Pajama Party

Two of my favourite American progressive/liberal/lefty/sane writer/bloggers, The Nation's David Corn (scroll down) and Vanity Fair's James Wolcott (here and here), are at war over the former's joining the board of Pajamas Media. It's a blogger agglomeration site that aspires to

coalesc(e) the internet’s brightest minds and most compelling content into a single source that will, in turn, complement and re-define journalism in the 21st century.

Wolcott's problem is that Corn is the token non-fascist on this chorus line of White House talking points.

By allowing his name to be slated on the editorial board, Corn is letting himself be used as a figleaf enabling Pajamas to pretend that it's a bipartisan effort instead of what it so flagrantly is, a neocon popstand.

Does Corn really want to be associated with fun blogs like Little Green Footballs and Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war")?

Bad enough those two blogs are all about fanning the flames of anti-Muslim hatred. But other participants in the PJ game include this shrew, who makes this shrew seem reasonable and intelligent.

Comments

[Dana]

What hath Arianna wrought?

Jammys is aping Huffington Post and I mean aping in the truest sense of the word. Knuckles dragging, shrieking in the trees and shitting where they eat.

I agree with Wolcott but I'm not surprised by Corn. He and Kristof remind me of one another.

I think there's a breed of American small "l" liberal of which these two are good examples. These folks acknowledge that some things might not be working out very well in this or that area of American life. But then they tend to think that what's needed to rectify the situation is for they themselves to try harder to be more understanding of the essentially good people, whose intentions are, after all, for the best, who unfortunately put in place the policies or practices that have made things not work very well. And then to acknowledge how their own shortcomings have contributed to the lack of solutions.

In less extraordinary times that has been an occasionally useful strategy. Most certainly a more collegial one.

Except that these times are these times.

Kristof of late seems to have had the scales removed from his eyes though I've thought so before only to see them grow back.

Corn is still operating under the presumption that Malkin, Ledeen, Podhoretz, Coulter et al-et al are simply drawing incorrect conclusions from the rational examination of the same set of factual data that he's looking at. That properly organized rational argument can be brought to bear and they will see the error of their thinking and change their minds and their actions.

But their minds and actions are not organized around rationality. Their first principle is faith. Not necessarily or always but often religious faith though there's a secular variant as well.

Faith is not transformed by reason.

Corn is behaving with the patience of Job when he should more properly apply the renunciation of Lot.

[Robert McClelland]

The funniest thing about PJ Media is that one of its founders, Roger L. Simon, frequently writes posts on his blog that begin with, "I just don't understand what the story is here." Oh ya, they're really going to change the face of media. I wonder if their new name will be "The DC Times" (with the DC standing for Dazed & Confused)?

[MC]

I think this says it all.

"...these are harmless and somewhat hilarious attempts to smear our new media adventure. Incumbents don’t like renewal or competition."
- Pieter Dorsman at Peaktalk.com

The people will decide to whom and where to turn for their information. Which is as far as I can tell, away from the MSM. Does this bother you?

[Del]

Of course it bothers Antonia, she's a dinosaur, a lumbering, walnut-sized-ganglioned, Old Media dinosuar.

The very idea of competition from blogs sends her into a flop-sweat panic.

The best thing about blogs is that they have demonstrated that there are literally thousands of people out there who are far more talented writers, far more knowledgeable commentators than those whom the MSM have annointed as our betters.

So of course it bothers Antonia that she's being shown up by a bunch of nobodies with blogs. It the species ending meteor crashing into her Jurassic jungle.