On the limitations of justice, Anatole France:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. That is one of the good effects of the Revolution.

OTOH, it could be said that social closure has reached such an extreme that social justice is justice tout court. I think of the Psalms, where over and over the singer laments not that a decision went against them, but that they couldn’t even get a hearing. Rhetorically, social justice sounds like a subset of justice, even though, in this point, analytically, the reverse is true.

Terminological note: The OFB are Obama supporters who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid; their fan-like adherence to their candidate is so extreme that they can be modelled as trolls; possibly even paid trolls. They don’t have problems with the “ramen” posts, so long as they posts don’t say anything about their over-valued object, Obama; it’s the “creative class” of knowledge workers and symbol makers who have the problem.

Nicknames: Can we not invent nicknames for our enemies? And what about invective? I’d hate to have to do without the Unity Pony, for example; and OFB wasn’t invented on the spur of the moment to insult; it emerged as a result of actually behavior that needed to be named.

Great post that ties a lot together. I see now why you say PB 1.0 is broken — if indeed it ever existed.

UPDATE I did some very light copy editing.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

OFB or Unity Pony are not nicknames. They are reality-based and encapsulate in a short form a phenomenon that has to do with a demonstrable reality.

I don’t like nicknames that are just demeaning with no meaning “Shrillary” or “Obambi”. I hated it when PLuk started calling VL “Britney” when VL endorsed Obama even though I agreed with Paul on the substance. I just think we should be careful. Like the New Yorker cover, it’s a fine line to walk.

and if, as I think, it never existed, then a lot of folks fooled themselves about one thing or another. What makes you think that can’t happen again, or isn’t. And if PB 1 never existed, what makes you think PB 2 can?

I’m in the camp that says the intertubes are just a toolkit, like the phone networks or the printed word used to be —- a communications space, another commons that it’s their job to try to take from us and our job to defend, and extend.

Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com

… a network through which “we” communicate. You can call that network a toolkit if you want, but it is in the same way that your larynx is a toolkit.

I don’t think anybody is saying what happened to PB 1.0, or how PB 2.0 can be created — I assume you think it should be — is a technical problem.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Is that it then?

Defending the Toobz? It’s a tool indeed. We might as well try to use to advance what we really want. I’m not naive but I’d rather try before throwing the towel.

Years ago I read Jody Powell’s book The Other Side of the Story and he talked about how reporters used anonymous sources to just make stuff up. He said it was like a clerk taking money out of a registered, just too tempting. Since then I have avoided reporters who use anonymous sources, even Seymor Hersh.

The smears of the primary were all driven by anonymous sources. So one of the things we need to do is call reporters and bloggers on anonymous sources. Don’t link to stories that use anonymous sources, especially if they are telling us what we want to hear. Anonymous sources are the habitat of lies. It is still possible to lie without anonymous sources, but it is harder.

Is about one thing and one thing only: winning elections. That’s it. We can fool ourselves into thinking its the savior, but its not. I’m a partisan and have helped organize campaigning schools for groups. For a variety of reasons, I’m a Dem. (In the 1850s, I’d have been a Whig.) Parties come and go and their philosophies change but the goal is always the same: win elections.

P2.0 should avoid partisan electoral politics as much as possible. Hell, a poor child living in a south side Chicago slum with no heat in the winter should be a concern to both Dems and GOPers.

that I completely agree with you on this.

Now, let me say, purely from the standpoint of a blogging practitioner: Blogging isn’t all about the hits, but it is about the hits. It makes to sense to speak the truth but only in a whisper. People have to hear, or, in our case, read.

That’s the advantage of electoral politics from the post, post, post perspective: There’s ready made subject matter of some, at least, importance, and it comes on a daily basis. Now, we don’t adopt that subject matter — to the extent that we don’t adopt right wing tropes, that is — but even if we don’t adopt it, we can do a critique.

No matter how the substance changes, we’re still going to have to get read. And I guess that means developing orginal narratives, instead of the critique. A lot of hard work, there.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

It’s not cultural. It’s definitely political, and to shove it left, you’ve got to address all the issues of rights, opporunities, and resources. See HCAN’t vs. single payer for an obvious contemporary example.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I have taken to checking site statistics and technorati links

the posts about Obama and the election gets lots of links and inbound traffic, the posts about single payer are ignored. Now, as the health debate takes off next year I hope that will change. But it is what it is.

I don’t think I am cynical. That’s kind of like accusing folks who don’t believe in the same god the same way you do of being an atheist. (which I am, but that’s a different conversation.) Cynicism, the way I learned it, is the belief that all good efforts and intentions lead to bad ends, no matter what. So I ain’t no cynic. No sir. I mean, no ma’am.

I ain’t for throwin’ in no towels. I’m all for trying, for struggling over what we can really do with these tools. I am just wary (and weary too) of folks investing properties in the tools that don’t exist, or that are inherent in US not in the tools.

Does that make any sense?

Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com

FrenchDoc, my ideal would be a fuzzy line of judgment somewhere between yours and Lambert’s. The little conscience fairy on my shoulder seems to have a surprisingly clear line where she enjoys some mocking nicknames, but cringes at others. It’s only partially correlated with my regard for the person.

I asked my fairy what the deal was, and she says it’s a complex of subconscious factors involving the degree of respect she thinks is owed the subject AND the degree of respect owed ADMIRERS of the subject. I think frequency is a factor. A heavily used nickname starts to seem relentlessly boring, uncreative and juvenile (“McSame”). I completely agree with your examples, FrenchDoc. My fairy, however, would mourn the loss of “Tweety” — I guess because it passes all the above criteria.

Struggle is where the fun is, though! From atheist to another. :-)

Obama stories get a lot of traffic, some Africa stories, but lots of other stuff gets far less. But the referring traffic is chiefly driven by the themes of the MSM coverage.

So to make the real difference, to get the mass audience is a real challenge.

Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com

Irony, satire and nicknaming (if reality-based) can be weapons of the powerless against the powerful.

When nicknaming is simply used to demean and dismiss by the powerful against a less powerful person / group, that’s where I have problems.

1. A year ago, when Corrente’s traffic was dependent on A list links, instead of growing organically, the single payer numbers would have been fine. Any subject matter takes time to find an audience. Gardening, for example, is doing much better than it used to, and, I am convinced, brings a real contributors, as opposed to just readers. Our task is to connect to those people.

2. The single payer posts are informational, but to get real numbers, you need a narrative. For example, Why does Barack Obama want my friend to keep bleeding into her shoes is a UHC post, but also includes the electoral narrative and a PB 1.0 narrative about A listers being in the tank. It has 3300 hits, two orders of magnitude better than the typical single payer post. Part of that — lambert blushes modestly — is me, but that’s not all of it.

3. I agree that our substance needs to be party invariant, but that doesn’t mean that our content must be. If leveraging the electoral narrative gets us what we need, then let’s use it. For example, in this post, FrenchDoc also does a fine job of media critique on the A list — within a larger frame.

4. And I always harp on this, but for those who haven’t heard it before, I’ll say it again: The headline is absolutely critical. It’s what gets the reader’s attention on the main page, it’s what shows up in Google, it’s what the URL is made from, and most important of all, it’s what shows up in people’s RSS readers. Plus it flags the narrative. Assume two hypothetical posts with identical content: Which do you think will get more coverage: “Single payer bill fails to advance in House” or “Steny Hoyer shits the bed on HR 676”? Eh? There is absolutely no substitute for polished writing in every aspect of a post.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

“Britney” was not about VL’s endorsement of Obama, rather about his illegitimate claim to being a PUMA. It wasn’t about VL being a “Britney” — rather it was about his not being a PUMA any more than he was “Britney Spears”.

In other words, I called VL “Britney” to designate something he wasn’t.

And, IMHO, that’s not namecalling.

You’re right on the context, of course.

Who is investing properties in the tools that don’t exist? Am I? Is FrenchDoc? Who?

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

So if I call you, Paul, He of Colorless Green Ideas, that would be meaningful because you actually have ideas?

This is like a joke that has to be explained; not a good joke!

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Besides, I don’t see the PB2.0 issues as technical but really social (networking) and political. Again, substance and structure (not in a technical sense but in the sense of how do we organize ourselves).

which you can find near the beginning of FrenchDoc’s original post on this page is, I think, an example of this. Maybe I lost too many brain cells in the 70s or something, but I find it hard to imagine a PB2 “structure”.

Help me out on that if you can. I mean marketing efforts and campaigns have structure. Electoral efforts have structure. But PB 2? PB 1, even. What “structure” was that?

Looked to me just like another uneven playing field.

Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com

issues are essentially boring — at least until they become the topic, at which point everyone becomes an expert (or at least enough of one to have an opinion).

What FD does is an essential part of the ’progressive’ blogosphere (regardless of version) — not because he does daily posts, but because he pays enough attention to the issue that he is a highly credible source of information on it —- if I read something from French Doc on health care issues, I know that I’m reading something by someone who knows what he’s talking about.

One of the problems with PB 1.0 is that getting a ’reputation’ in one area seems to convey credibility in all areas — and while Glenn Greenwald is reliable on issues like FISA and ’torture’, IMHO he’s full of crap on the question of the larger political environment…nevertheless, Greenwald opinions on just about every subject have become ’respected’ because of his espertise in a few rather narrowly defined areas.

From what I’ve seen MOST of the progressive blogosphere suffers from the same basic flaw — people who know their shit on a hot topic become ’famous’, and depending on how badly they want to become an ’A-lister’, wind up becoming ’respected’ opinionators on a whole host of subjects….in very large part because of the ’social’ organization of the blogosphere, and the fact that we’re all pretty much a bunch of sheep.

********
and geez, I’ve avoided taking part in the whole PB 2.0 discussions because I think its intellectual masturbation, rather than productive discussion, and only labelled it as such as an aside in a thread that was NOT a PB 2.0 discussion. Suddenly, this label becomes worthy of a quote from Orwell?

you take my opinions far too seriously… ;)

Did PB 1.0 have a structure?

My answer: Very clearly. A classic Internet power curve, with a very few sites at the top of the curve getting most of the traffic (a classic example of a network), a few thousand sites, like us, clinging to the shoulder of the power curve, and then a “long tail” of blogs with tiny readerships — millions of ’em.

How’d that structure work out for us? (You might also look here. Although these discussions are expressed in technical terms they are, precisely, about access to resources and opportunities.)

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

OK, now we’re talking. It’s about how we organize ourselves. But organizing cannot just take place over the tubes. This is not Second Life, it’s Life Itself.

The answers are not going to come from or over the tubes, because the organizing that really drives change will not itself be led from there. It has to come from stuff we do with the people we get face to face with, and in stuff we do with the access we get, or struggle to get, to local broadcast media, to make a self-serving kind of point.

The real questions are where are the political pressure points at this point in time that can be organized around and what are the most appropriate and useful forms of organization, and after these are answered, what we can do with it over the intertubes.

Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com

that’s basically what I mean by structure.

In the previous PB2.0, we discussed how the smears and falsehoods and truthiness spread so fast, easily and powerfully. A “structure” like DK, that is, a gigantic hub, we think, facilitated such contagion without any mechanisms to stop it (and, as Lambert has written about before, with the active complicity of sysadmin).

The issue for PB2.0 is then how do we relate to each other? How do we exercise some critical thinking over the stuff we write on a variety of topic. Maybe the centralism of the hub structure is part of the problem with PB1.0, well then, we need a different structure: a network of blogs without central point? A central blog that simply lists the PB2.0 posts of the day so that a reader can easily find them and go read them? (I’m just brainstorming with myself here)

And if we agree that the focus electoral politics is a mistake, how do we promote the causes we want, across the PB2.0 network?

This means, we might have to develop a list of criteria of what a PB2.0 blog should have to claim the label.

Does that make more sense?

Oh, wait. That’s the Obama thread. Sorry.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I’m glad you are participating in the discussion, albeit tepidly (sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

as The New Yorker, and yourself as some Joe-Bob, and everything will be okay… ;)

Trust me, I’m French and therefore an automatic expert on all matters sexual!

+100. What this post is about, I would say, is developing a framework to identify classes of pressure point.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

like that one, you mean? ;)

i see it’s already been said, but i’ll pile on: i’m with saint molly on satire, and would include the use of offensive, demeaning nicknames as an additional weapon.

also, while i’m annoyed at paul’s choice of britney spears, i reserve the right to hurl epithets at my opponents in an argument, if the situation seems to call for it.

all rhetorical weapons should be used judiciously, but they should pretty much all be allowed, even the offensive ones.

This Frenchdoc is a lady, Paul

gawd, I hate it when this happens.

(at least it wasn’t in the Melissa McEwan thread).

If its any solace, I think I see ’ungendered’ Obama supporters as inevitably male (and ’ungendered’ Clinton supporters as female…I thought VL was a woman for the longest time!) Kind of like how I see cats as female, and dogs as male, until I know their gender….

but, as with all objects of religious veneration, completely unproductive.

seems to be true-ish of anyone who amasses a large enough audience. this is why i’d like to see more emphasis on human editors in pb2.0, and less use of electronic tools.

pundits who become automatic experts on everything, by virtue of their popularity, has certainly been one of the [many] problems with the m$m.

Had an unexpected family crisis; my apologies.

Great to read what you all have talked about so far.

FrenchDoc—is one of your arguments over that the blogosphere has now clearly chosen Obama over social justice? And continues to do so?

And if so, why? Because it’s easy, one-stop shopping? Or the Kool-Aid….?

that a gender neutral pseudo = male.

Heck, I’m still trying to figure out the genders of half the commenters around here!

To your question: I think PB1.0 was predisposed to choosing BO BECAUSE it is not really progressive but rather libertarian in orientation and focused on electoral politics (which is why the “electability” argument got so much traction… see BTD who saw that as pretty BO’s only advantage).

From this starting point, the structure of PB1.0 facilitated the spread of that without any sense of cognitive dissonance (still true now, see Markos’s quote here)

What we’ve nicknamed the kool-aid was the quick and strong dispersal of content that was absorbed and reproduced at lightning speed across A-list blogs that were/are in the habit of citing each other w/o much critical “oversight”.

Does that make sense?

I don’t know if anyone here ever watches the blogging head tv stuff? Jeralyn from Talkleft is sometimes on and that’s fun.

Well, the philosopher Josh Cohen was talking with “The Age of Abundance” author Brink Lindsey and they were talking here about how there was a huge difference between their salaries and the richest CEO and a difference of about 4-5 times the salary of an assistant regional manager below theirs. And Lindsey said he didn’t care that the CEO’s make so much more than him—he had enough and had chosen intellectual stimulation rather than more money. They were concerned with those in the lowest ranks having not enough money or opportunity—and I am too. But I still (unlike Lindsey anyway) think it’s linked to the overvaluation of a CEO’s “labor” because really what’s enriching him or her is the actual labor of people not making much. How can they be separated?

And is this the kind of thing you are saying, FrenchDoc, that the blogs can do—is make people realize—and see—these problems?

“PB1.0 was predisposed to choosing BO BECAUSE it is not really progressive but rather libertarian in orientation”

I saw something much more extenisve on this point today somewhere on-line—but you are making a very interesting point here.

What does that mean otherwise in terms of the sides bloggers are choosing on issues?

Using your example: why have CEOs compensation risen to stratospheric heights while the bottom 50% saw practically no improvement? Did CEOs really become so much better at their jobs? More efficient? There is no rational explanation for the increase in social inequalities within and between countries, this is not a natural phenomenon. It is the product of political decisions made 30 years ago or so. We need to do the work of analyzing these disparities, where they come from and their social consequences.

Also, we need to reintroduce and make acceptable the idea that we SHOULD raise taxes on the rich because they are NOT paying their fair share. (Some posts on that later)

“What we’ve nicknamed the kool-aid was the quick and strong dispersal of content that was absorbed and reproduced at lightning speed across A-list blogs that were/are in the habit of citing each other w/o much critical “oversight”.”

Wasn’t much of it actually e-mailed by the Obama campaign?

“w/o much critical “oversight””—another huge point. Even now I fear we read and comment emotionally—and don’t do that much homework a lot of times—although linky and quotey goodness buck that trend.

Of course, which of us said earlier that expressing our emotions was a huge part of the internet? How true.

It is enormously significant in terms of the issues they choose to cover and fight for (net neutrality, FISA) and those they neglect (reproductive issues, UHC, fair wages).

very useful to have one central place to go to for information, and i like very much the idea of having one or a few central aggregators that link many smaller blogs.

i also like having one central place to go to for discussion with a variety people, like here at corrente, but mostly i avoid group blogs precisely because of the mob behavior.

i’m not sure, but i think the troll rating and trusted user functions greatly exacerbated the mob-psychology aspects of dkos. if you’re going to go with the ’wisdom of crowds’ thingy [and it’ll never be a replacement for real editors and moderators imnsho], then allow only one option — recommend this post/comment. additionally, there should be a separate way to report especially greivous behavior to a moderator, or patently untrue material to an editor.

the focus on electoral politics isn’t/wasn’t a mistake; blogs are a good replacement for what caucuses are alleged to be good for [ack! the grammar!], and they’ve certainly been one of the few [tiny] sources of media critique, and getting more people involved in the political process is a net positive.

plus, i came here for the electoral politics, which means that now y’all have me as a captive audience for wherever you want to go with pb2.0.

we wouldn’t be here, I think. I also think that the treatment of HRC got to us not just intellectually and in terms of fairness but also emotionally. We ain’t cold fishy around here. Good thing too. As long as we step back and look at the info objectively, or are made to do by our peers around here (i.e. pestering us about linky goodness). That’s also why we need to educate ourselves and others… read stuff, report here, discuss.

The lack of oversight resulted in the inability to distinguish what was astroturfing, MSM memes or legit info… mostly BS.

except that the obama campaign has made productive use of the internet for organizing and especially for raising money.

also, i’ve been more politically active in real life this year than in recent years, in large part because of answers/suggestions/questions/organizations/exhortations that i encountered first in cyberspace.

I think it is a powerful organizing / info-sharing / info-digging tool. It can really deepen your offline experience… I don’t think I would have that invested in the primary w/o all the internet activity, the good, the bad and the ugly.

:-)

TalkLeft is a good example of the need for editor oversight. I think one of the reasons TL remained sane, albeit very pro-HRC, is that Jeralyn exercises strong control over what gets posted and she has clear rules and does not hesitate to zap people’s accounts if they misbehave.

I think we could have a one-site/aggregator type that would collect different posts on similar topics (environment, economy, etc.) and you could have then discussion in one place but relating to different posts on a similar topic.

topics…like http://www.memeorandum.com/ ?

instead, PB 1.0 was destroyed because ideology trumped plain old common sense, and because PB 1.0 was organized based not on what it supported, but what it opposed — and demonized that which it opposed.

Most of PB 1.0 started out this campaign as “anyone but Hillary” because she was perceived as being too “centrist” and “insufficiently progressive”. But as Edwards faded, progressives were forced to make a choice between the qualified but “insufficiently progressive” candidate, and the unqualified “ideological blank slate” candidate — and most of PB 1.0 wound up in the latter camp.

And the reason that PB 1.O fell apart was that progressives tend to be all about rational argument for change/”progress” (its not enough for us for torture to be ’wrong’ morally, we’re far more comfortable arguing that its ineffective as an interrogation technique, against both domestic and international law, etc.) But there was little or no rational “pro-Obama” argument (and what little there was lost its relevance as the campaign progressed).

The only ’rational’ argument for supporting Obama turned out to be “he’s not Hillary Clinton”, and with PB 1.0 being most about what it was against (and demonizing the opposition), attacks on Hillary were a natural consequence. And human nature being what it is (especially in terms of group behavior) the more obvious it became that Clinton was the far better person for President, the more insane and vehement the attacks from what had once been the “progressive blogosphere” became.

but the idea that Obama appealed to some kind of ’libertarianism’ is nonsense — Obama was no more a ’libertarian’ than he was a ’progressive’ — he was, in fact, utterly without substance.

With, say, a scrolling widget of headlines/abstracts.

Otherwise, we’re putting memeorandum at the head of the power curve.

Yes, I could write and serve such a widget.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Yes, BTD saw The Lightbringer (hat tip, Cannon Fire) as more electable, but that was because the press was in the tank for him. There’s substance to that argument.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

“ideology trumped plain old common sense, and because PB 1.0 was organized based not on what it supported, but what it opposed — and demonized that which it opposed.”

So you’re saying the PB thrives on demonizing?

“And human nature being what it is (especially in terms of group behavior) the more obvious it became that Clinton was the far better person for President, the more insane and vehement the attacks from what had once been the “progressive blogosphere” became.”

I think this does differ from what they were doing with the Bush Administration problems but I am much less sure than I was before the many almost senseless attacks on Clinton. I mean, I had thought the blogosphere reporting was about facts and analyzing facts and trying to be fair, although in many cases with a clear lean (not even spin, but judgment.) Was I wrong then too?

The “not Hillary” argument got more traction because it had 16 years of media / Right-wing record of BS and we, non-Kool aid drinkers, watched with our jaws repeatedly hitting the floor as we saw this stuff recycled by the A-list bloggers / commenters.

On the libertarian front, I would argue that some prominent leaders of the mob (Kos, Arianna Huffington…) were, if not former republicans, certainly centrist Dems (Drum), all of them upper-class folks not very concerned about bread-and-butter issues and less likely to perceive the role of the government as equalizer. But very focus on civil liberties issue.

Now, the question is: does Obama have a similar libertarian core? Or did his absence of strong progressive core (visible to anyone who paid attention) allowed for projection of libertarian tendencies which made him kinda fit with the dominant A-list meisters?

I think that ’specificity’ and has a lot to do with this. While “FISA” was an issue as a whole, “telecom immunity” was really the focus — the overall discussion of fourth amendment isses was really a secondary consideration. I think that PB 1.0 was just as capable of raising hell about reproductive issues — if they’d been as cut and dried as “telecom immunity”.

As for ’net neutrality’, keep in mind that the “A-List” is still dominated by “early adopters” of the technology; and that those A-Listers who were not early adopters tend to be sheep when it comes to technology issues, and follow the lead of those early adopters on tech issues.

Finally, there is the obvious question of gender/class bas throughout the PB, whose A-list is male (especially middle and upper-middle class male) dominated — and where issues like reproductive rights, UCH, and ’fair wages’ are concerned, well, for most of them the issue isn’t personal.

In other words, I think you are seeing a pattern that doesn’t exist.

Not to toot my own horn, here but this post — 36K hits — included my favorite chart:

And so that analytical tool was propagated with some success. (I grant you, propagated to whom is an open question.)

My conclusion being that electoral content is OK as a means, but not as an end.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

do this?:

“a distributed model…
with, say, a scrolling widget of headlines/abstracts.”

The purpose being to provide people with the latest news? Or our latest comments? Or the blog’s latest comments?

Could you give an example?

Do you mean a widget that all PB2.0 sites would have in their sidebars (or wherever)?

I would also love a logo. Any designers out there?

far be it from me to complain about my captivity.

They wouldn’t have to use it, of course. But it would be available.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Actually, your three paragraphs are related to each other:

- mostly upper-class males
- more likely to be involved with tech issues and adopt them
- focus on issues that matter to them because they hit close to home

The big blogs have always been proud to be able to assert that their demographics were not nerdy kids hiding in their mom’s basement. But rather upper class professionals, mostly in their 40s, white.

I would contend that this is a privileged class that gets to call itself “creative” and that therefore the libertarian bias against social justice / redistributive issues makes perfect sense (to me at least).

This is the idea, regardless of format. I think WP has one. What we could offer is the ability to server it to any platform.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

A yearly conference!

How come no one’s at Netroots Nation around here??

It’s in Austin, maybe Sarah will go and report.

on its own site talk about meta. It’s distributed through widgetbox, I think.

it’s that. I’m very proud of attracting a lot of strong writers with individual voices. I’m even prouder that the voices are strong in themselves without regard to gender. (And I saw this as a very white, very male WASP.)

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

That is a profound point, Hipparchia.

(In our media critique, we so often focus on the writers. But in fact, the editors are the real enemies: They assign the stories, determine placement, write the headlines, hire and fire. And above them, of course, the owners. It’s clean, earthy sport to skewer Ron Fournier, and necessary, but not as important as skewering… Who does own AP?

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

posts from other blogs in the pb 2.0 community, or

comments from other blogs in pb2.0, or

you can make widgets that follow pretty much any web content that is being updated anywhere: blogs, candidates websites, you name it.

just as an example, i have this widget on my blog sidebar.

but this:

“assuming Obama doesn’t destroy any mandate for policy by tacking, Sister Souljah style, to the (vanishing) center”

kinda stung these days…

a certain level of writing / reasoning / evidence from all of us. It’s probably intensive and demanding on you but I hope it works out the way you want it to.

I think this is also why there hasn’t been too much trolling around here.

See Clay Shirkey.

Bruce Dixon is right that the Internet is “just” a tool, but no tool is neutral in its effects; the screwdriver deforms the bones of the hand in a certain way, for example. And so with community software like blogs.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

So you’re saying the PB thrives on demonizing?

yup. absolutely. so does the wingnut blogosphere.

The dynamic of the political blogosphere is little different than the “if it bleeds, it leads” ethos of television news. Its all about making an emotional impact — and the easiest emotions to trigger are anger and fear.

Was I wrong then too?

Its hard to say, given the fact that the Bush administration (and congressional Republicans) fully deserved to be demonized.

But one thing that has become glaringly obvious to us PUMAs is that the ’progressive’ blogosphere isn’t exactly all about intellectual honesty — for instance, while the McCain/Hagee thing deserved to be an issue, the idea (consistently promoted by the Obamasphere) that it is somehow ’equivalent’ to Obama/Wright is pure bullshit — yet for the longest time, any mention of Wright was met by howls of protest that the media had a double standard because it wasn’t covering Hagee as closely.

And you can go to any non-PUMA blog, and see where ’gaffes’ by McCain are presented as indisputable evidence that he absolutely must not be permitted anywhere near the Oval Office (see the recent “Czechoslovakia” nonsense), but gaffes by Obama are ignored.

The fact that the Bush administration was ’evil incarnate’ made it easy to ignore that demonization as it happened. The fact that Clinton was not ’evil incarnate’ made it impossible to ignore that demonization process. And the effort to paint McCain as the second coming of Bush (and therefore, an appropriate target of demonization) strikes me more as an example of ’knee-jerk demonization’ than the result of a rational process — instead, its a rationalized process.

since they hire/fire the editors.

also, you should be proud, justly so, of the voices you’ve brought here. it’s an extraordinary group, and one for which i thank you.

Up until now, Corrente has been an Obamaroots Nation free zone. And you had to go and ruin it….

FrenchDoc’s summary:
“* Promotion of intellectual tools that do not reproduce conservative / libertarian / media-favored frames by bringing back the social (as opposed to the individual / judgmental frameworks)
* Promotion of redistribution of rights, opportunities and resources
* Promotion of the ways in which current institutions can be reformed to create a more just society (again, where rights, opportunities and resources are more equally redistributed… we may be equal in terms of rights under the law, but in the absence of equal opportunities and resources, it’s meaningless) here and globally (World Bank, IMF, WTO)”

Isn’t the argument several people have been making here that the current make-up of bloggers is such that these goals would be unlikely or impossible?

”- mostly upper-class males
- more likely to be involved with tech issues and adopt them
- focus on issues that matter to them because they hit close to home

…upper class professionals, mostly in their 40s, white.”

Don’t many bloggers mostly want THEIR own views heard and responded to by others? And aren’t many of them ending up AGAINST—especially in the current threatening economic clime—“redistribution of rights, opportunities and resources”?

(Or ending up against that “until things get better”.)

I do enjoy the writing here and that almost every post has some analysis. One reason I never went to Atrios much was his “Wanker of the Day” posts that only contained the word “Wanker” and a link. Sometimes I couldn’t tell who was the wanker or if the link was just to the wrong place.

It is hard to resist its enchanting call!

And talking about intellectual masturbation… NN is probably wankcentral right now!

Whereas here, we’re having a high-minded discussion (if you skip over the “masturbation is sacred” comments, that is).

Compare and contrast. :-)

Hipparchia writes:

All rhetorical weapons should be used judiciously, but they should pretty much all be allowed, even the offensive ones

What’s allowed is one thing, what’s effective is another.

There’s no point, IMSHO, in offense for the sake of being offensive. One of Corrente’s missions, for a long time, has been the development of invective, and the key thing about invective is that it propagates successfully; it’s so on point, and so vivid, and so easy to use that others pick it up. VastLeft and I (or I and VastLeft, I’m not sure of the order) propagated both Unity Pony and OFB, and now they’re everywhere (and, as FrenchDoc says, they’re reality-based). Some find them offensive, but that’s in fact a measure of their power.

So, again, the writing is everything; if you’re going to invest the time in insulting someone, for pity’s sake try to get a return on your investment; and that only comes if your writing is good enough that other people copy it. (Which, incidentally, is why Paul’s “Britney” abuse fails; though it was offensive, nobody could see the point, which is why Paul finally had to explain it. Alas, therefore, it discredited every comment in which it appeared, which is why I am happy to see the old, analytical Paul returning to us on this thread. No offense ;-)

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I would contend that this is a privileged class that gets to call itself “creative” and that therefore the libertarian bias against social justice / redistributive issues makes perfect sense (to me at least).

I don’t think it has a thing to do with any bias against social/redistributative justice… its simply not a priority for the privileged classes. Its not “libertainism”, its pure egocentrism.

Gotta go —

I kinda hijacked the thread on technical matters, I think, so I want to bring it back to Frenchdoc’s conclusion:

Our goal: a more just society here and globally. Reducing /eliminating structural violence. Avoid symbolic violence (the lowest form of which is the use of demeaning nicknames).

The challenge is to find the structure to promote this far and wide.

What Frenchdoc said. This too:

PB1.0 revealed during the primary its relative indifference to structural violence and engaged itself in symbolic violence through insults, demeaning writing / posting and a general exhortation for “some people” (women, older people, low classes) and a general dismissal of their issues as less important the goal they had defined as significant. These categories of people were basically told to keep their place and “trust the Man.” Or else.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

all wrapped up in the Randian language of economic rationality… all BS in my view.

1. I have a job too new to have vacation time.
2. I wouldn’t go if you paid me.
3. I live 300 miles from Austin (see below).
4. It’s going to be an OBF fanfest, and I’m not invited.

But 4legs good, at Plush-Life, is going.
Atrios is going.

How to get there from here

And it’s a Great Orange Satan sponsored event. It’s not like there won’t be liveblogging out the wazoo.

Last year I flirted with buying a ticket. This year, I am oh-so-very-glad I was too broke. When I make a trip to Austin, it’ll be for something worthwhile.

Maybe something like Texas Wildlife Expo.

To which, everybody who blogs, writes or reads here, is now cordially invited. Y’all come if you can. Austin in October is gorgeous, and orders of magnitude cooler than Austin in July.

Plus, the events are free, it’s family-friendly, you can find the restrooms, and NOBODY makes political speeches.

We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

but since I can’t reach through my monitor I am forced to settle.

————————————————————————
“But hysteria is all the rage these days, I guess” - gqm

like an onion. One layer for visibility (including electoral politics), but at least one other layer without the constraints of partisan support. (Single payer is a good example. Some Hillary supporters will support the two-tiered approach simply because she did—I do for the “practical” reason, but also a more fundamental philosophical, I-told-you-so reason.) Partisanship inevitably softens the issue position if the candidate isn’t 100% on our side.

I’d like to see a layer with some hardcore wonkery. One thing 6+ years of graduate school taught me is that there are people that know a hell of a lot more than me about so many things and this shouldn’t be seen as a threat to me, but a tool to push my research: just ask them questions. But I have to trust the people.

I think one of the reasons I avoided Kos is because, as mentioned below, nonexperts acted like experts with credibility and I never trusted them. I want to see links to academic papers and rigorous summaries of the data, not just a NYT summary or some ignorant person repeating talking points they heard from someone else.

… would be interesting.

We would want the content to be PB 2.0 specific. Something more than just headlines, perhaps.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

The answers are not going to come from or over the tubes, because the organizing that really drives change will not itself be led from there. It has to come from stuff we do with the people we get face to face with, and in stuff we do with the access we get, or struggle to get, to local broadcast media, to make a self-serving kind of point.

I think Bruce is half-right.

Nothing will change from campaigns on the internet alone, but the internet is capable of getting maximum utility out of ̶