…or the elephant in the room. Really just astonishing how carefully they all managed to step around it, even during the Q&A at the end when someone pointed out that they’d been stepping around it.

This is exactly like one of those one-sided Israel-Palestine discussions on public access TV.

really—the range of “acceptable”, “serious”, “responsible” talk/policies is short enough to fill only one post-it note.

I can’t get the panel video to play, so I am at a loss here.

Echo chamber and all.

As one of the commenters said, why weren’t Liss McEwan, you or VL invited… I’m sure you would have had plenty to discuss on this topic.

IT was eerie listening to this. Only a few years ago, I valued these people’s opinions (Bowers / Stoller, Pandagon) and now I can’t even listen to them anymore.

Is it me or did they look like either they did not prepare anything at all for this panel, or that they are really not very smart public speakers?

Only the TL commenters made thing thing bearable (apparently, BTD got a real kick out of the whole thing, so that’s something, I guess).

I’m relying on this series of comments:

IACF. Here come the racist charges.
(5.00 / 3) (#80) by
Teresa on Sat Jul 19, 2008 at 05:09:26 PM EST

I am looking forward to what Peter Daou writes about his experience and I hope Eric Boehlert follows through and writes about the crack up of PB 1.0.

A neutral party. But no. Tankdwellers all.

FrenchDoc, it sounds like you listened to the thing. Is there a transcript, do you know? Did they bring up anything concrete? The doctored war room video? The RFK smear?

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

Susie Madrak, too. All of those who managed to extricate themselves from the trainwreck.

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

Maybe they’ll publish this stuff later (as is customary in conferences).

I listened to some of it… quite frankly it was awful and boring. It was like listening to my worst students.

The gist was that the BO campaign did NOTHING in terms of sexism. IT was all the media but the HRC supporters were confused, cuz they’re low-information. Nothing concrete in terms of “how do we unite?” (Oh yeah, Marcotte said something to the effect that we’ll realize that we have more in common than we have disagreements and everything will be fine… my version is actually more articulate than hers). But none of them have ANY clue of the level of anger still in the HRC supporters ranks… no mention of PUMA (at least I didn’t heard one). IF one were an HRC supporter, it was like being discussed like a quaint and not very interesting zoological specimen (from a different era).

Otherwise, it was just blathering on and on and on, inane anecdotes from people who were obviously unprepared for this.

And then it hit me: they really do sound like college students who never grew up.

But then, I was late, so, maybe, they discussed all the good stuff before I logged on.

Frankly, if they have any sense, they will NOT publish a transcript. This would be way too embarrassing.

It’s not going to change, is it?

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

While Bowers acknowledged that a Clinton supporter should have been on the panel, the panel was set before the “Clinton” aspect was added.

But as I noted in the TL comments, the most interesting ’meta’ thing that happened in the blogosphere in the past year was the way it responded to the takeover of most progressive blogs by the Obots. Almost overnight, and entirely new social network was formed for Clinton supporters, who virtually abandoned larges swaths of the Blogosphere formerly known as Progressive.

THAT was the big “meta” story, and a Clinton supporter should have been there to discuss it anyway. But Bowers is so wrapped up in the Obamasphere that he virtually ignored the most inportant “meta” development of all.

because these are the “official” voices of the progressive blogosphere. OL, Pandagon, these are BIG blogs.

If this is what passes for thinking in the progressive blogosphere, then progressive thinking is in big big trouble.

And as Paul commented downthread, the meta story is, in my view, the very real fracture of the lefty blogosphere and I don’t think they have a clue about that. Probably because, as some mentioned on the panel, they don’t even think HRC supporters are internet-savvy, aware of social networking software, etc.

So, they probably think that they ARE the progressive blogosphere.

Not to toot my own horn (and yours as well), our PB2.0 discussions have been WAY more substantial than this.

FOX does discussion panels with a couple far-right conservatives and a couple of lunatic fringe conservatives so they will be “fair and balanced”

So Obama Bloggers run panels with a couple kool-aid drinkers and a couple who snort the powder straight.

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

invite Peter Daou or Eric Boehlert or Gene Lyons to talk about PB 2.0

… if you want to be seen as Serious in the Village?

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

she has been watching from London

Don’t get smart with me, young man!

Well, there go our successful MSNBC pundit careers, I guess. And I could already see myself doing my own Special Commentaries, urbi et orbi. Damn!

No crashing the gates for us then. Sentenced to toil in obscurity.

and no lambert, it is not going to change.

nor is the white house.

nor is the congress.

nor is the beltway media.

as i have argued many times before,

the weblog world became the second ring of media hell when clinton v obama rolled around
]
because they responded precisely the same way

that the mainstream media, which bob somerby has been excoriating for years, behaved toward president bill clinton, toward candidate gore, and toward candidate kerry.

this is just standard human behavior -

mob action, to be sure, but standard behavior nonetheless.

such behavior is as old as our species.

no “goals and objectives” agreement will transcend it,

no “declaration of progressive ethics” will transcend it,

no p.b. 2.0 (whatever that is) will transcend it.

just as no cannon of journalistic ethics will prevent broder, krystol, russert (x), dowd, matthews, miller, will, krauthammer, limbaugh, et al. from bending the truth to serve their careers.

what WILL make a difference is encouraging and providing weblog media, as a platform, a soapbox,

for people like

paul lukasiak,

joseph cannon,

emptywheel (marcy wheeler),

larry johnson and col pat lang,

brad friedman,

glen greenwald,

wampum,

dcblogger,

scott horton,

and many others i have failed to mention

(each time i make out this list, i wake up in the middle of the night thinking of those i should have included, but did not).

the basic rationale for progressive weblog advocacy should be this:

give knowledgeable individuals a platform from which to speak out.

by doing so one begin jackhammering away at the foundations of the “inside the beltway” power elite.

Instead of merely discussing the cluelessness, contempt of others, and self-reverence of the Obots which led to the fracturing of the so-called Left blogs, they decided to demonstrate those traits instead. And what a masterful job of it they did.

I completely missed that. I guess they’re not called the creative class for nothing, after all.

Thanks Nadai.

A simulacrum.

Don’t go all Baudrillard on us! :-)

Perhaps it’s time to start looking for one.

We’ve got starpower, IMO. I’ve only just read this piece by our own writer and host, as I’m relatively new here. No wonder Krugman linked to Corrente. Rewards should be heaped on Lambert’s and others’ prescience, and lessons should be learned.

Ditto this comment to Lambert on DKos, where it was crossposted:

[T]his is incredibly well written and your depth of research and insight shows. If the New York Times had any sense, they’d give you Kristol’s slot.