BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Tag: Weblogs

  • The lesser of…

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    Arianna endorses Alberto Gonzales for the Supreme Court. Well, as good as….

    That’s right, Dobson and Bauer and Schlafly and Perkins, and groups like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America have been so focused on sticking a knife through Gonzales’ Supreme Court chances that hearing their collective pining for “another Scalia or Thomas”, and reading rants like the National Review’s “conservatives would be appalled and demoralized by a Gonzales appointment,” I actually had a brain freeze moment where, I’m ashamed to admit, I thought: Gee, I hope Bush picks the man who thinks the Geneva Conventions are “quaint”. I wonder if that’s what happened to Boies too when he made his prediction, without voicing any concern, that Gonzales would be confirmed.

  • How Kos is like a Subaru bumpersticker

    1 comment on How Kos is like a Subaru bumpersticker

    In the spirit of peace, love, and kindness, Kos likens the American right to al Qaeda and shows how the American left has no loonies of its own. Just a few of his deft notes:

    Self-image
    Al Qaida/Taliban: Belief in their own infallibility
    American Taliban: Belief in their own infallibility
    Liberals: Willingness to consider other viewpoints…

    Free Speech
    Al Qaida/Taliban: Anyone who disagrees with us is an infidel and must be silenced
    American Taliban: Anyone who disagrees with us is a traitor and must be silenced
    Liberals: Anyone who disagrees with us is in for a spirited discussion

    Well, unless you disagree with Kos or Ollie….

    : Not wanting to be accused of subtlety or restraint, here’s more.

  • Beware the blogs!

    1 comment on Beware the blogs!

    Now it’s the Washington Post’s turn to write a silly, paranoid, and ignorant story smashing blogs. Telling a story about someone who speculated on a blog that someone was running for a seat in Virginia politics — someone who said he tried to listen in on a conversation on a politician’s front yard — the Post moans:

    “It’s creepy. That somebody would spread rumors on Jim Moran’s seat, that’s not all that surprising. The fact that somebody is keeping tabs on who we have over to dinner, that’s more problematic,” she said. “The whole thing about being anonymous is that there’s no accountability. They can literally post anything.”

    Such is the new and emerging realm of Internet blogs. Since the 2005 Virginia election cycle kicked off, the number of blogs talking about Virginia politics has swelled to at least 20. Many are run anonymously, allowing people to express their views freely — and giving them an easy way to spread rumors and half-truths.

    Oh, I’ll be there are a helluva lot more than 20 of them. Run for the hills!

  • Really Simple Sales

    The NY Times discovers advertisers discovering RSS. The is no doubt that RSS — whether people know what the initials mean or even know they’re using it — will become a major transport of content. But I’ve said before that it needs to deliver user stats via cookies before it really takes off (and before publishers will be willing to deliver full content and not just links on it).

  • Conversation stoppers

    1 comment on Conversation stoppers

    Continuing the theme of technological dependence and addiction… Since I have given tough love to Technorati over time for not being able to constantly update its counts, I should in the spirit of equal opportunity lament PubSub these days: I haven’t seen updated links there in days. Wazzup? I depend on these services to find out what people are saying. When they don’t work, it’s like losing my cell phone.