The F word

Here's a helpful tip for anyone who runs a blog and hopes to earn money as an Amazon affiliate: Watch your language.

For example, including the word "fascists" in a blog post can have unintended results:



This is a screenshot from LGF, and what you see there on the right is an ad for a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

Which is probably not the sort of book Charles Johnson would choose to recommend to his readers if he were inclined to exert any sort of control over his Amazon ads, which -- despite his constant and obsessive monitoring of his blog and discussions thereof all over the interweb -- he apparently isn't.

A side note: Whatever happened to Pajamas Media's ad network, anyway? $7 million spent, and they're now reduced to using Google and Amazon ads like everyone else.

Happy Birthday Dennis!

Dennis the Peasant turns 50, still bashing PJM like there's no tomorrow...

Charles sinking...?

For a short while we thought the plug had been pulled on LGF because Charles wasn't paying his bills, but it turns out he's simply been getting a lot of traffic for posting YouTube clips from the Channel 4 ("normally a little to the left of Stalin") documentary Undercover Mosque on his site. Oh well, we can dream. Interesting, though, that CJ has no problem subscribing wholeheartedly to this episode of Dispatches, but reacts like a redneck in a San Francisco sauna when he sees any of their other programs. Perhaps there's an in-built bias somewhere in that lizard brain...?

Anyhow, back to the subject: has anyone noticed that Charles has added a 'Top Tech News' feed to his left sidebar. It's rather prominent. He even posts links directly to their stories. Could it be that this is some sort of sneeky sponsorship deal he's not telling his readers about? After all, why would a website that professes itself to be about Middle East policy give so much space to geek news? What's the deal, Charles? How much are you getting? Does it plug the money hole that is Pajamas Media?

Blogger 1, MSM 0

But it's not what you think.

Long story short: Conservative commentators spew violent rhetoric on a San Francisco hate-radio station owned by Disney via ABC. Local blogger contacts station's advertisers and tells them exactly what they're sponsoring -- complete with audio clips. Horrified advertisers cancel ad buys.

Score one for the blogosphere!

And please support Spocko if you can.

(Any resemblance between the kill-'em-all rhetoric spouted on KSFO and in the LGF comments section is entirely coincidental. And the fact that the conservative blog LGF and its "respectable" doppelgänger JammieCorp also happen to have a couple of big-name corporate sponsors, is utterly irrelevant.)

The New Journalism, R.I.P.

The invaluable Glenn Greenwald has composed a comprehensive epitaph for the pathetic pretensions of the pajama-clad poobahs.

These right-wing bloggers operate at a level several beneath the National Enquirer, literally. They simply fabricate facts and recklessly and maliciously launch serious accusations against the media whenever doing so advances their political agenda.

They leap on any innuendo or gossip from the Internet swamps and tout it as fact whenever doing so bolsters their ideological view or can be enlisted to destroy the credibility of a journalist who reports unpleasant facts. They desperately seek out any basis for attacking media reports that cast doubt on their Leader and his policies. They repeat government and military claims as fact and then accuse the media of "lying" whenever their reporting contradicts Official Statements from Our Leaders.

There's much, much, much more, including some excellent linkage.

And now for a fearless prediction about where the warblogosphere will turn after all this: back to what they do best; namely, non-stop, nakedly partisan mudslinging lacking even the slightest pretense of objectivity. Already the moniker "Nazi Pelosi" is bubbling out of the fetid fever swamps of FreeRepublic et al.; it's only a matter of time until it goes "mainstream."

The American people demonstrated on November 7th that they are no longer interested in extremist right-wingerism. So, yesterday, did America's most popular Republican politician, once a cause célèbre of the right-wing élite. No less a personage than Arnold Schwarzenegger is now saying things like:

Like Paul on the road to Damascus, I had an experience that opened my eyes. And what was it that I saw? I saw that people, not just in California, but across the nation, were hungry for a new kind of politics, a politics that looks beyond the old labels, the old ways, the old arguments.

[...]

The people are disgusted with a mindset that would rather get nothing done than accomplish something through compromise. I want to thank the Legislature for taking action this past year on behalf of the people, not politics. I thank them for taking that risk.

The question is not what are the needs of Republicans or Democrats? The real question is what are the needs of our people? We don't need Republican roads or Democratic roads. We need roads. We don't need Republican health care or Democratic health care. We need health care. We don't need Republican clean air or Democratic clean air. We all breathe the same air. When California 's leaders have worked together, we have accomplished good things.

[...]

Ladies and gentlemen, we face important issues that should unite us. I believe we have the opportunity to move past partisanship . . . past bi-partisanship . . . to post-partisanship. Post-partisanship is not simply Republicans and Democrats each bringing their proposals to the table and working out differences. Post-partisanship is Republicans and Democrats actively giving birth to new ideas together. I believe it would promote a new centrism and a new trust in our political system. And I believe we have a window to do it right now.

[...]

Centrist does not mean weak. It does not mean watered down or warmed over. It means well-balanced and well-grounded. The American people are instinctively centrist . . . so should be our government. America's political parties should return to the center. They should return to the center where the people are.

"The center" also being a place recently vacated -- or, one might argue, never occupied -- by the mindless regurgitators of hard-line GOP policy over in Pajamaland. And if you think their rhetoric over the past few years has been nasty, you ain't seen nothing yet.