in Iowa because he lost in Iowa. One draw from a random bag.
Thus, the "well-knowns" like the HUFFINGTON POST, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS, CROOKSANDLIARS, MEDIA MATTERS, FIREDOGLAKE, DIGBYATHULLABALOO, DAILYKOS, ESCHATON and so forth have filled in doing the investigative work the MSM no longer does, but their fame have ruined their "blog" experience. It is a monologue, no longer a dialogue. How can it be a dialogue when each post commands 300 comments? This is no knock on the "well-knowns". They are doing essential work.
That leaves all of us. Our virtue is in our vast numbers of blogs, the relative paucity of comments which allows for intimate and in-depth discussion, and the boldness with which may express ourselves. Perhaps, because unlike the above two "industries" if you will, we have no financial stake in the game. There's a lot of freedom in that. And FREEDOM is what it's all about.
We, Ourselves agree Ser Kelso. There is much power in a thin layer of reason that covers Terra vice a very deep mole hill.
Estimada Pain-ache:
I was too young to know about it beyond what Jaromir Jagr has said in press conferences, but I do believe this all has a Prague Spring feel to it.
Many of the fine folks I mentioned in this post had what apparantly was a balls-out meet-up in Brooklyn a few weeks ago.
And as for me, well, I didn't have to queue up 300 deep for someone half my age to write me a one line response. I merely hit the teclado and got a heartfelt response from Clark Clifford which put a frog in my throat.
How can I not like Underground Blogovia's prospects?
Thank you, Kelso! Praise from you is truly an honor. I will try to be less self-deprecating, now that I know it's illogical. (Picture a smile on my face, even though you don't know what I look like.)
Nicely done, Kelso. You did an excellent post here that highlights the corner of the blogosphere we rub shoulders in.
There's a great mix of voices. I crave hearing each of them everyday.
You've been a busy man, pal. Cheers!
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