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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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April 30, 2002
I'd like to thank...
: I'm very proud and happy that two of my sites -- Epicurious and Style.com -- were nominated for Webbys.
Nonetheless, I was disappointed that the high-falutin' "International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences" did not see fit to notice and award the only new trend on the Internet in two years: Weblogs.
That's what is wrong with awards. They are always two steps behind.
Extra! Extra!
: Click here to subscribe to the new L.A. paper. No, it doesn't exist yet. But if you all show passionate interest in the thing, then it will exist.
: Bennett on the paper.
A year after
: ABC plans to devote a full day of programming to the one-year anniversary come Sept. 11.
America
: Quick responds quickly to the post below.
I'd like to thank...
: I'm very proud and happy that two of my sites -- Epicurious and Style.com -- were nominated for Webbys.
Nonetheless, I was disappointed that the high-falutin' "International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences" did not see fit to notice and award the only new trend on the Internet in two years: Weblogs.
That's what is wrong with awards. They are always two steps behind.
Extra! Extra!
: Click here to subscribe to the new L.A. paper. No, it doesn't exist yet. But if you all show passionate interest in the thing, then it will exist.
: Bennett on the paper.
A year after
: ABC plans to devote a full day of programming to the one-year anniversary come Sept. 11.
America
: Quick responds quickly to the post below.
April 29, 2002
A nation of ideas and ideals
: I spent last week vacationing in Williamsburg, soaking in history along with sunlight (thank you, God) and beer (ditto) and Busch Gardens water rides (a price of paternity).
Now it so happens that my son soon has to appear as Thomas Jefferson in a fourth-grade wax museum (no, I don't know what that is; it sounds like a teacher's clever way to get a little quiet -- "Johnny, make like wax!"). Anyway, it was fortuitous that an ersatz Thomas Jefferson happened to be speaking to a large assemblage of citizens (and tourists) behind the Governor's Palace the day we were there. My son stood at the feet of the great man and soaked up his ever word on a digital recorder. 1774 meets 2002.
I soaked up his words as well, for I found everything he had to say all the more relevant these days.
After the speech, while taking a walk with my son, I told him that now is a particularly good time for us to study our history, for we need to remind ourselves of what we're defending as others attack us; we need to remember the ideas and ideals we stand for; we need to reaffirm our belief in America. I'm not usually quite that dull and pontifical a dad (or at least I hope I'm not), but I meant what I said, for that afternoon, I heard Thomas eloquently recite our democratic creed:
We believe in the right to free assembly and free speech.
We believe in the right of a people to elect their government.
We believe in the right of a people to self-determination.
We believe in freedom of religion.
We believe it is the responsibility of the majority to protect the rights of the minority.
We believe a government should represent its people.
We believe all people are created equal.
This is what we believe as Americans. This is what we as Americans brought to the world now more than two centuries ago. This is the touchstone of modern civilization. This is democracy.
Now look at the combatants in the Middle East. How many uphold the right of their people to elect their government? One. How many do not allow their citizens free assembly and free speech and freedom of religion? Too many. How many treat all their people as equal? Too few. How many are fighting against the right of the Jews and the Palestinians to self-determination? How many of these people are attacking us for these beliefs, these ideals and ideals?
Sorry to be so basic, so obvious, so fundamental. But I do think it is time to remind ourselves of these fundmentals. And I could tell that most or all of the 200-or-so citizen-tourists on that green lawn were inspired to hear Thomas Jefferson remind us of them, especially now
: Andrea Harris echoes the same sentiment, less sentimentally: One effect of September 11th, on me anyway, was the immediate banishment from my psyche of any vestiges of the belief that there was something inherently wrong with being an American. Anyway, Opinion Journal is starting a new pro-Western Civilization column: The Western Front. Some might quibble: how much more pro-Western can the Wall Street Journal be? But not me. That column at Opinion Journal begins with something that will warm the hearts of many a blogger: a slap at a journalism prof. "The problem with America," a college professor told me recently, "is that it can't get over the idea that it is somehow special among nations." His name is Robert Jensen and he teaches journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. He's flat wrong. The problem with America and Western civilization in general is that it lost confidence in itself and started accepting relativist arguments....
The main purpose of this column will be to argue for rebuilding confidence in the West's ideal of human freedom--spiritual, political and economic liberty....
Now it's time for Western culture to stand up again. Worries about imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, should be cast off. Global free trade isn't imperialistic; it's the spread of a natural right, economic freedom. Demanding that a country respect its people's basic rights isn't imperialistic, and neither is standing for an unfettered media. The column has its predictably shrill moments (trying to blame the media for a lack of pride in all Western civilization... oh, give it up, Journal). And we still need to guard against jingoism and blind nationalism and smug superiority. We are not better because we are American. It is our ideas and ideals that are better. Indeed, as the column ends: Yet whatever its failures, the West is worth defending. Indeed, it is in rising above these shortcomings that give hope to the world, establish peace among men and spread freedom to lands that have known only tyranny. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Let's start acting like it. Tom would be proud.
Searching searches
: Via Matthew Haughey, an impressive new meeting of Alexa and Google: search for a site and find out what people who visit that site also visit and find the links and a traffic ranking. Try NickDenton.org. (I am apparently disadvantaged by switching urls to buzzmachine.com; it hasn't scraped me for a bit under the new address.)
Remember anthrax
: The NY Post -- with its cousin, the Weekly Standard -- have a sizable package today demanding action on anthrax and arguing that it's lazy of the feds to assume that this was a domestic attack. Here's the Standard piece, plus a Podhoretz column taking on the FBI, plus a Post editorial: Sadly, we have no answers this morning - just a growing conviction that Washington, and the FBI in particular, aren't even asking questions. The power of celebrity: Here's an observation Lileks and fellow parents of young ones will understand; others won't.
Tonight, Nick Jr. had a special saying goodbye to Steve, the host of Blue's Clues (he's "going to college") and saying hello to his "brother," Joe, the new host of the show. It was an event in my 5-year-old's life.
What's amazing is that even young children now understand the power of celebrity.
This, too, is American.
Los Ahngeles in the summah
: It's sad when a Californian -- a Southern Californian, a Southern Californian politician -- tries to act all continental cosmopolitan -- and fails.
I was listening to NPR this afternoon report on the breakup of Los Angeles (potentially losing the Valley, the port, and Hollywood and leaving... what?) when the mayor complained that he didn't want to see the city become just a bunch of enclaves.
But he didn't say enclave. That is, he didn't say en-CLAYVE or ahn-CLAYVE.
He said ahn-clahve.
It was a small moment. But I enjoyed it.
Rossi's art show is on
: Details here.
A nation of ideas and ideals
: I spent last week vacationing in Williamsburg, soaking in history along with sunlight (thank you, God) and beer (ditto) and Busch Gardens water rides (a price of paternity).
Now it so happens that my son soon has to appear as Thomas Jefferson in a fourth-grade wax museum (no, I don't know what that is; it sounds like a teacher's clever way to get a little quiet -- "Johnny, make like wax!"). Anyway, it was fortuitous that an ersatz Thomas Jefferson happened to be speaking to a large assemblage of citizens (and tourists) behind the Governor's Palace the day we were there. My son stood at the feet of the great man and soaked up his ever word on a digital recorder. 1774 meets 2002.
I soaked up his words as well, for I found everything he had to say all the more relevant these days.
After the speech, while taking a walk with my son, I told him that now is a particularly good time for us to study our history, for we need to remind ourselves of what we're defending as others attack us; we need to remember the ideas and ideals we stand for; we need to reaffirm our belief in America. I'm not usually quite that dull and pontifical a dad (or at least I hope I'm not), but I meant what I said, for that afternoon, I heard Thomas eloquently recite our democratic creed:
We believe in the right to free assembly and free speech.
We believe in the right of a people to elect their government.
We believe in the right of a people to self-determination.
We believe in freedom of religion.
We believe it is the responsibility of the majority to protect the rights of the minority.
We believe a government should represent its people.
We believe all people are created equal.
This is what we believe as Americans. This is what we as Americans brought to the world now more than two centuries ago. This is the touchstone of modern civilization. This is democracy.
Now look at the combatants in the Middle East. How many uphold the right of their people to elect their government? One. How many do not allow their citizens free assembly and free speech and freedom of religion? Too many. How many treat all their people as equal? Too few. How many are fighting against the right of the Jews and the Palestinians to self-determination? How many of these people are attacking us for these beliefs, these ideals and ideals?
Sorry to be so basic, so obvious, so fundamental. But I do think it is time to remind ourselves of these fundmentals. And I could tell that most or all of the 200-or-so citizen-tourists on that green lawn were inspired to hear Thomas Jefferson remind us of them, especially now
: Andrea Harris echoes the same sentiment, less sentimentally: One effect of September 11th, on me anyway, was the immediate banishment from my psyche of any vestiges of the belief that there was something inherently wrong with being an American. Anyway, Opinion Journal is starting a new pro-Western Civilization column: The Western Front. Some might quibble: how much more pro-Western can the Wall Street Journal be? But not me. That column at Opinion Journal begins with something that will warm the hearts of many a blogger: a slap at a journalism prof. "The problem with America," a college professor told me recently, "is that it can't get over the idea that it is somehow special among nations." His name is Robert Jensen and he teaches journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. He's flat wrong. The problem with America and Western civilization in general is that it lost confidence in itself and started accepting relativist arguments....
The main purpose of this column will be to argue for rebuilding confidence in the West's ideal of human freedom--spiritual, political and economic liberty....
Now it's time for Western culture to stand up again. Worries about imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, should be cast off. Global free trade isn't imperialistic; it's the spread of a natural right, economic freedom. Demanding that a country respect its people's basic rights isn't imperialistic, and neither is standing for an unfettered media. The column has its predictably shrill moments (trying to blame the media for a lack of pride in all Western civilization... oh, give it up, Journal). And we still need to guard against jingoism and blind nationalism and smug superiority. We are not better because we are American. It is our ideas and ideals that are better. Indeed, as the column ends: Yet whatever its failures, the West is worth defending. Indeed, it is in rising above these shortcomings that give hope to the world, establish peace among men and spread freedom to lands that have known only tyranny. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Let's start acting like it. Tom would be proud.
Searching searches
: Via Matthew Haughey, an impressive new meeting of Alexa and Google: search for a site and find out what people who visit that site also visit and find the links and a traffic ranking. Try NickDenton.org. (I am apparently disadvantaged by switching urls to buzzmachine.com; it hasn't scraped me for a bit under the new address.)
Remember anthrax
: The NY Post -- with its cousin, the Weekly Standard -- have a sizable package today demanding action on anthrax and arguing that it's lazy of the feds to assume that this was a domestic attack. Here's the Standard piece, plus a Podhoretz column taking on the FBI, plus a Post editorial: Sadly, we have no answers this morning - just a growing conviction that Washington, and the FBI in particular, aren't even asking questions. The power of celebrity: Here's an observation Lileks and fellow parents of young ones will understand; others won't.
Tonight, Nick Jr. had a special saying goodbye to Steve, the host of Blue's Clues (he's "going to college") and saying hello to his "brother," Joe, the new host of the show. It was an event in my 5-year-old's life.
What's amazing is that even young children now understand the power of celebrity.
This, too, is American.
Los Ahngeles in the summah
: It's sad when a Californian -- a Southern Californian, a Southern Californian politician -- tries to act all continental cosmopolitan -- and fails.
I was listening to NPR this afternoon report on the breakup of Los Angeles (potentially losing the Valley, the port, and Hollywood and leaving... what?) when the mayor complained that he didn't want to see the city become just a bunch of enclaves.
But he didn't say enclave. That is, he didn't say en-CLAYVE or ahn-CLAYVE.
He said ahn-clahve.
It was a small moment. But I enjoyed it.
Rossi's art show is on
: Details here.
April 28, 2002
The Mr. Bill Show
: I've seen the rumors that Bill Clinton is up to replace Bryant Gumbel in a few places.
I love the idea for one reason: It would be different. CBS has failed many times to create a successful morning show by copying the other successful shows.
Clinton would be entertaining. If you love him or hate him, you'll be entertained by him in any case. He's smart. He's born for media. He's charming. He's a supreme communicator. He'd have something to say. And wouldn't that be fun to watch?
Search me
: Nick Denton added a cool Google search of his site to his page. I plan to steal it if he lets me.
: I just did it anyway. My son showed me how to create the Google search, then I stole Nick's adaptation of it. Thanks, Nick.
Buzzzzz
: Kottke is trying to tell someone something: You know how after you poke a hornet's nest with a stick and all the hornets come streaming out and they are all buzzing around pissed off and they sting you with their stingers but it's not really their fault because they're hornets and that's all hornets know how to do even though all you would like is for them to stop stinging you and go back into their nest? Yeah, that. Get me rewrite: Ken Layne is right: It's apparently a good thing when Matt Welch loses his internet access for 40 hours, for he spends the time staring intently at the LA Times until the newsprint spontaneously combusts and then he writes about it. Go there and start with "One last note about the LA Times..." (well, that's a lie if I ever saw one) and keep reading. He gives you what should be a 101 course in journalism at the University of the Streets.
Matt demonstrates why a reporter showing off his writing style ("He works amid ghosts. Downtown ghosts. Buildings and streets that once held a city together...") is a service to no reader (save perhaps the writer's possibly proud mother). I hate having to read a story for 10 paragraphs before getting to the point.
That, students, is why God invented The Lead (or, if you insist on not getting to the point in the first paragraph, at least get to it by the third in what became known as The Hook Graph). Getting to the point is the most basic service to the reader. The reader is busy. The reader bought a newspaper to find out what the hell is going on. So tell your dear reader.
When I was TV critic at People, I started ending my reviews with grades (which later became the essential conceit of Entertainment Weekly) and many colleagues actually got mad at me; they said that people wouldn't read the review if they could get a summary in one letter; I said that was exactly why I did it: It's a service to get to the point.
I've been telling some people lately that this is one lesson print can take back from the Web: Print, too, needs a good user interface. On the Web, we have very little space and time to get to the point and to entice our readers to invest the time in a scroll or a click. Print reporters and headline writers would do well to remember this even when writing for their captive readers: Get to the point in the head and lead and spare us your show-off style.
Matt then respectfully takes the Times to task for not reporting until now on the new newspaper project, he, Ken, and a few others are working on. Reporting on yourself and your own industry is tough but necessary and it's pitiful that the Times came in last here. He also tweaks them for printing an unsubstantiated rumor that Rupert Murdoch is an investor. I wish Murdoch were involved and if he isn't, I hope the rumor at least gives him the idea. LA could use a NY Post. It is a far better model for an alternative paper than the NY Sun. The Post isn't about journalism. The Post isn't about showing off. The Post is about New York.
I love tabloids because they get to the point. They think like a reader. They fight on behalf of the reader. They respect for readers' time and don't waste it on pud-pulling stylistics. They aren't afraid to say something.
And then (or actually, this being a weblog, first) Matt uses a Howard Rosenberg TV column to give a wise lecture on the virtues of covering news -- yes, even crime -- instead of just sucking thumbs in 17-part series, as too many columnists and prize-hungry newspaper editors do; again, they are more interested in showing off than actually serving the reader's needs.
Read it all. And get ready to subscribe to the paper coming from Matt, Ken, et al.
: I hate that I often dredge up stories from my professional past here. It's so damned egotistical (it's showing off) and it makes me seem like some old warhorse hack (it makes me feel as if I should start writing my memoirs... but I'm only half the age of Jim Bellows, who just wrote his).
Anyway, Matt's post about TV criticism in the LA Times reminded me of the time I almost went to work for the Times. So here's one last story from my past (that's a lie):
After I left San Francisco for New York, I quickly missed California. At first, I missed Northern California but soon it was generic California, anyplace with iceplant on the freeways. So I went job-hunting at the LA Times. I ended up seeing the then-editor of the entertainment section and he wanted to hire me as a second TV critic, besides Rosenberg. He said he wanted a critic "who actually watches TV." (I don't mean to slap Rosenberg; he has always been very nice to me,but it's what the guy said). I loved the idea; was going to take the job. But then, at the last minute, the entertainment editor got bad news: He wasn't allowed to hire another TV critic; office politics, he explained. But a top editor offered me a consolation prize: I could come to the paper to cover the LA Olympics Arts Festival. Me? Arts? I'm a TV guy, a tabloid guy, a mass guy, a guy of the people, a cultural slob! I don't do ballet. I don't do ethnic folk dance. I don't do performance art. What the hell would I do in that job except growl? I said no. My mentor and pal at People, Peter Travers (now the movie critic and more at Rolling Stone) used all this, without my knowledge, to get my other mentor at People, then-editor Pat Ryan, to make me TV critic at the magazine. And that's how I became a TV critic afterall. And the rest is... Entertainment Weekly.
: Howard Owens also weighs in on the LA paper here (he could use permalinks; I went to some effort to get you this one), raising some concerns about the business of papers. I say it depends on the business plan. The new paper is not going to defeat the Times in classified ads or big display advertising; it can work as a business with extremely low costs and targeted advertising and a loyal audience paying a fair price. My one business concern for them is distribution. It's easy to distribute in New York; we have newsstands -- and we have sidewalks on which to place them. We also have homeless people happy to don ugly T-shirts and sell newspapers to people walking on said sidewalks. LA is going to be tough. They need creative distribution -- say, along with the morning copies of Variety, on freeway exit ramps, and such. Maybe parking valets can double as hawkers.
The Mr. Bill Show
: I've seen the rumors that Bill Clinton is up to replace Bryant Gumbel in a few places.
I love the idea for one reason: It would be different. CBS has failed many times to create a successful morning show by copying the other successful shows.
Clinton would be entertaining. If you love him or hate him, you'll be entertained by him in any case. He's smart. He's born for media. He's charming. He's a supreme communicator. He'd have something to say. And wouldn't that be fun to watch?
Search me
: Nick Denton added a cool Google search of his site to his page. I plan to steal it if he lets me.
: I just did it anyway. My son showed me how to create the Google search, then I stole Nick's adaptation of it. Thanks, Nick.
Buzzzzz
: Kottke is trying to tell someone something: You know how after you poke a hornet's nest with a stick and all the hornets come streaming out and they are all buzzing around pissed off and they sting you with their stingers but it's not really their fault because they're hornets and that's all hornets know how to do even though all you would like is for them to stop stinging you and go back into their nest? Yeah, that. Get me rewrite: Ken Layne is right: It's apparently a good thing when Matt Welch loses his internet access for 40 hours, for he spends the time staring intently at the LA Times until the newsprint spontaneously combusts and then he writes about it. Go there and start with "One last note about the LA Times..." (well, that's a lie if I ever saw one) and keep reading. He gives you what should be a 101 course in journalism at the University of the Streets.
Matt demonstrates why a reporter showing off his writing style ("He works amid ghosts. Downtown ghosts. Buildings and streets that once held a city together...") is a service to no reader (save perhaps the writer's possibly proud mother). I hate having to read a story for 10 paragraphs before getting to the point.
That, students, is why God invented The Lead (or, if you insist on not getting to the point in the first paragraph, at least get to it by the third in what became known as The Hook Graph). Getting to the point is the most basic service to the reader. The reader is busy. The reader bought a newspaper to find out what the hell is going on. So tell your dear reader.
When I was TV critic at People, I started ending my reviews with grades (which later became the essential conceit of Entertainment Weekly) and many colleagues actually got mad at me; they said that people wouldn't read the review if they could get a summary in one letter; I said that was exactly why I did it: It's a service to get to the point.
I've been telling some people lately that this is one lesson print can take back from the Web: Print, too, needs a good user interface. On the Web, we have very little space and time to get to the point and to entice our readers to invest the time in a scroll or a click. Print reporters and headline writers would do well to remember this even when writing for their captive readers: Get to the point in the head and lead and spare us your show-off style.
Matt then respectfully takes the Times to task for not reporting until now on the new newspaper project, he, Ken, and a few others are working on. Reporting on yourself and your own industry is tough but necessary and it's pitiful that the Times came in last here. He also tweaks them for printing an unsubstantiated rumor that Rupert Murdoch is an investor. I wish Murdoch were involved and if he isn't, I hope the rumor at least gives him the idea. LA could use a NY Post. It is a far better model for an alternative paper than the NY Sun. The Post isn't about journalism. The Post isn't about showing off. The Post is about New York.
I love tabloids because they get to the point. They think like a reader. They fight on behalf of the reader. They respect for readers' time and don't waste it on pud-pulling stylistics. They aren't afraid to say something.
And then (or actually, this being a weblog, first) Matt uses a Howard Rosenberg TV column to give a wise lecture on the virtues of covering news -- yes, even crime -- instead of just sucking thumbs in 17-part series, as too many columnists and prize-hungry newspaper editors do; again, they are more interested in showing off than actually serving the reader's needs.
Read it all. And get ready to subscribe to the paper coming from Matt, Ken, et al.
: I hate that I often dredge up stories from my professional past here. It's so damned egotistical (it's showing off) and it makes me seem like some old warhorse hack (it makes me feel as if I should start writing my memoirs... but I'm only half the age of Jim Bellows, who just wrote his).
Anyway, Matt's post about TV criticism in the LA Times reminded me of the time I almost went to work for the Times. So here's one last story from my past (that's a lie):
After I left San Francisco for New York, I quickly missed California. At first, I missed Northern California but soon it was generic California, anyplace with iceplant on the freeways. So I went job-hunting at the LA Times. I ended up seeing the then-editor of the entertainment section and he wanted to hire me as a second TV critic, besides Rosenberg. He said he wanted a critic "who actually watches TV." (I don't mean to slap Rosenberg; he has always been very nice to me,but it's what the guy said). I loved the idea; was going to take the job. But then, at the last minute, the entertainment editor got bad news: He wasn't allowed to hire another TV critic; office politics, he explained. But a top editor offered me a consolation prize: I could come to the paper to cover the LA Olympics Arts Festival. Me? Arts? I'm a TV guy, a tabloid guy, a mass guy, a guy of the people, a cultural slob! I don't do ballet. I don't do ethnic folk dance. I don't do performance art. What the hell would I do in that job except growl? I said no. My mentor and pal at People, Peter Travers (now the movie critic and more at Rolling Stone) used all this, without my knowledge, to get my other mentor at People, then-editor Pat Ryan, to make me TV critic at the magazine. And that's how I became a TV critic afterall. And the rest is... Entertainment Weekly.
: Howard Owens also weighs in on the LA paper here (he could use permalinks; I went to some effort to get you this one), raising some concerns about the business of papers. I say it depends on the business plan. The new paper is not going to defeat the Times in classified ads or big display advertising; it can work as a business with extremely low costs and targeted advertising and a loyal audience paying a fair price. My one business concern for them is distribution. It's easy to distribute in New York; we have newsstands -- and we have sidewalks on which to place them. We also have homeless people happy to don ugly T-shirts and sell newspapers to people walking on said sidewalks. LA is going to be tough. They need creative distribution -- say, along with the morning copies of Variety, on freeway exit ramps, and such. Maybe parking valets can double as hawkers.
April 27, 2002
Ovation
: I predict that when the Spiderman movie shows the World Trade Center towers, audiences everywhere will erupt in applause.
Tragedy
: We are not the only country to suffer the tragedy of school shootings.
Ovation
: I predict that when the Spiderman movie shows the World Trade Center towers, audiences everywhere will erupt in applause.
Tragedy
: We are not the only country to suffer the tragedy of school shootings.
April 26, 2002
Welcome home
: Mr. Hartung's LakeFX is back.
Reply to sender
: Efrem (below) forwards the response he got from saudiembassy.net: Thanks Efram. We think the United States of Israel is a great little country too. Maybe one day it will be our fourteenth province. Just kidding. And Will Vehrs sends this to the Saudis: Align yourselves with freedom and democracy, not with
violence and oppression. Support peace with Israel, not the Intifada. Urge the Palestinians to accept the boundries of a new state and help them build a nation based on a free people and free markets. Seek the US as your partner in peace and prosperity; stop the support of dark forces that attempt to undermine the only nation that can offer you military and economic security.
You stand at a historic crossroads. Follow the suicide bombers and radical Islamofascists into the dustbin of history, or embrace peace and freedom, teach it to your children, and achieve greatness.
Welcome home
: Mr. Hartung's LakeFX is back.
Reply to sender
: Efrem (below) forwards the response he got from saudiembassy.net: Thanks Efram. We think the United States of Israel is a great little country too. Maybe one day it will be our fourteenth province. Just kidding. And Will Vehrs sends this to the Saudis: Align yourselves with freedom and democracy, not with
violence and oppression. Support peace with Israel, not the Intifada. Urge the Palestinians to accept the boundries of a new state and help them build a nation based on a free people and free markets. Seek the US as your partner in peace and prosperity; stop the support of dark forces that attempt to undermine the only nation that can offer you military and economic security.
You stand at a historic crossroads. Follow the suicide bombers and radical Islamofascists into the dustbin of history, or embrace peace and freedom, teach it to your children, and achieve greatness.
April 25, 2002
Tell the Saudis what you think of them...
: Not that they listen but... Let's have a little fun.
So the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is threatening to threaten us with playing the oil card.
VodkaPundit says what the Prince can do with his threats.
Better yet, why don't we all tell the Prince ourselves!
The Saudi embassy has its own email address: info@saudiembassy.net
So send them email directly -- just in case they don't read blogs.
While you're at it, also CC this address I just created -- saudisuck@mail.com so we can all share.
: And already, the mail bag starts filling up. This from Efrem Zionist Jr.: Hi! How y'all doin'? Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that I think--and I'm speaking as an American here--I think you've got a great little country. I don't care what anybody says, it's not just 865,000 square miles of crude oil, suicide pilots, and anti-Semitism. I think you're going to make a fine 51st state. Don't worry, the Pledge of Allegiance is easy to learn!
No, no, just kidding. I'm sure you'll start off as a terrortory of the United States. I mean territory. But no! I'm just joking, really. You know how us Jew-lovers are, always cracking wise.
So, which hand should I chop off for sending this? Kidding! A is for Andrew...: Jim Treacher starts the blogictionary. One true entry: Instalanche: A sudden influx of thousands of hits that threatens to crush your server, brought on by a link from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com. Appropriate for today, I suggest blogspotty: The reliability of Blogspot.
The Wall, cont.
: Eric Olsen weighs in on the wall.
: And a reader, Steven Postrel, counters on Olsen's site.
We will soon build a wall between prowall and antiwall bloggers.
Maybe the French are right
: Well that headline gets your attention, eh?
Those protesting French are protesting not only their own insane election returns but also the corporate performance at Vivendi. Shareholders and employees "stormed" (that's what the French always do: storm) the company's annual meeting.
A wonderful idea.
What if we did the same at AOL Time Warner's annual meeting? I said when the merger with AOL occurred that it was a big, fat mistake, that it was just Time Warner being frightened of its own future (and lack of strategy for it), that AOL was not worth anywhere near what was being calculated in the deal. Time Inc. had done things like this before; when I was there, they were afraid that Chris Whittle's company (which put magazine's in doctors' waiting rooms) was going to eat its lunch and so they bought a big piece of his pie for too much money. They ended up writing all that off when Whittle croaked.
So now it turns out that the AOL Time Warner merger was a $54 billion boo-boo.
I still own too much of their stock, having worked there for a decade.
I'm depressed.
Maybe I should do some storming.
Oops
: I meant:
Blogger : Journalist :: Butterfly : Caterpillar.
It makes a big difference.
Tell the Saudis what you think of them...
: Not that they listen but... Let's have a little fun.
So the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is threatening to threaten us with playing the oil card.
VodkaPundit says what the Prince can do with his threats.
Better yet, why don't we all tell the Prince ourselves!
The Saudi embassy has its own email address: info@saudiembassy.net
So send them email directly -- just in case they don't read blogs.
While you're at it, also CC this address I just created -- saudisuck@mail.com so we can all share.
: And already, the mail bag starts filling up. This from Efrem Zionist Jr.: Hi! How y'all doin'? Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that I think--and I'm speaking as an American here--I think you've got a great little country. I don't care what anybody says, it's not just 865,000 square miles of crude oil, suicide pilots, and anti-Semitism. I think you're going to make a fine 51st state. Don't worry, the Pledge of Allegiance is easy to learn!
No, no, just kidding. I'm sure you'll start off as a terrortory of the United States. I mean territory. But no! I'm just joking, really. You know how us Jew-lovers are, always cracking wise.
So, which hand should I chop off for sending this? Kidding! A is for Andrew...: Jim Treacher starts the blogictionary. One true entry: Instalanche: A sudden influx of thousands of hits that threatens to crush your server, brought on by a link from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com. Appropriate for today, I suggest blogspotty: The reliability of Blogspot.
The Wall, cont.
: Eric Olsen weighs in on the wall.
: And a reader, Steven Postrel, counters on Olsen's site.
We will soon build a wall between prowall and antiwall bloggers.
Maybe the French are right
: Well that headline gets your attention, eh?
Those protesting French are protesting not only their own insane election returns but also the corporate performance at Vivendi. Shareholders and employees "stormed" (that's what the French always do: storm) the company's annual meeting.
A wonderful idea.
What if we did the same at AOL Time Warner's annual meeting? I said when the merger with AOL occurred that it was a big, fat mistake, that it was just Time Warner being frightened of its own future (and lack of strategy for it), that AOL was not worth anywhere near what was being calculated in the deal. Time Inc. had done things like this before; when I was there, they were afraid that Chris Whittle's company (which put magazine's in doctors' waiting rooms) was going to eat its lunch and so they bought a big piece of his pie for too much money. They ended up writing all that off when Whittle croaked.
So now it turns out that the AOL Time Warner merger was a $54 billion boo-boo.
I still own too much of their stock, having worked there for a decade.
I'm depressed.
Maybe I should do some storming.
Oops
: I meant:
Blogger : Journalist :: Butterfly : Caterpillar.
It makes a big difference.
April 24, 2002
Blogging is to heroin as....
: Bo Weevil is soliciting SAT questions. I nominate: Blogger : Journalist :: Caterpillar : Butterfly.
The Wall
: Nick Denton joins the calls for building a wall between Arabs and Jews, between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as the only sensible course left to bring peace.
I understand the desire: Enough of all you hate-motivated Middle Easterners, enough of your murders, enough of your hate leeching out of the region and killing others -- us -- all around the world, enough! Just stay away from each other, damnit. It's like shouting at the kids in the back seat. Every parent in the world wants to build a wall between their kids sometimes. We want to build one between the Arabs and the Jews.
And Denton has a point: A wall may just buy the two generations the region needs to find peace.
But I doubt it.
A Wall was East Germany's solution to a different problem -- it was built to keep people in not out -- and it didn't work.
The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all.
The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era.
The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate.
Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.
I spent a lot of time in Berlin when the Wall was still up (I was working on a very bad novel about it that no one will ever read). When I first crossed over Checkpoint Charlie, I certainly was no fan of Communism, but I didn't fully realize the damage it caused. By the time I came back across to the West, I saw the damage clearly. I saw it in a simple sign: I can't tell you how happy I was to see the first Coke sign on our side; I celebrated all the choice we had.
The Berlin Wall only accentuated that contrast; it turned gray to black and white. And the media that flew over the Wall -- in the extreme, our decadent Dallas and Dynasty at the end -- only made the contrast more striking for people on the other side. The Wall turned out to be porous; it let images and ideas and jealousies and competition and dreams through from this side to that until such pressure built up on the other side and it simply had to blow. Media exploded that wall.
An Israeli wall would be just as pourous. The hate would still flow through.
And if this wall does prevent Palestinians from killing Israelis, the pressure will still build up; they and their alleged allies will aim their hatred elsewhere. They will attack Israeli's friends. They will kill us.
I wish I had a solution, like Denton. I don't. I know too little about the Middle East.
I wish a wall were a solution. I fear it is not.
The solution must come from self-interest, the need to begin cooperation or the need to end defeat. Mutual self-interest may well be impossible to find.
: Update: Don Wolff writes in email that I missed a successful wall: the DMZ in Korea. He says this keeps people of murderous intent from distrupting a democratic society.
Motive matters in how you judge success. If your aim is to cut off North Korea to the point that they're starved, then perhaps that wall is successful. You could measure the wall of water around Cuba similarly. If the goal of the Israeli wall were to cut off Palestine and starve them of attention and economics, I'm afraid that wouldn't work. The Palestinians have murderous allies.
Blogging is to heroin as....
: Bo Weevil is soliciting SAT questions. I nominate: Blogger : Journalist :: Caterpillar : Butterfly.
The Wall
: Nick Denton joins the calls for building a wall between Arabs and Jews, between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as the only sensible course left to bring peace.
I understand the desire: Enough of all you hate-motivated Middle Easterners, enough of your murders, enough of your hate leeching out of the region and killing others -- us -- all around the world, enough! Just stay away from each other, damnit. It's like shouting at the kids in the back seat. Every parent in the world wants to build a wall between their kids sometimes. We want to build one between the Arabs and the Jews.
And Denton has a point: A wall may just buy the two generations the region needs to find peace.
But I doubt it.
A Wall was East Germany's solution to a different problem -- it was built to keep people in not out -- and it didn't work.
The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all.
The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era.
The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate.
Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.
I spent a lot of time in Berlin when the Wall was still up (I was working on a very bad novel about it that no one will ever read). When I first crossed over Checkpoint Charlie, I certainly was no fan of Communism, but I didn't fully realize the damage it caused. By the time I came back across to the West, I saw the damage clearly. I saw it in a simple sign: I can't tell you how happy I was to see the first Coke sign on our side; I celebrated all the choice we had.
The Berlin Wall only accentuated that contrast; it turned gray to black and white. And the media that flew over the Wall -- in the extreme, our decadent Dallas and Dynasty at the end -- only made the contrast more striking for people on the other side. The Wall turned out to be porous; it let images and ideas and jealousies and competition and dreams through from this side to that until such pressure built up on the other side and it simply had to blow. Media exploded that wall.
An Israeli wall would be just as pourous. The hate would still flow through.
And if this wall does prevent Palestinians from killing Israelis, the pressure will still build up; they and their alleged allies will aim their hatred elsewhere. They will attack Israeli's friends. They will kill us.
I wish I had a solution, like Denton. I don't. I know too little about the Middle East.
I wish a wall were a solution. I fear it is not.
The solution must come from self-interest, the need to begin cooperation or the need to end defeat. Mutual self-interest may well be impossible to find.
: Update: Don Wolff writes in email that I missed a successful wall: the DMZ in Korea. He says this keeps people of murderous intent from distrupting a democratic society.
Motive matters in how you judge success. If your aim is to cut off North Korea to the point that they're starved, then perhaps that wall is successful. You could measure the wall of water around Cuba similarly. If the goal of the Israeli wall were to cut off Palestine and starve them of attention and economics, I'm afraid that wouldn't work. The Palestinians have murderous allies.
April 23, 2002
Rub-off
: We can all tell from our traffic when we get an Instapundit link, as I was fortunate to get today for two posts (on Moussaoui and my hate mail from Bill Cosby, below).
I can also tell from my traffic when Blogspot is down, as it is right now; I get fewer links from all those Blogspot blogs and my traffic gets hit.
My luck that Blogspot goes down just as Instapundit.blogspot.com gives me a nod.
Nevermind
: Mediaminded throws in the towel.
But Letter From Gotham gets back in the ring.
Old way v. new way
: The accepted wisdom is that the Web is a rotten way to read newspapers. That's what I always thought and said.
But this week, I'm south of the center of the universe (and I'm on a dial-up connection) and so I'm reading the Washington Post on paper, the first I've done that in ages.
Especially since Sept. 11, I've been reading the Post online -- and I have to say, I prefer that. It's a combination of factors: The Post's web site it that good: well-organized, easy to browse, clean to read. And the Post on paper is oddly small; the size of the paper (the web, as we call it in the trade) is much narrower than the NY Times (to save money on paper) and it seems they try to cram more into that smaller space. I'm not alone. My wife found the Post hard to read.
Accepted wisdom is sometimes wrong.
Leave it to Moussaoui
: We'll be watching Robert Blake on trial on TV when what we should be watching is Zacarias Moussaoui on the tube -- not because it would be entertaining to see this bozo defending himself but because it would project the perfect -- that is, perfectly accurate -- image of Muslim fanatics as dangerous and demented and just plain stupid.
This is why we should have cameras in all courtrooms, to let us see the truth.
Rub-off
: We can all tell from our traffic when we get an Instapundit link, as I was fortunate to get today for two posts (on Moussaoui and my hate mail from Bill Cosby, below).
I can also tell from my traffic when Blogspot is down, as it is right now; I get fewer links from all those Blogspot blogs and my traffic gets hit.
My luck that Blogspot goes down just as Instapundit.blogspot.com gives me a nod.
Nevermind
: Mediaminded throws in the towel.
But Letter From Gotham gets back in the ring.
Old way v. new way
: The accepted wisdom is that the Web is a rotten way to read newspapers. That's what I always thought and said.
But this week, I'm south of the center of the universe (and I'm on a dial-up connection) and so I'm reading the Washington Post on paper, the first I've done that in ages.
Especially since Sept. 11, I've been reading the Post online -- and I have to say, I prefer that. It's a combination of factors: The Post's web site it that good: well-organized, easy to browse, clean to read. And the Post on paper is oddly small; the size of the paper (the web, as we call it in the trade) is much narrower than the NY Times (to save money on paper) and it seems they try to cram more into that smaller space. I'm not alone. My wife found the Post hard to read.
Accepted wisdom is sometimes wrong.
Leave it to Moussaoui
: We'll be watching Robert Blake on trial on TV when what we should be watching is Zacarias Moussaoui on the tube -- not because it would be entertaining to see this bozo defending himself but because it would project the perfect -- that is, perfectly accurate -- image of Muslim fanatics as dangerous and demented and just plain stupid.
This is why we should have cameras in all courtrooms, to let us see the truth.
April 21, 2002
Brush with infamy
: I made mention of hate mail from Bill Cosby below (in the item about Daddyhood) and Jim Treacher sent me email demanding:
"Bill Cosby sent you hate mail? Details, man! Details!"
Nothing I love better than someone who actually asks to hear one of my stories from my (not-so-)good(-not-so-)old-days. Pull up a chair, young man.
When I was the TV critic at People, I wrote many a rave review of Cosby's original family sitcom when it first appeared. I said that he saved sitcoms themselves (which were being written off about then). He (along with shows like Hill Street Blues) proved that you can make money with quality. He helped herald the real golden age of television. But then Cosby started reading his own PR and he turned haughty and his show turned into the weekly sermonette. I said his show went downhill (he saw it differently: as far as he was concerned, I turned on him). So I started getting the poison-pen letters. After I said that he was a has-been, he sent me a tin cup and a note asking where the flowers were for his funeral (a mixed metaphor I never fully groked). He went to a lot of trouble getting a test cover I had created for Entertainment Weekly before its launch -- a cover that touted the arrival of wise-ass women Roseanne and Murphy Brown and touted the end of the Cosby era -- and he had someone replace his image with mine and a coverline that said farewell to me when I left Entertainment Weekly.
I ended up on lots of enemies lists -- not just Cosby's and not just that anti-warblogger twit's.
: After Murphy Brown went bad (or I turned on the show, depending on your perspective), they wrote my name into the script with a network executive warning a Kathie-Lee clone not to get on the bad side of powerful people, like Johnny Carson or "Jeff Jarvis, that man is a bottomless pit of hate." I'm thinking about making up CafePress T-shirts with the slogan.
: Alan Thicke sent me mail begging me to stop making him my "personal whipping boy." I only begged him to stop making talk shows.
: Jay Leno called me to whine about my view in TV Guide that Johnny and Dave were both funnier.
: Bill Moyers complained to my bosses about me because I said that he was boring.
: But my proudest moment came years earlier. During my tenure as a columnist in San Francisco, I suggested that Frank Sinatra should have stayed retired and at a concert the next night, he stopped in the middle of singing My Way, of all songs, to call me "a bum."
Life doesn't get much sweeter.
Lotto fever
: Max Power takes on my challenge to defend the economic impact of the lottery.
Brush with infamy
: I made mention of hate mail from Bill Cosby below (in the item about Daddyhood) and Jim Treacher sent me email demanding:
"Bill Cosby sent you hate mail? Details, man! Details!"
Nothing I love better than someone who actually asks to hear one of my stories from my (not-so-)good(-not-so-)old-days. Pull up a chair, young man.
When I was the TV critic at People, I wrote many a rave review of Cosby's original family sitcom when it first appeared. I said that he saved sitcoms themselves (which were being written off about then). He (along with shows like Hill Street Blues) proved that you can make money with quality. He helped herald the real golden age of television. But then Cosby started reading his own PR and he turned haughty and his show turned into the weekly sermonette. I said his show went downhill (he saw it differently: as far as he was concerned, I turned on him). So I started getting the poison-pen letters. After I said that he was a has-been, he sent me a tin cup and a note asking where the flowers were for his funeral (a mixed metaphor I never fully groked). He went to a lot of trouble getting a test cover I had created for Entertainment Weekly before its launch -- a cover that touted the arrival of wise-ass women Roseanne and Murphy Brown and touted the end of the Cosby era -- and he had someone replace his image with mine and a coverline that said farewell to me when I left Entertainment Weekly.
I ended up on lots of enemies lists -- not just Cosby's and not just that anti-warblogger twit's.
: After Murphy Brown went bad (or I turned on the show, depending on your perspective), they wrote my name into the script with a network executive warning a Kathie-Lee clone not to get on the bad side of powerful people, like Johnny Carson or "Jeff Jarvis, that man is a bottomless pit of hate." I'm thinking about making up CafePress T-shirts with the slogan.
: Alan Thicke sent me mail begging me to stop making him my "personal whipping boy." I only begged him to stop making talk shows.
: Jay Leno called me to whine about my view in TV Guide that Johnny and Dave were both funnier.
: Bill Moyers complained to my bosses about me because I said that he was boring.
: But my proudest moment came years earlier. During my tenure as a columnist in San Francisco, I suggested that Frank Sinatra should have stayed retired and at a concert the next night, he stopped in the middle of singing My Way, of all songs, to call me "a bum."
Life doesn't get much sweeter.
Lotto fever
: Max Power takes on my challenge to defend the economic impact of the lottery.
April 20, 2002
Inked stained wretch vs. linked Layne kvetch
: I'm delighted for Matt Welch and Ken Layne that they're working on the not-so-secret project to start a new paper in L.A. (if New York's new paper is the Sun, should L.A.'s be the Moon?).
I have just one complaint, just one fear: They're already blogging less. What happens when they have to publish or perish? Will the boys still blog?
: Update: Layne doth protest. Good. We'll keep him honest.
He also brags about posting more than I do. Hey, I'm on vacation... sort of.
Storms
: Whenever I think I've finished cataloguing the changes from that day, another one pops up.
I got caught in an awful storm last night as I drove home: 76 mph winds, dust and debris flying everywhere, the sky suddenly dark, huge flashes from some transformer blowing up, vision cut off from all the rain.
I didn't get a flashback to 9.11; this was just rain; I don' t have PTSD.
But I did realize that I approached the danger in a wholly new way. I found myself going through a calculus of risk, as I did that day: Could I be hurt? Could I be killed? Is there an escape? How was I stupid enough to end up trapped here? I then found myself with a very calculated calm, forcing myself to keep my wits to keep safe.
Just another change for the list.
D.C.
: My uncle and his mate wanted to take us into Washington today to show the kids the sights. But the anti-globo bozos took over the city. So much for our capital.
Outa here
: Going on vacation. Will post between raindrops.
Inked stained wretch vs. linked Layne kvetch
: I'm delighted for Matt Welch and Ken Layne that they're working on the not-so-secret project to start a new paper in L.A. (if New York's new paper is the Sun, should L.A.'s be the Moon?).
I have just one complaint, just one fear: They're already blogging less. What happens when they have to publish or perish? Will the boys still blog?
: Update: Layne doth protest. Good. We'll keep him honest.
He also brags about posting more than I do. Hey, I'm on vacation... sort of.
Storms
: Whenever I think I've finished cataloguing the changes from that day, another one pops up.
I got caught in an awful storm last night as I drove home: 76 mph winds, dust and debris flying everywhere, the sky suddenly dark, huge flashes from some transformer blowing up, vision cut off from all the rain.
I didn't get a flashback to 9.11; this was just rain; I don' t have PTSD.
But I did realize that I approached the danger in a wholly new way. I found myself going through a calculus of risk, as I did that day: Could I be hurt? Could I be killed? Is there an escape? How was I stupid enough to end up trapped here? I then found myself with a very calculated calm, forcing myself to keep my wits to keep safe.
Just another change for the list.
D.C.
: My uncle and his mate wanted to take us into Washington today to show the kids the sights. But the anti-globo bozos took over the city. So much for our capital.
Outa here
: Going on vacation. Will post between raindrops.
April 19, 2002
Daddy
: Lileks explains kids to those who don't have them as his adorable Gnat enters into the wonderful world of conversation: Imagine if your dog or cat began to talk. Imagine if you had rudimentary conversations. You'd love your pet if they didn't speak, but man! Imagine if they could! That's what it's like....
I’m well aware that I’m missing much in life because we have the Gnat. Travel, freedom, money, salty lingo - all are curtailed now....
Those of you who think that kids will come along some day, and wonder what that might mean, how it will change things - I can only note a moment today in the Mall of America with my Gnat. We always end our trips to the Mall with a cookie. A rare treat, since we don’t have cookies at home. (Jell-o Fat Free Pudding for Daddy, yes, but that’s another story.) We sat on a bridge over a stream as we snacked, alone in a leafy glade in the biggest mall in America. Gnat beamed as she chewed her ration.
“Num,” she said, grinning. “Nice. Cookie nice." Pause, chew, swallow, smile. "Daddy nice.”
I have never been happier in my life, or loved anyone more. Beautifully said, of course.
I'll bet some kid will be born because of this. It's amazing how little it can take to inspire fertility: a blackout, a terrorist attack (yes, 9.11 led to a baby boom), even a TV show.
I used to be scared of the little beasts. But then a friend had one and I held him and I realized that he didn't know what to expect of me; I was safe.
And here's an embarrassing revelation: I actually give Bill Cosby some credit for my having a family. His old sitcom made having a family look like fun. Real and frustrating but fun. I liked his show then. Cosby and I ended up feuding later because I didn't like his later seasons; he sent me poison-pen mail of all sorts. Hey, I was a critic. I had to have an opinion. But I will always be grateful to him for making fatherhood look doable. I hope Lileks inspires others.
And as to you, Mr. Lileks: It only gets better.
9.11 show update
: I ran into David Friend -- the Vanity Fair editor who helped bring the great 9.11 show to CBS on the six-month anniversary -- in the elevator at work yesterday. After I congratulated him on his great show, he reported good news: They have deals to show the movie in countries around the world. And the show will be rerun on CBS on September 11, 2002.
Offtrak
: I'm heading off to vacation in my car tomorrow. We were going to go to Disneyworld but, as I wrote earlier, we decided not to; fear of flying, you know. I had thought of switching instead to the Amtrak AutoTrain. Glad we didn't.
If this train accident had happened a few months ago, we all would have wondered or at least asked whether it could be a terrorist act. I haven't heard that not.
Everything new is old again
: Nick Denton calls the feud developing between pioneer bloggers and warbloggers.
It's a simple case of the pioneers being jealous of the attention the newcomers are getting. The same exact thing has happened at every stage of the Internet's development -- with usenet (which started as a nice communications tool and soon became filled with the dogmatic blatherings of nerds without lives and then descended into spam) and with gopher and with the web and now with weblogs. The early adopters want it to be theirs; they don't like new neighbors; they also don't want to see their invention ruined by the clumsy. They become old farts at a remarkably young age. They can act just like old-media publishers who are fearful of losing control of the medium.
That's life. The Internet belongs to the audience. It belongs to the people. There is no way to control it. There is no way to own it.
Mind you, I love all the pioneers (except when Blogger is down; I was going to publish this last night!). They invented a whole new kind of commentary, reporting, publishing, storytelling. They did a great job. They're still doing a great job. They gave birth to a brilliant child. But now it's time for the child to grow up and move out of the house.
: One more thing:
On this warblogger thing. I don't get my knickers in knots about the word. No, everything here isn't about war. But that did inspire me to start. I had followed blogging for ages; I got my company to invest in Blogger; I have my blogging stripes. But I didn't blog because I didn't have anything to say... until 9.11 and then I had much I had to say. That started the addiction. I have no problem with acknowledging that genesis. Call me a warblogger or blogger or just an ass; I don't much care. I'll write about what I want to write about without editors; that's the joy of this, isn't it?
: Bennett is really pissed about this warblogger debate thing. The War Blog Book project has a lot of the limp-wristed html technicians who falsely consider themselves the pioneers of the web all upset, over their presumed exclusion. Call it BlogBurn: First, Sarge called it quits (with all the credibility of the retirements of Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Michael Jordan; he's back already).
Now Letter from Gotham flames out (going through about 100,000 gallons of jet fuel on the way).
Blogging is hard work.
Daddy
: Lileks explains kids to those who don't have them as his adorable Gnat enters into the wonderful world of conversation: Imagine if your dog or cat began to talk. Imagine if you had rudimentary conversations. You'd love your pet if they didn't speak, but man! Imagine if they could! That's what it's like....
I’m well aware that I’m missing much in life because we have the Gnat. Travel, freedom, money, salty lingo - all are curtailed now....
Those of you who think that kids will come along some day, and wonder what that might mean, how it will change things - I can only note a moment today in the Mall of America with my Gnat. We always end our trips to the Mall with a cookie. A rare treat, since we don’t have cookies at home. (Jell-o Fat Free Pudding for Daddy, yes, but that’s another story.) We sat on a bridge over a stream as we snacked, alone in a leafy glade in the biggest mall in America. Gnat beamed as she chewed her ration.
“Num,” she said, grinning. “Nice. Cookie nice." Pause, chew, swallow, smile. "Daddy nice.”
I have never been happier in my life, or loved anyone more. Beautifully said, of course.
I'll bet some kid will be born because of this. It's amazing how little it can take to inspire fertility: a blackout, a terrorist attack (yes, 9.11 led to a baby boom), even a TV show.
I used to be scared of the little beasts. But then a friend had one and I held him and I realized that he didn't know what to expect of me; I was safe.
And here's an embarrassing revelation: I actually give Bill Cosby some credit for my having a family. His old sitcom made having a family look like fun. Real and frustrating but fun. I liked his show then. Cosby and I ended up feuding later because I didn't like his later seasons; he sent me poison-pen mail of all sorts. Hey, I was a critic. I had to have an opinion. But I will always be grateful to him for making fatherhood look doable. I hope Lileks inspires others.
And as to you, Mr. Lileks: It only gets better.
9.11 show update
: I ran into David Friend -- the Vanity Fair editor who helped bring the great 9.11 show to CBS on the six-month anniversary -- in the elevator at work yesterday. After I congratulated him on his great show, he reported good news: They have deals to show the movie in countries around the world. And the show will be rerun on CBS on September 11, 2002.
Offtrak
: I'm heading off to vacation in my car tomorrow. We were going to go to Disneyworld but, as I wrote earlier, we decided not to; fear of flying, you know. I had thought of switching instead to the Amtrak AutoTrain. Glad we didn't.
If this train accident had happened a few months ago, we all would have wondered or at least asked whether it could be a terrorist act. I haven't heard that not.
Everything new is old again
: Nick Denton calls the feud developing between pioneer bloggers and warbloggers.
It's a simple case of the pioneers being jealous of the attention the newcomers are getting. The same exact thing has happened at every stage of the Internet's development -- with usenet (which started as a nice communications tool and soon became filled with the dogmatic blatherings of nerds without lives and then descended into spam) and with gopher and with the web and now with weblogs. The early adopters want it to be theirs; they don't like new neighbors; they also don't want to see their invention ruined by the clumsy. They become old farts at a remarkably young age. They can act just like old-media publishers who are fearful of losing control of the medium.
That's life. The Internet belongs to the audience. It belongs to the people. There is no way to control it. There is no way to own it.
Mind you, I love all the pioneers (except when Blogger is down; I was going to publish this last night!). They invented a whole new kind of commentary, reporting, publishing, storytelling. They did a great job. They're still doing a great job. They gave birth to a brilliant child. But now it's time for the child to grow up and move out of the house.
: One more thing:
On this warblogger thing. I don't get my knickers in knots about the word. No, everything here isn't about war. But that did inspire me to start. I had followed blogging for ages; I got my company to invest in Blogger; I have my blogging stripes. But I didn't blog because I didn't have anything to say... until 9.11 and then I had much I had to say. That started the addiction. I have no problem with acknowledging that genesis. Call me a warblogger or blogger or just an ass; I don't much care. I'll write about what I want to write about without editors; that's the joy of this, isn't it?
: Bennett is really pissed about this warblogger debate thing. The War Blog Book project has a lot of the limp-wristed html technicians who falsely consider themselves the pioneers of the web all upset, over their presumed exclusion. Call it BlogBurn: First, Sarge called it quits (with all the credibility of the retirements of Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Michael Jordan; he's back already).
Now Letter from Gotham flames out (going through about 100,000 gallons of jet fuel on the way).
Blogging is hard work.
April 18, 2002
Here we go again...
: Robert Blake and his bodyguard arrested tonight in the killing of his wife.
It's starting with echoes of O.J.: Helicopters following a white vehicle with the suspect inside as it wends its way through L.A.'s freeways. And Geraldo's preening. So is Greta. Deja view.
This will be the test of whether we are a newly serious America or whether we love filthy gossip best: Will Blake push the Middle East and terrorism down and off the front page?
Geraldo is treating this murder trial as "entertainment" -- "a welcome diversion" -- from the gore of 9.11 and the Middle East.
There's no clash of civilizations in this story.
And at least there's no race card ths time.
Those wacky French
: Thousands of employees and Frech people rallied against the firing of the head of Canal Plus. Can you imagine Americans rallying on behalf of any fired executive?
Less dead
: Nick Denton has a correction/clarification on the suitcase bomb sweats below.
Here we go again...
: Robert Blake and his bodyguard arrested tonight in the killing of his wife.
It's starting with echoes of O.J.: Helicopters following a white vehicle with the suspect inside as it wends its way through L.A.'s freeways. And Geraldo's preening. So is Greta. Deja view.
This will be the test of whether we are a newly serious America or whether we love filthy gossip best: Will Blake push the Middle East and terrorism down and off the front page?
Geraldo is treating this murder trial as "entertainment" -- "a welcome diversion" -- from the gore of 9.11 and the Middle East.
There's no clash of civilizations in this story.
And at least there's no race card ths time.
Those wacky French
: Thousands of employees and Frech people rallied against the firing of the head of Canal Plus. Can you imagine Americans rallying on behalf of any fired executive?
Less dead
: Nick Denton has a correction/clarification on the suitcase bomb sweats below.
April 17, 2002
Freaked
: Years ago, when I was Sunday editor of the SF Examiner, it came out that the neutron bomb (you remember: it destroys life but leaves buildings intact) had been developed across the way at the Livermore Labs and in my sensationalistic effort to scare the bejesus out of the readers, I took an aerial photo of San Francisco, placed the epicenter of a neutron bomb smack-dab on the Transamerica Pyramid and drew concentric circles of death and destruction out from there: Would YOU survive?
Now, thanks to PBS [via Nick Denton] we can all play the same fun game with a suitcase bomb set off in Manhattan. How dead would I be? Very. Whether I'm working in New York or Jersey City that day, I'm just plain dead.
See, too the fallout map. Even Philly is sick.
You can detonate the bomb wherever you are.
When I did this in the '70s in San Francisco, it was smart-assed sensationalism; it was fun.
This is now real. No fun.
If that didn't freak me enough, I go now to the Washington Times -- usually a scary experience but especially so today. They visit a tunnel in West Virginia where officials are training for responses to terrorist attacks in subway tunnels. "The Marines say the Washington Metro and New York subways are among the top targets for which they are training."
Oh, joy.
I honestly sit on the PATH train these days and have daymares (v. nightmares) about blasts and flooding and grappling in the dark with no air and no escape.
Now I get to worry about gas, too. And more.
This, too is real: The Defense Department set up the facility in the abandoned turnpike tunnel two years ago after a Border Patrol agent stopped an Islamic extremist trying to cross the Canadian border with material for a large bomb in his trunk. An investigation revealed that the explosives were part of a plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
Defense Department analysts realized that the United States increasingly was becoming a target for terrorists with conventional bombs, toxic chemicals, biological agents or nuclear weapons. Blog book debate: I get pissy about the people who would try to edit the blogbook according to the demands of a mob -- here.
Eclipse
: The Sun isn't online (yet), but the competition is: Five days a week we take a piece of the Sun — a news item, an editorial — and rip it into finely shredded, easily digestible bits. It's guaranteed fun. Sunshine: A lovely letter from Gotham on the return of sunwhine, good weather, and tourists to New York yesterday.
Jersey City, on the other hand, is fermenting in the heat already.
: Bill Quick just caught me in my typo above: "sunwhine." We've decided it should mean something. I think that should be "conservative complaint from a new New York newspaper, specifically, any mention of Hillary Clinton."
Freaked
: Years ago, when I was Sunday editor of the SF Examiner, it came out that the neutron bomb (you remember: it destroys life but leaves buildings intact) had been developed across the way at the Livermore Labs and in my sensationalistic effort to scare the bejesus out of the readers, I took an aerial photo of San Francisco, placed the epicenter of a neutron bomb smack-dab on the Transamerica Pyramid and drew concentric circles of death and destruction out from there: Would YOU survive?
Now, thanks to PBS [via Nick Denton] we can all play the same fun game with a suitcase bomb set off in Manhattan. How dead would I be? Very. Whether I'm working in New York or Jersey City that day, I'm just plain dead.
See, too the fallout map. Even Philly is sick.
You can detonate the bomb wherever you are.
When I did this in the '70s in San Francisco, it was smart-assed sensationalism; it was fun.
This is now real. No fun.
If that didn't freak me enough, I go now to the Washington Times -- usually a scary experience but especially so today. They visit a tunnel in West Virginia where officials are training for responses to terrorist attacks in subway tunnels. "The Marines say the Washington Metro and New York subways are among the top targets for which they are training."
Oh, joy.
I honestly sit on the PATH train these days and have daymares (v. nightmares) about blasts and flooding and grappling in the dark with no air and no escape.
Now I get to worry about gas, too. And more.
This, too is real: The Defense Department set up the facility in the abandoned turnpike tunnel two years ago after a Border Patrol agent stopped an Islamic extremist trying to cross the Canadian border with material for a large bomb in his trunk. An investigation revealed that the explosives were part of a plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
Defense Department analysts realized that the United States increasingly was becoming a target for terrorists with conventional bombs, toxic chemicals, biological agents or nuclear weapons. Blog book debate: I get pissy about the people who would try to edit the blogbook according to the demands of a mob -- here.
Eclipse
: The Sun isn't online (yet), but the competition is: Five days a week we take a piece of the Sun — a news item, an editorial — and rip it into finely shredded, easily digestible bits. It's guaranteed fun. Sunshine: A lovely letter from Gotham on the return of sunwhine, good weather, and tourists to New York yesterday.
Jersey City, on the other hand, is fermenting in the heat already.
: Bill Quick just caught me in my typo above: "sunwhine." We've decided it should mean something. I think that should be "conservative complaint from a new New York newspaper, specifically, any mention of Hillary Clinton."
April 16, 2002
The blog book
: I'll be contributing to the blog book project as soon as I find more than 10 minutes to finish the email/post I started. In the meantime, note VodkaSchpundit's well-worded take on the concept: Jeff Jarvis takes another navel gaze at the warblogs, and comes up with some fine lint.
The point I found most interesting? Blogs work like Memento. More lottery madness: No, I'm not buying one.
: Jim Treacher saw the same TV piece about the lottery trailer-to-Tara tale that I saw (a few posts down). His take: Probably bought his lottery ticket with his bottle deposit money or something. Rags to riches, the American dream, etc. That was less than eight months ago, and in that time, this genetic cautionary tale has bought three houses (the one they showed would make Liberace go, "It's a bit much, dear, isn't it?"), seven luxury cars, jewelry out the ass, plasma-screen TVs and computers in every room, robots, a customized golfcart made out of a humvee for his daughter... Makes Ozzy's pad look like a studio apartment. : Gregory Taylor, a Northwestern (may alma mater) law prof, asks whether I'm being hypocritical (a common state of being for me): But isn't it contradictory to object on the grounds that the lotto takes money from those that can least afford it ("trailer trash") and at the same time complain that the winners waste the money because they come from the class of people who play? In other words, lotto is bad because it takes money from the underclass AND because it gives money to the underclass? Ah, but it takes from millions of poor people and gives it all to one poor person, who spends it stupidly; see above.
: Gunner20 also forwards a link to an anti-Lotto site in Tennessee. Where does the professor from Knoxville stand on this?
: Matt Welch sends email on the lottery, taking a stand that is either moralistic or libertarian (who has been spiking Matt's beer?); you decide: Speaking of the lottery, my argument against it is this -- the state should not be involved in actively promoting vice to its own citizens, let alone (maybe to a lesser extent) depending on levies from said vice to fill a budget. I don't want the state spending money on anti-smoking billboards, and I don't want the state spending money on pro-lottery commercials. I want the state to govern. How's that?
Goob
: Mac Thomason has no idea why he's posting this: George "Goober" Lindsey on AL.com's chat today at 2p CT. That's one of my services. I'm so goshderned proud.
Sun spotty
: Got the NY Sun today. But it wasn't easy. It was sold out already throughout Penn Station and nearby. That means somebody in the circulation department didn't do a good job; that means lost sales. But there were guys in yellow T-shirts outside selling it. Too bad they don't put any of it online for all you conservatives in Blogland.
: Read Ken Layne's celebration of newspapers, inspired by the rising Sun.
: If the Sun did have a web site, I'd be able to point you to the text of Elie Wiesel's speech at the pro-Israel rally in Washington yesterday. If the Sun had a web site, I'd be able to point you to its very good editorial explaining why the war in the Middle East remains a war against not just Israel but a war against Jews.
But the Sun doesn't have a web site. How odd for a paper born of the web?
Redistribution of idiocy
: So the PowerWhatever lottery is up to $325 million heading higher, maybe to a record by the end of the day.
I find it tragic.
I sit on the PATH train from NY to NJ and see guys who clearly don't have much money carrying a thick pile of lottery tickets -- which means they now have even less money -- as they head to the nearest newsstand to buy more tickets and lose even more money. I see the line at that newsstand, held in by police barricades, snaking around and around, packed with people -- almost all of them minorities and, by all appearances, most of them poor. I come in my building and Bob the guard, who doesn't have a bank account and pays $9 to cash his Social Security check, is shaking head head over missing the number... again.
This is the most regressive -- the most cynical -- tax ever created. The poor pay it.
But even worse is where the money goes.
I watched TV this weekend as it followed up on a guy who won $195 million in a lottery. All that money is going to fund the world's worst interior design and most overpriced cars, a tribute to the taste of trailer trash.
It's a tragedy to steal this money from the poor. It's a tragedy to waste it on the stupid.
Imagine what you could do with $325 million if you had brains. You could start a company. You could employ thousands. You could create billions of wealth. You could pay billions of taxes.
I'll just bet that a smart econ Ph.D candidate could write a helluva dissertation on that, proving that lotteries are helping to depress our economy, redistributing wealth in the most unproductive manner possible.
Hey all you economist bloggers -- you, you, or you -- tackle that one. Calculate the total amount of income -- income at its most spendable -- drained from the economy; how much spending power did we lose? Then look at where the winnings went; what did it build? Then look at the net income to the government for all this and who paid and how much it cost to generate that income. Then answer the question: Are we better off?
The blog book
: I'll be contributing to the blog book project as soon as I find more than 10 minutes to finish the email/post I started. In the meantime, note VodkaSchpundit's well-worded take on the concept: Jeff Jarvis takes another navel gaze at the warblogs, and comes up with some fine lint.
The point I found most interesting? Blogs work like Memento. More lottery madness: No, I'm not buying one.
: Jim Treacher saw the same TV piece about the lottery trailer-to-Tara tale that I saw (a few posts down). His take: Probably bought his lottery ticket with his bottle deposit money or something. Rags to riches, the American dream, etc. That was less than eight months ago, and in that time, this genetic cautionary tale has bought three houses (the one they showed would make Liberace go, "It's a bit much, dear, isn't it?"), seven luxury cars, jewelry out the ass, plasma-screen TVs and computers in every room, robots, a customized golfcart made out of a humvee for his daughter... Makes Ozzy's pad look like a studio apartment. : Gregory Taylor, a Northwestern (may alma mater) law prof, asks whether I'm being hypocritical (a common state of being for me): But isn't it contradictory to object on the grounds that the lotto takes money from those that can least afford it ("trailer trash") and at the same time complain that the winners waste the money because they come from the class of people who play? In other words, lotto is bad because it takes money from the underclass AND because it gives money to the underclass? Ah, but it takes from millions of poor people and gives it all to one poor person, who spends it stupidly; see above.
: Gunner20 also forwards a link to an anti-Lotto site in Tennessee. Where does the professor from Knoxville stand on this?
: Matt Welch sends email on the lottery, taking a stand that is either moralistic or libertarian (who has been spiking Matt's beer?); you decide: Speaking of the lottery, my argument against it is this -- the state should not be involved in actively promoting vice to its own citizens, let alone (maybe to a lesser extent) depending on levies from said vice to fill a budget. I don't want the state spending money on anti-smoking billboards, and I don't want the state spending money on pro-lottery commercials. I want the state to govern. How's that?
Goob
: Mac Thomason has no idea why he's posting this: George "Goober" Lindsey on AL.com's chat today at 2p CT. That's one of my services. I'm so goshderned proud.
Sun spotty
: Got the NY Sun today. But it wasn't easy. It was sold out already throughout Penn Station and nearby. That means somebody in the circulation department didn't do a good job; that means lost sales. But there were guys in yellow T-shirts outside selling it. Too bad they don't put any of it online for all you conservatives in Blogland.
: Read Ken Layne's celebration of newspapers, inspired by the rising Sun.
: If the Sun did have a web site, I'd be able to point you to the text of Elie Wiesel's speech at the pro-Israel rally in Washington yesterday. If the Sun had a web site, I'd be able to point you to its very good editorial explaining why the war in the Middle East remains a war against not just Israel but a war against Jews.
But the Sun doesn't have a web site. How odd for a paper born of the web?
Redistribution of idiocy
: So the PowerWhatever lottery is up to $325 million heading higher, maybe to a record by the end of the day.
I find it tragic.
I sit on the PATH train from NY to NJ and see guys who clearly don't have much money carrying a thick pile of lottery tickets -- which means they now have even less money -- as they head to the nearest newsstand to buy more tickets and lose even more money. I see the line at that newsstand, held in by police barricades, snaking around and around, packed with people -- almost all of them minorities and, by all appearances, most of them poor. I come in my building and Bob the guard, who doesn't have a bank account and pays $9 to cash his Social Security check, is shaking head head over missing the number... again.
This is the most regressive -- the most cynical -- tax ever created. The poor pay it.
But even worse is where the money goes.
I watched TV this weekend as it followed up on a guy who won $195 million in a lottery. All that money is going to fund the world's worst interior design and most overpriced cars, a tribute to the taste of trailer trash.
It's a tragedy to steal this money from the poor. It's a tragedy to waste it on the stupid.
Imagine what you could do with $325 million if you had brains. You could start a company. You could employ thousands. You could create billions of wealth. You could pay billions of taxes.
I'll just bet that a smart econ Ph.D candidate could write a helluva dissertation on that, proving that lotteries are helping to depress our economy, redistributing wealth in the most unproductive manner possible.
Hey all you economist bloggers -- you, you, or you -- tackle that one. Calculate the total amount of income -- income at its most spendable -- drained from the economy; how much spending power did we lose? Then look at where the winnings went; what did it build? Then look at the net income to the government for all this and who paid and how much it cost to generate that income. Then answer the question: Are we better off?
April 15, 2002
Ch-ch-ch-changes
: I was walking on Times Square at lunchtime. Saw a guy with three fanny packs around his waste. A year ago, I would have thought: "Tourist dork." Now I think: "Dynamite?"
PULO
: Charles Johnson has been speculating on the odor inside Arafat's compound. This report from the NY TImes doesn't help the image: "I am down to the last analgesics," said Dr. Zedi Abu Shawish, a surgeon and deputy director of hospitals for the West Bank who said he has been caring for a half dozen wounded Palestinian fighters inside with dwindling supplies left by the Red Cross, performing an amputation below the knee on one man with just local anesthetic. "I need first of all the water. It's the most important here for us, because if I have more diarrhea here, it will be messy."
Ch-ch-ch-changes
: I was walking on Times Square at lunchtime. Saw a guy with three fanny packs around his waste. A year ago, I would have thought: "Tourist dork." Now I think: "Dynamite?"
PULO
: Charles Johnson has been speculating on the odor inside Arafat's compound. This report from the NY TImes doesn't help the image: "I am down to the last analgesics," said Dr. Zedi Abu Shawish, a surgeon and deputy director of hospitals for the West Bank who said he has been caring for a half dozen wounded Palestinian fighters inside with dwindling supplies left by the Red Cross, performing an amputation below the knee on one man with just local anesthetic. "I need first of all the water. It's the most important here for us, because if I have more diarrhea here, it will be messy."
April 14, 2002
Blog publishing
: Matt Welch reveals that many months ago, he, Ken Layne, Tim Blair, and I, plus a few others, thought of bringing our weblog-inspired writing together for a book on 9.11 and its aftermath. But we were all too busy -- blogging, among other more or less lucrative things -- and never got around to it.
Now Welch is properly pissed that we didn't publish our book while other, opposing fraternities of fools did publish their books. He's urging someone to pick up the torch. I'll cheer that on.
I'll also admit that I had another book idea as well. I love this new genre, these weblogs, for many reasons, among them: This is a new form of storytelling in reverse, with the present on top of the past. Here, the beginning is the end of the story. Here, the reader starts off smarter than the writer, knowing how things will turn out and then reading back in time to find out how it all came to be. Every entry in these web diaries is immediate and reflects the moment in which it is written but also reflects the wisdom that came before.
I read back over my own weblog with its often achingly (and frequently embarrassingly) raw and personal recollections of September 11 and what followed and saw that progression myself; I saw the change in me, played in reverse. I saw, too, the unique flavor of the weblog. I'm not saying it was good; I'm too close to it and I admire too many other bloggers too much to think that. But still, I did wonder whether there might be a book in this. I wasn't sure and so I contacted an agent, since agents are supposed to know such things, eh? Unfortunately, I hadn't had an agent in years, having been too busy earning a living to write in the last decade or so. So I made contact with the first agent I could find via a friend of a friend. That was three and a half months ago. In all that time, I had one love-ya-babe conversation and just waited. I tried reminding the agency that this 9.11 thing is fairly timely and we should decide one way or the other now; the agent was too busy to deal with it. Only Friday did I get the answer: This 9.11 thing is timely, the agent opined, and now we're late. I didn't have the to say that if we'd done this around the New Year (when I made the first contact, damnit) we might have acted in time. But surprise of surprises, there are other 9.11 books coming out now. So it's too late.
A good agent is as hard to find as a good contractor.
Now the truth is that there were probably many other good reasons why this would not work as a book, from the quality of my prose to the difficulties of capturing the richness of content the Web offers via simple links. And I am late to the book party. And that's fine.
But here's the point: I do believe that one way or another, blogs will yield books, good books. Blogs will yield new and exciting authors with new voices (start with that list at the top of this post). Blogs will yield new ways to tell stories, where today follows yesterday, where the audience is wiser than the author (an appropriate product of the first medium owned by its audience). There has been a great deal of talk lately about how blogs will or should change news and the news business. But I think an even bigger opportunity -- and more needed -- is for blogs to change book publishing and even writing itself. Blogs can bring new voices and immediacy and passion and wit and generosity to the stuffy, hidebound, predictable, dull medium of books.
So far, the first and only indication I've seen that anyone in the old medium notices the new one comes in the announcement that Bertelsmann has signed right-wing Web site Newsmax to a deal to start a publishing imprint. It's a step -- in the wrong direction, perhaps, but a step nonetheless.
If anybody wants to see a box of printouts from this blog, lemme know.
But if anybody wants to mine blogs for new authors, I'll stand up and cheer.
I'll buy those books.
: I'm glad Oliver Willis sent me links to his posts on this topic. I remembered his view that books will become the killer ap of bloggers but couldn't find it last night.
: Relevant to 9.11 books (not blog books): Today's NY Times roundup.
: One of the first blog books should be Will Warren's collected verse and punchlines in iambic pentameter. Today: Amazonian Dowd.
Faith
: Too bad that Beliefnet.com filed Chapter 11. It's a good site. [via Holy Weblog]
Golem
: A nice post from Eric Olsen on Sharon as Israel's Golem, inspired by the play's timely run in New York.
Blog publishing
: Matt Welch reveals that many months ago, he, Ken Layne, Tim Blair, and I, plus a few others, thought of bringing our weblog-inspired writing together for a book on 9.11 and its aftermath. But we were all too busy -- blogging, among other more or less lucrative things -- and never got around to it.
Now Welch is properly pissed that we didn't publish our book while other, opposing fraternities of fools did publish their books. He's urging someone to pick up the torch. I'll cheer that on.
I'll also admit that I had another book idea as well. I love this new genre, these weblogs, for many reasons, among them: This is a new form of storytelling in reverse, with the present on top of the past. Here, the beginning is the end of the story. Here, the reader starts off smarter than the writer, knowing how things will turn out and then reading back in time to find out how it all came to be. Every entry in these web diaries is immediate and reflects the moment in which it is written but also reflects the wisdom that came before.
I read back over my own weblog with its often achingly (and frequently embarrassingly) raw and personal recollections of September 11 and what followed and saw that progression myself; I saw the change in me, played in reverse. I saw, too, the unique flavor of the weblog. I'm not saying it was good; I'm too close to it and I admire too many other bloggers too much to think that. But still, I did wonder whether there might be a book in this. I wasn't sure and so I contacted an agent, since agents are supposed to know such things, eh? Unfortunately, I hadn't had an agent in years, having been too busy earning a living to write in the last decade or so. So I made contact with the first agent I could find via a friend of a friend. That was three and a half months ago. In all that time, I had one love-ya-babe conversation and just waited. I tried reminding the agency that this 9.11 thing is fairly timely and we should decide one way or the other now; the agent was too busy to deal with it. Only Friday did I get the answer: This 9.11 thing is timely, the agent opined, and now we're late. I didn't have the to say that if we'd done this around the New Year (when I made the first contact, damnit) we might have acted in time. But surprise of surprises, there are other 9.11 books coming out now. So it's too late.
A good agent is as hard to find as a good contractor.
Now the truth is that there were probably many other good reasons why this would not work as a book, from the quality of my prose to the difficulties of capturing the richness of content the Web offers via simple links. And I am late to the book party. And that's fine.
But here's the point: I do believe that one way or another, blogs will yield books, good books. Blogs will yield new and exciting authors with new voices (start with that list at the top of this post). Blogs will yield new ways to tell stories, where today follows yesterday, where the audience is wiser than the author (an appropriate product of the first medium owned by its audience). There has been a great deal of talk lately about how blogs will or should change news and the news business. But I think an even bigger opportunity -- and more needed -- is for blogs to change book publishing and even writing itself. Blogs can bring new voices and immediacy and passion and wit and generosity to the stuffy, hidebound, predictable, dull medium of books.
So far, the first and only indication I've seen that anyone in the old medium notices the new one comes in the announcement that Bertelsmann has signed right-wing Web site Newsmax to a deal to start a publishing imprint. It's a step -- in the wrong direction, perhaps, but a step nonetheless.
If anybody wa | |