HEY, MIZ NAPOLITANO!

Department of Homeland Security to spy on journalists and bloggers.

The Timeless Epic of the Conservative "New Media"...

Video Renegado Ladd Ehrlinger comments on the recent mild disagreements between conservative bloggers during the GOP Presidential debates:

"Seriously? Come on, Jeff. Some bloggers endorsed Rick Perry. BFD. Everyone in the GOP field has major flaws. There is no messiah. Attacking conservative bloggers for endorsing a candidate you don't like in the same way you'd attack a card-carrying members of the Socialist Worker's Party is not only silly, it's counter-productive.

How about concentrating fire on foes, and debate your allies?

Bear in mind, this is coming from a guy who's had more than his fair share of silly internecine fights."

Silly internecine fights?!  These are life and death struggles for Truth, Justice and Juicier BlogAds! We are bloggers, dammit!  We're IMPORTANT!  We MATTER!  People tell us so! Other people squat in their basements for hours on end just to insult us!  Why, we're going to do for the future of this country what Menelaus and Agamemnon did for the future of Troy!

If anything, we're not squabbling hard ENOUGH! Think of it as fighting for internet tenure: we have to be particularly vicious because the potential rewards are so small!

So let the battle rage!  Let our self-appointed Odysseuses (Odysseyi?) scurry around thinking how clever and manipulative they're being, while our vainglorious Ajaxes sulk in their tents, their brilliance unappreciated, as our virtuous Hippolotuses (Hippoloti - screw it, did that joke already) have their honor and naiveté exploited and our wretched Philocteteseses suffer tormented exile for impiety towards the Gods of the Web.

The end result will be magnificent, a modern Iliad for our times... as directed by Roger Corman.

"Sarah Palin sold a quart of milk from a state-run dairy to Herman Cain's mistress!"
"Ace you lying bitch!"

A Raucous Ostentation of Peacocks...

Well, the People Who Matter have spoken.

The pundits have weighed in every sonorous Sunday morning. The news has credulously paraded every staged bimbo and jewelry store debt across our screens to the point where we can't tell 60 Minutes from TMZ.

Failed mancrushes (and girly crushes, too) have been splashed all over blogs, Twitters, Facebook, Tumblr and the rest of the metastizing 'social media' like an Occupy porta-potty as someone or another's dream candidate turns out to be clueless, fallible or human.  Talk radio hosts have eagerly cribbed these tantrums as though they had ideas of their own.

The special interests have show why they get the special bus to school, the Democratic leadership have shown they don't give a damn about democracy and the Republican National Committee doesn't give a damn about the future of the Republic as long as their rice bowls remain filled.

The election is over, we are told, and all that matters is which party's heir apparent gets anointed.

AND NOT ONE DAMNED VOTE HAS BEEN CAST.  No caucus held, no primary voted, no convention assembled, no campaign run.  It's as though the World Series was awarded on the basis of spring training, or the Super Bowl decided by exhibition games.

In short, Mr. and Mrs. American Voter (or, in the words of a pre-PC Harlan Ellison, 'sir, madam, or bisex'), NOBODY ASKED YOU. Whether it's Karl Rove or Kos Moulitsas, James Carville or Ace of Spades, you'll take what we decide to give you.

Except, and here's the funny part, you don't have to.  All the experts and hysterics and hysterical experts have had their say.  Now it's up to you.  Listen to the candidates.  Look at them.  Learn what they've done in the past and measure it against what they say they'll do now.

These are all, with one or two exceptions (decide for yourself), people of genuine material accomplishments, unlike the current mannequin in the White House.  They are all, one or two exceptions (decide for yourself), people of substantial virtues, unlike our current Neurotic in Chief, who stands revealed more and more as a crudely assembled collection of stale ideologies, grievances and appetites.

You probably can't tell that from us.  Sorry about that, but those Nielsen points and site visits won't create themselves.  You can trust us if you choose, but in the words of our last truly great President: "Trust... but verify."

Just don't sit back and let us do your thinking for you.  We are, mostly, no more up to the task than you are.


Peck, peck, peck...

Bloomberg GOP Debate Displays Weak GOP Commentariat Field... Twitter and blogging hardest hit

A special guest editorial by Frumley Brooks, Esq., Mainstream Conservative Pundit


In keeping with the highest traditions of the Brooks family motto, "Uno dies tardus quod uno denarius brevis" ("a day late and a dollar short") Mr. Brooks decries the latest failings on the part of the American conservative movement.

Last night's debate on the influential and widely popular "BloombergTV" shone a brilliant spotlight, not on the regrettable list of rural extremists trying to impede the campaign of the Presidential candidate and our fondly-remembered classmate Willard Mitt Romney, but on the slapdash and dispiriting performance of our modern-day conservative commentariat.

When discussing Internet political commentary, of course, one must acknowledge that we are forced to deal with two elements: the self-appointed pundits themselves, and their correspondents, or "commenters."

The "commenters" may in large be dismissed out of hand, of no more relevance than those faceless throngs trudging through the factory gates; their guttural yawps infused with no more content and significance than the barkings emanating from the high "bleacher seats" at Wrigley Field on "Dollar Beer Day." (Or so one is informed, certainly never having imposed said "bleachers" on oneself.)  Of a surety one can read an entire "thread" or series of debate comments by them and come away without the slightest idea of what was actually said by the debaters.

The pundits themselves are another matter.  While it is a priori regrettable that they have arrogated this position to themselves without the years of prior vetting and conditioning at the proper schools and publications to which the rest of us have had the upbringing and associations to submit ourselves, their performance during the BloombergTV event was particularly lackluster.

Given that far too many of the hoi polloi have far too little judgment to select "BloombergTV" for their cable assortments over the likes of "ESPN," "Spike" or (one shudders to think) "Fox," one would hope these pundits would make a particular effort to provide some detailed exposition of the actual goings-on that transpired at the debate: to lay at least a token pearl or two before their swinish audiences. Alas, it was not so.  

With the token noteworthy exceptions of one or two bloggers with at least nominal proper journalistic experience such as Michelle Malkin and Robert Stacy McCain, the online punditry wallowed in its subjective incontinence.  Even those who arranged special commentary feeds for the event were too often reduced to subjective banalities such as "so and so looked uncertain" and "that could have been clearer" with no further elaboration, even had such been comprehensible to their notional audience.

Far more attention was paid to the pundit's approval or disapproval of specific candidates, in a narrative stream seemingly scripted specifically to discourage the electorate from any of the choices on view.  The performance of these pundits offered abundant grist for the mills of any canny Democratic operative in the forthcoming elections, a litany of despair and pettifogging criticism that could drown any lesser man than Governor Romney, and may well have.  Even the plucky rustic Ron Paul was subjected to hypocritical mockery  — the equivalent of stopping a film review to specifically complain about the performance of Gabby Hayes — first for speaking out and then for remaining silent, making too big an affair of a tiny little man.

The pundits' lack of experience and perception further showed in their uniform criticism of the hosts, the topics and the specific questions presented in the debate.  Partisan amateurs at heart, they do not see the value of forcing the candidates to address the public in the terms of their opponents' talking points; they do not see the importance of reassuring possible Democratic watchers of the validity of their own points of view, and of demonstrating the GOP's continued commitment to comity and collegiality in the unlikelihood one of them takes office.

Fortunately for the nation, the remaining Republican candidates recognize this, and have been eagerly snapping up the remaining GOP consultants and campaign managers still unemployed, doughty men and women who understand from New York and California and the bloody battlefields of 2006 how a Republican campaign should be run to keep the voters engaged before the Party's own man is nominated.  If the blogging pundits can learn this lesson it should be a rousing show.

"The only proper choice for the right sort of person;

it doesn't bear thinking about..." Frumley Brooks

Rule 5 -- Important Health Advice for Bloggers!

Ah will get to 40,000 hits by hook or by crook...

i Can Haz Quarterly Earnings!

The Wall Street Journal posts some entertaining numbers on the Big Bux to Be Made Bloggging (Ask Me How!)

Now, admitting that I, with my readership in the high severals, don't rake in these acres of kale depresses me, but to cheer up the rest of you, I have identified several internet entreeprenoors who ARE paid more than their place in the universe suggests they could possibly be worth.

For example, green Shamwow! salesman Al Gore, shown here with his modest home and simple recreational vehicle...

Or famous structural engineer Rosie O'Donnell and several of the struggling small businesses she keeps open with the proceeds of her diligent opinionating...








Note: photo taken prior to issuance of restraining order pursuant to Hooters v. O'Donnell, New York Central Superior Court, for 'creating a creepy workplace environment.'

So it's a shame the WSJ didn't focus on the economic stimulus overpaid bloggers provide to the surrounding community.