Some of you may have been reading Greenwald’s CiF pieces and their attendant comment threads, and some of you perhaps not.
Those of you following along will be aware that Greenwald came to the Guardian rather full of himself (let’s be honest**), with public statements at his old Salon venue about how he will have “complete autonomy” in his new digs; statements that he then repeated in early comment threads in reply to me and several other commenters about the level of control he had negotiated. Here’s a sample of his original position, in response to a comment from me which included the FAQ boilerplate about how ATL authors don’t have moderation control;
Can Greenwald hop the Guardian’s censorship gate?
gunnison
There are a lot of things different about my column. For one, I have full editorial independence, and will be posting directly without editorial review.
Second, I will have autonomy over how my comment section is regulated. The Guardian will still delete comments that create legal issues, spam, overt hate speech and the like, but otherwise, I’ll have supervision over what is done.
This is still being worked out in terms of mechanics, but what you posted does not apply to here.
Shortly thereafter he came BTL again with this comment, again in response to one of mine, and where he quoted from my comment to him;
Gunninson
I was not questioning his ability, but his motivation. Why in the hell would he want to have to trawl through at least three active comment threads with hundreds of comments each on a daily basis to check for legal liabilities under bizarre UK libel laws?
Yes, I obviously can’t (and obviously don’t want to) monitor the comment section all day and night, so the Guardian moderation team will continue to delete for libel, spam, overt hate speech, etc.
It’s the rest of the stuff – the tonal issues, the off-topic flexibility, the ability to engage in strenuous arguments, etc – that I will be shaping to conform to how I think it’s best to maintain the community I’ve built. The mechanics of that are still being worked on, but the concept was agreed to as part of what I negotiated.
In general, my supervision will mean fewer deletions, not more – I have a more permissive standard for what should be allowed than generally prevails here.
A clarification, but still maintaining that he will have control of “tonal” and “off-topic” issues. I have no doubt that is his good-faith understanding of the negotiations that resulted in his being hired.
So far so good, but now, from stage left, enter the Mighty ‘Comment is Free’ Moderation Bunker, with Bella Mackie , CiF’s “community coordinator” (and Rusbridger’s daughter) astride her monumental ego, galloping into the fray.
Slowly, then with increasing frequency, comments that would certainly remain unmolested elsewhere on CiF begin to be deleted, then disappear without trace. Naturally enough, many of the new CiF commenters who drifted in on Greenwald’s coattails began to speculate in their comments about what the hell was happening.
We all know what happens to comments that question the awesome power of Mackie’s Minions. They disappear too. Equally naturally, your intrepid proprietor here felt the need to insert his nose wisdom into the fray by responding as best he could to the puzzlement and annoyance increasingly on display.
And, again naturally, my comments began to disappear without trace too, which, if you know me at all by now, just motivated me to make more of them, culminating last night with one which ranted about how I’d been deleted on that one single thread more than in the last five years combined (true) and that the only possible justification in the “standards” would be that I was “off-topic”.
I then pointed out that there are fucking rhubarb pie recipes I posted on Tomasky’s old blog that are still there for all to see, and if they weren’t “off topic” then the term has no meaning at all. Also true.
This morning, amazingly, that comment was still there. While corresponding with another commenter (from Salon) who had contacted me via 9thousandfeet here, the comment was deleted, and I am now placed in pre-moderation on CiF.
A badge of honor, really.
I’m not at all sure how this will get resolved, or even if it can be resolved. Greenwald’s work is almost custom-designed to unsettle the comfortable (and quite fictional) belief structures so commonly found on CiF, and all the more so because he names names and his pieces are meticulously researched and referenced.
I hope they do resolve it though. I’ve enjoyed Greenwald’s pieces, and the influx of fresh commenting blood.
** Greenwald is full of himself, as am I with things that I’m good at, so that’s not an adversarial posture I’m adopting there, but just an observation. He can be snarky, dismissive, and (certainly by CiF’s established standards) spectacularly hard on commenters who thoughtlessly carpet bomb threads with tired old one-liners.
This is a style one can either tolerate or not, and I have no doubt that there are many candyass CiF regulars who are so horrified that they will complain incessantly.
Teaandchocolate, et al — I’m talking to you, you silly and insensate cow. You’re welcome.
Update; I have had some email contact with a couple of Greenwald’s Salon commenters, and they are abuzz with concern. Greenwald is in email contact with many of his long-standing commenters/friends about the issue also. He has just posted this comment in public response to the confusion;
Moderation issues
I know there’s a lot of confusion and annoyance over this. As I’ve written before, there were lots of things to attend to with my coming here, and we just haven’t gotten to this yet. I’ll definitely make this a priority on Monday and it’ll all be straightened out. Please just have a little more patience and it’ll be resolved quickly and I’ll let everyone know exactly what will happen going forward. Thanks.
He sounds confident, which is good.
Wonder if he can pull some strings to get me off the naughty step?
Madame Max, FWIW, not only did I not publish that hive post, I objected to it for, perhaps, similar reasons. In fact, I think that poster, someone I normally agree with and respect (though it has become clear over the past few years that that feeling is not mutual) got it exactly backwards. I object to anyone claiming to know what posters think about complex political issues, and take exception to the notion that anyone speaks (or apologizes) for others. Besides that, using a hundred inflammatory words instead of simply writing “Israel” is ridiculous.
A word that resonated is “hive,” but for a different reason: I was thinking that these threads point to the modern phenomenon of hive collapse, the disappearance of once thriving communities. People get so busy stinging each other, the hive (cultural) seems to lose a sense of purpose and being and eventually collapses.
One of the reasons I’ve loved moving the skep is the infusion of new ideas. I do think this is a smart robust community and it has been a pleasure hearing new voices and perspectives.
BrightWings,
I corrected the misattribution of the Hive Mind post to you up-thread, on 9/12, at 5:36, which was ten minutes after it happened – the next comment, in fact.
Re: “Skep” – I like that. And I’m glad you’re enjoying hearing new voices and perspectives, and I hope that as a result of hearing them you no longer believe that CiFWatch is “shaping [our] debate and discussion in subtle but profound ways.” I wouldn’t want anybody believing that we’d let that happen.
Had a chance to visit any of the other threads here yet? I don’t think you’ll find them depressingly serious.
Glenn in new thread on comments policy, new protocols imminent.
“…new protocols imminent.”
Splendid.
Imminent is good.
How many people are still in premod jail, do you have any idea, or is it just me at this point?
I hope so. I’m just so fucking speshul, eh?
I just hope this doesn’t backfire and make it seem as if Glenn’s crowd needs or deserves special privileges. The truth is that what we’ve witnessed is the rank abuse of the existing system, their own stated protocol. Posts that met all of the stated standards were removed. That’s wrong on any and every thread; it– the fix– should not be special to Glenn’s.
I hope that this incident will inspire the Guardian to consider putting safe-guards up to prevent politically motivated “reporting.” At a minimum, two sets of eyes should have to peruse those posts deemed problematic, and it should take multiple reports; one crank should not be allowed to override another person’s voice and views.
I like many sites on TG, and really don’t want to continue to play games to avoid deletions and moderation. I think it would be better for Glenn and everyone if we all played by the same rules. As I said before, the words “community standards” mean nothing if they are not standard.
I will welcome change at Glenn’s site, but hope it becomes the norm at all of the Guardian’s sites.
That was my quote…having computer glitches and not sure why my name is appearing on some posts and not on others; not trying to be anonymous!
Gunny,
I have no idea what Glenn did w/ the list I sent him, but the person who is the “Mabel Minkoff” persona reports that Mabel is still in premod. So, too, apparently is 024601. And we have not seen Mary Steyr show up.
I suppose, since it appears there is a lot of work going on getting whatever this new system will be in place, maybe freeing the captives immediately hasn’t been a priority? Maybe also TPTB say they first need to check why some are in premod, or even banned?
I dunno. That stmt in comments is all I’ve heard from Glenn today. I used your advice to get out: sent quite a number of oh-so-well-behaved comments, and voila. (This option is not available to Ms. Minkoff.)
If things are not more clear tomorrow I’ll email him again, about all of you, and Mabel, too.
–Mona–(who frets about emailing the Man too often)
Mona;
It took me all of ten minutes to fall in love with Mabel, so I’m happy to stay here in this cozy cell with her.
We’re having fun.
Don’t bug GG about it, for sure.
I can’t decipher TPTB. It’s probably a well known acronym. I should get out more, I guess.
As for why any of us are in premod, my online infractions at the G were no worse, or better, than anyone elses, unless;
1. Asking if the mods were flexing muscles to show the new kid who’s boss, or
2. Referring to Bella Mackie as an nepotist egomaniac and calling teaandchocolate an insensate cow are considered worse.
And #2 was here, not there, though I got ten bucks says they’ve read it.
If I’m being punished more severely on account of shit I say on a venue outside of the G totally, I might give thought to deciding whether to approach the cusp of becoming mildly annoyed. 9000feet is in ‘Merika, goddam it, not some fucking bunker full of effete wankers in London.
Well, I don’t know.
I glanced at that Vanity Fair piece. I thought the real issue was obsequious journalism and an equally subservient pusillanimous acceptance of (not to say willing complicity in) institutional censorship of reporting.
About which, I may say, I have previously commented on both in the Guardian and in passing, here.
But I didn’t see much about that. Is that how these new ‘protocols’ are meant to work? Because, frankly, if they are, I don’t see much point in commenting directly on the issues raised at all.
Though I have felt provoked into making one attempt . . .
Squirrel, Glenn addressed that up front–noting the points you just raised– and moved on to flag some of the more disturbing issues of content (openly admitting that he was going to use the NPP to advance a war agenda, for example). I saw many posts focusing on those issues.
What continues to astonish me about Obama is not so much what he does, but that he feels entirely free to brag about his own Constitutional breaches and war crimes, and, more to the point, that the press not only doesn’t hold him accountable, it actually provides the platform for him to do so, while fawning at his feet. To me, that’s the real story because it is so dangerous.
The US is in full blown crisis (though the vast majority of citizens slumber safely through) because of it, and more to the point, the rest of the world suffers from criminally bad policy.
—————–
As to Mabel and the Sisters Minkoff.… Gunny, entire sonnets (dirty ones of course, and yet I insist on the sonnet not the limerick as the form that does them justice) could be written about their charms…which are considerable. Unscramble the code and there’s smart skewering happening every time.
“Update”
I won’t, tempted as I am, respond to that on that thread. Unless I can do it in as inoffensive a way myself as I can. I’m not going to even possibly risk compromising my ability to respond anywhere else on the Guardian; or risk getting flamed every bloody time I comment there.) Though I will elsewhere; and anyone who wants to look at my profile in The Guardian will be able to read it later.
It’s made me extremely angry, because it amounts to just the same sneering catch-all “all journos are corrupt boot-licking capitalist lackeys” you get to see so much of on these threads anyway.
Even in the relatively small scale of journalism I have been professionally involved in (though national and nonetheless with substantial readerships in Europe and the USA, I and most of the people I know never have been. And (for all I’m now semi-retired and really a dilettante at it now) I am fucking well insulted. It took a lot of hard effort to get to the point where I was quite widely respected for my work. I had to earn it, and I am fucking well proud of it.
And that comment belittles some of the people on the very newspaper he is writing for! (Who, because it’s considered wrong, we only usually respond about matters of fact or errors in reporting, not about opinions) won’t respond themselves.
Sorry about the rotten punctuation. Squirrel is not at his best brainwise today; and I’m angry as well.
Did not see that, and I agree, it is extremely offensive, for the reasons you note. Thanks for flagging it.
I did post (very innocuously) and this was the reply:
“There are many really good journalists, and many of them work at large media outlets. Unfortunately, they are a small minority who cut against the profession’s prevailing ethods [sic].
I’m not going to push my luck asking whether that’s supposed to be ‘ethos’ or ‘methods’; anyway. if I was Guardian staff, I still wouldn’t be buying him drinks any time soon at the pub.
I had a quick look last night at Glenn’s article, but haven’t yet had time to read the VF article. I’m horrified though – because Michael Lewis is generally an excellent investigative financial journalist and author. He’s not one of VF’s puff writers. What i’m wondering is how on earth he agreed to that? Do i need to suspect his other work now too?
It’s no big secret that VF allows vetting of their puff piece sleb cover stories and articles. Which is why those articles usually suck. But buried within their pages are some first rate investigative pieces, any those pieces are what makes the magazine worth a read every now and again. Michael Lewis is one of those who writes excellent articles for them. I just don’t get it.
Maybe he owed them one. He’s married to Tabitha Soren (anyone remember MTV’s Rock the Vote? oops, it was Choose or Lose) Apparently she’s a photographer now, and VF had a piece on one of her shows in, um, Indianapolis.
Porn,
Didn’t the very nature of the kind of ‘research’ Lewis asked to do -hanging out at the white house for all that time- compromise the piece from the outset? No sane administration would allow a reporter to wander around so freely, and with that kind of access, and not want a first-look waiver on quotes. So Lewis’s dilemma was: hang out at the white house or not. If he had insisted on not giving them a first look, they would have said, sorry but- we can’t do that.
If Obama was willing to give journalists that kind of access without any oversight- I’d say he was too naive to be there in the first place.
I’d say it would have been best for everyone to keep the boundaries where they would be without the oversight. which means no article of that kind could be written, which means no one would have to get confused: is it some kind of authorized ‘biography’ or is it journalism.
Clearly it is not journalism as we know it. But clearly it was a gig it would have also been very, very hard for Michael Lewis to turn down.
Thing is, Lewis drags a rep with him. A pretty good one. Gotta wonder if that was compromised a bit now. Or maybe it already was – in interviews for pieces with, say, Arnie, and other various political and financial titans.
Agreed.
Even if any ‘oversight’ you accept is minimal—which, obviously, in these circumstances you could never prove!— writing the damn thing thereafter is not really much more than journalistic ego.
I’ve wandered around all sorts of corporate places and had to sign ‘non-disclosure’ agreements, and accepted them, but only because of assurances I could still talk to the people I wanted to and get what I needed on the usual basis of ‘off the record’ conversations.
The only time I’ve really been hamstrung by anything like that was before I was a journalist and I had contacts who wanted me to try to get something out; I couldn’t in the end, though I tried hard, because I couldn’t get anybody to get me the paper proof or go on the record.
Some of the paper did get out later: I don’t know how, and I’ve always wondered about it, because I was searched for ‘confidential papers’ every time I went in and out of the fucking City Council offices and from one department to another. I wanted to get something else out once, too; I was in the position of being the only person to know about it who wasn’t a council employee.
Even so, I was called in and told very explicitly, that if any information about that reached the press, whether it provenly came from me or not, every penny of council funding for the charity I was then working for would be withdrawn, and we’d be evicted from the council office premises we rented from them. The council concerned actually did both to another later (though over something else.) And they used their PR people to trash the reputation of its director.
Eventually, I left, after working very hard to make that charity as independent of council funding as I could; and some of the story of that (very nasty) episode did come out . .
(The council was Westminster, FWIW. I’ve nothing to lose now by saying that; I don’t even live in it. Though ironically—or maybe not?—I was offered a ridiculously cheap, and probably asbestos-riddled. flat to buy by the Housing Department shortly afterwards. I declined.)
Porn:
Depends on how influential GG is. His piece is comment; it doesn’t come with the editorial imprimatur of The Guardian.
(Especially as he’s proclaimed his entire ‘editorial freedom’ from the paper. Works both ways, you see. You see why I’m—professionally—somewhat amused?)
Squirrel,
Shall we oppose the thesis of…
…to the antithesis of…
…and see what synthesis emerges? (Me, I mean: I can understand it if you’re not quite in a dialectical mood right now.)
I learned to say “co-opted” when I was about 16 (48 exciting years ago). What a potent denunciation it was for a while! You’ve been co-opted! You’re part of the problem! But I – I have rejected your compromising ways and am free (as you are not) to see the simple, grand sweep of the thing (and thus, of all the things that matter now, in this emergency). Most of its potency came from the fact that it was always sufficient, always devastating, always went directly to the heart of the matter; in other words, it was always both effortless and satisfying. I grew out of it a couple of years later – the Weathermen could do that for you – but the years between 16 and 18 can seem like forever at the time, and I really do mourn the satisfactions of those unco-opted days. Life has never been as simple since and I am still, after all this time, very mindful of the attractions of the I-Refuse-To-Be-Co-Opted way of life.
But I have also learned to despise it’s hidden, never-elucidated moral (and somewhat metaphysical) assumptions. That you, Squirrel, can learn your trade, work hard at it, do capable and respected work in it – and then become a Tool Of The Oppressors because Bella Mackie is a spoiled little princess and Vanity Fair sells its integrity (your integrity, this becomes…) for a must-read story. That others can work just as honestly and effectively in politics, in government, in industry and in almost any other field, and also lose their entire worth, practical, ethical and moral, because sleaze has once more risen to the top… This is what I mean by metaphysical: the power of someone else’s sleaziness to irredeemably corrupt us all by proxy: all of us, except the few who hold fast to an uncompromising you’ll-never-pin-this-one-on-me-and-anyway-it’s-all-part-of-the-big-picture-isn’t-it unco-optedness in everything they think and, especially, say.
But we can slip in and out of that frame of mind, can’t we? That article started out (above the line, I mean) as a careful and prudent statement of an explicitly stated, concrete problem: PR delivered in the guise of journalism. But it instantly turned into the now-familiar, heroically strenuous, below the line duel between the rival forces of unco-option. And finally Greenwald himself joined in – probably more in irritation than anything else – and voila, so much for Squirrel and all his guilt-edged ilk. (Which he did walk back a little, later, didn’t he? But without apology, because unco-option, when even the best of us fall into it, never apologizes…)
At times like that, the temptation is very strong to fall into a later-life unco-optedness of one’s own, and say, to hell with all of you and your childish, stupefying self-righteousness. But deep down we know better, don’t we? If sweeping look-at-me-I’m-better-than-you-ism is the problem, then falling for our own version of it can’t be the solution. And even if there isn’t a solution, there’s still the possibility of holding on to what we’ve learned in our harder-workiong moments. So I suppose we take a deep breath and keep on doing the only thing that ever does that, and talk to people one or two at a time, and confine ourselves to the things we actually know, and let them do the same for us – to engage, I mean, as best we can, whether it seems to work or not. Not that anybody can do that all the time, of course – but it’s plain enough what we become when we don’t even try.
Agree with Natty. It’s not too hard to bridge the 6 degrees from Fareed Zakharia to Johann Hari. Michael Lewis isn’t exactly Maureen fucking Dowd. Or is he. Look, reality and life interfere. You have a pack of brats to feed, or you don’t want to lose council funding for your orgainzation because a lot of people would suffer. But so does journalism, and we lose out too.
Or to put it another way, Nick Davies notwithstanding, we’re a long ways away from Woodward and Bernstein. And especially Ben Bradlee.
nuf said has been locked in the guard’s dungeon twice with the key tossed in the moat.
Seems you can bash Arabs all you want at the Guard but point out something Israel has done and it’s bu-bye.
Fucking Wankers.
Mona,
Very glad to hear that Mabel’s “persona” is known to someone, and that she hasn’t given up the whole idea in disgust. She can hardly change her name and avatar and remain undetected.
Cossette is still rolling along this morning, as is (I assume) the latest JA incarnation, Medel Svennson. I’m sure gunnison does not want to give up the lovely portrait of the black chicken, and I wouldn’t either.
nuf,
Without knowing the context of the comments that got deleted — and believe me, I’m not blaming you for not providing that — it’s impossible to say whether you’re being picked on or have run afoul of longstanding Guardian policy. But in case you haven’t seen the explanations offered here (and to a lesser extent there) about how that policy works, any comment that is sufficiently off-topic is in jeopardy of being modded, especially in a heavy thread. And that depends entirely on the context and not on the merits of the comment per se.
Your apparent belief that criticism of Israel on CiF is not tolerated is simply not true. They host a great many above the line articles devoted to it, and the comments on any article that mentions Iran or Gaza tend to focus on little else. And they all stay up. Because they’re on-topic.
Is ‘nuf said’ here ‘nufandstuff’ there?
Because, if, so, Nat, I’ll tell you.
I answered a complaint about ‘censorship deletions’ recently thus:
I don’t know whether that will ring any bells with anyone? I’d be very interested to know if it does.
Nat:
You’re quite right, the Squirrel brain is far too fuzzy at the moment to cope with dialectic. However, I would say that my comment was the langue deconstructing Greenwald’s parole.
And so to nest for Squirrel . . (early, I know, but I’ve already come close to maxing out what I call my ‘superdrug’ today what with yesterday and having to go shopping today.)
squirrel
You are peeved, nay, angry at GG’s dismissive words about mainstream journalists, but one of these, Chris Hayes at U.S. cable news network MSNBC, feels Greenwald generally raises good points in his media rants. For Hayes, the media corruption Glenn so detests is the result of entree into elite circles and resulting “cognitive capture.” Hayes, who “gets” what is wrong w/ corporatism and imperialist foreign policy, feels himself at risk in his newish, mainstream venue.
Novelist and former CIA analyst, Barry Eisler, published a widely-discussed post about Greenwald and Hayes’s discussion of the media, and Eisler offers a list of warning signs for journalists to flag cognitive capture.
I’d be curious to know what your reaction to Eisler’s piece might be.
Gunny: TPTB = The Powers that Be
Now I feel vindicated for so long wondering wtf “ATL” and “BTL” meant.
Gah!
The Powers That Be.
Obvious, really.
I kinda had it figured as meaning El Quesos Grandes somehow, but just couldn’t figure it out.
Thanks.
Mona:
I have long criticised the “one the one hand, but then again, on the opposite hand” style of reporting that’s wrongly excused as ‘objective’; I’ve long and often criticised the increasing trend to rewrite PR releases as ‘news’; I’ve been angry about an all-too frequent willingness to publish without questioning the sources or their motives adequately.
I’ve been extremely distressed, and said so, often, about the growing use of ‘sources’ about which there can be no proof or assessment either of their genuineness or even their knowledge. (The notorious and now ubiquitous ‘anonymous because not authorised to comment’.)
All of this you might find here and there among my comments in The Guardian, and before I was kicked out, in comments on the BBC’s website, too. Some of which may still survive in Google for all I know.
Yes: all Eisler’s points are, really, inarguable. Once upon a time, they were. to many of us, commonplaces. I have asked some of those questions of young journalists I have been training. And one which all too infrequently has failed to get the response I would prefer to hear: “Would you be willing to go to jail in support of what you write?” Depending on the reply, it may be followed with: “Because I am; and I (not you) may have to.”
But there was a line or two in Orwell’s unpublished preface which someone quoted today which I’ll adapt; something Nat has just touched on in the latest Greenwald thread, and which I very much wish will get the attention and discussion it deserves. Much of what is not written, or not published, or done inadequately, is not because people fear prison; it’s because they fear unpopularity.
That goes for ‘radicals’, too; as Eric Blair knew very well. To write what is conceived as ‘not popular’ and yet achieve a certain popularity through it, is not too difficult. The more cynical you are, the easier it is. There are plenty of examples; Hitchens is a very good one, I think. Niall Ferguson at the moment is a good one also in a different way; would be more so were he not so criminally obvious.
But what is always most needed, and is difficult, is to write popularly about what they consider unpopular in such a way as they as they do not realise they ever considered it so.
(I hope I’m clear enough; as I told Nat, I’m somewhat more cloudy of brain today, even more than usual—I like to get the digs in myself first!)
Once you get caught out a bit, even by association, it can be tough to shake. Honestly, i still have a hard time reading MT without the ghost of Journolist reading over my shoulder.
Squirrel,
Indeed, saying unpopular things effectively is a challenge. Saying them so effectively that nobody notices how thoroughly they would have rejected them before they were said is the supreme challenge. If it hadn’t been done hundreds of times throughout history, I’d probably say it’s downright impossible. It may be beyond us but surrendering without at least trying is simply craven self-excusing.
Madame asks me to convey her regards.
squirrel wrote:
In the abstract I grasp that, but what journalist or pundit would be an example or two who is credited with significantly penetrating the zeitgeist?
Journalists, like all human groups, are going to have far fewer saints in their ranks than average Jane and Joes who want to make some bucks and possible garner a bit of fame. Same goes for lawyers and fiction writers. But for both journos and ,we have reached new depths of craven careerism.
A few journalists however, via nature and/or nurture, are driven to expose evil, idiocy and corruption, first and foremost. If they can do well at the same time, so much the better. (I think Mencken was like that.)
But you are certainly correct that what today’s journalists fear most is being unpopular, not prison. I beg collective pardon for citing a Greenwald column, but I find this as spot on as I do amusing.
Circle squirts…[giggle]
–Mona–
Well, I’m giving up on those Grauniad threads. Too much repetitious bigotry.
And I’m abandoning GG as well. It’s far too depressing to see the (now very infrequent) posts that seriously try to discuss any of the real issues pretty well ignored, while clever-clever dog whistles get cheered to the high heavens with dozens (or hundreds) of ‘recommends’.
What some of us feared might happen I think has. There appear to be some obsessions that are going to be constantly played on—or preyed on—by the same people quite regardless of whatever subject Greenwald actually writes about. It takes now, far too long skimming over and past them.
It’s sad when ‘freedom’ becomes ‘freedom without responsibility’. Anarchy as a political and social theory is quite attractive; but without understanding what predicates its practice and application, it’s just . . .anarchic.
I just don’t see the point, myself. Nor do I see the point of repeating the same things all the time, no matter how variably expressed. Nat made some very good points, I thought, and they’ve been smothered.
I think if I’ve got anything to say I’ll put it on the Red Squirrel Party blog like I did when the Beeb got a bit like that. (While it doesn’t exactly have a wide readership [!] probably more people will read what I might have to say there than would in any GG comment thread . . . I’ve taken up too much server space and time—and other people’s—here on this, I think. And therefore, I think, I’ll say I view this as a statement, not an invitation to a discussion. “Comments are closed” as they say.)
But hey, not on this: ‘Nat the NeoCon’! Got a kind of ring to it, hasn’t it?
Twas ever thus, Squirrel. It was always tiresome to read the first comments on any USA thread along the lines of “all americans are stupid religious gun nuts” or variations with their many hundreds of recommends, let alone kung fu-ing the tea and chocolates out of the way to find some half intelligent commentary. It’s gotten worse on other threads now simply because there are a lot fewer americans commenting there now.
I still think GG is definitely worth a read. I guess it’s a good thing that i don’t have the time to read through the comments these days, let alone the inclination to comment on there myself.
Porn: well, I’m not going to get involved in this any more here. I’ve said, I think, about all I want to here.
Squirrel,
Of two minds myself. Something will come along to decide me, as usual. And thanks for the kind words, but I doubt they’ll help much now that my neolibcon agenda is out there for all to see.
Either way, I suppose I could use some advice on storing up nuts for the winter, so I’ll probably be looking you up.
Are Bella Mackie and “teaandchocolate” affiliated enterprises? There was a comment this morning suggesting so, but I recognize the commenter from Salon days, so did not know if it was an informed comment or not.
LINK
she,
I don’t have any way to know for sure but the idea seems ridiculous. You have only to compare their styles and points of view…
…but I’m dreadfully afraid that the “word on the street” the commenter used as his source is Gunny’s article at the top of this thread. Of course, to read it that way, you’d have to be an idiot who somehow imagines that he’s simultaneously calling both of them out in the strongest terms and coy enough to somehow suggest that they’re one and the same person. (Perhaps he had to be coy, though, because calling one of them a “monumental ego” and the other a “silly and insensate cow” is ordinary, within the pale discourse, but more than hinting at their shared identity would be breathtakingly, CIA-plot-busting-level truth telling…)
I hope I’m wrong about this being “the street”, and I really, really hope that nobody who decides it is takes it seriously. Talk about distractions within distractions…
I know I’d forsworn this, but given someone else’s admitted multiple identities, wtf?
Hang on, though . . .
I do hope what we happily say here among ourselves while musing on Richard’s bones or whatever isn’t going to bloody well start appearing as ‘evidence’ of something or other below every damn Greenwald column?
By ‘Richard’ is meant only the late Yorkist King of England; no reference to any other Richard, pseudonymously or otherwise, commenting on a Greenwald thread, is implied or expressed. Nor is it to be understood that there is any implication of any hidden skeletons other than that of the aforementioned lately demised King Richard III of this realm.
shenebraskan;
Oh, I very much doubt it.
I think Nat is probably on to something @10:42 — somebody read the column above this thread and then reported their “understanding” of it to someone else, and before you know it bahhummingbug has Mackie as nepotist mole using t&c as a sock puppet to destroy Greenwald’s career.
With some folks, it’s impossible to mention two distinct entities in the same piece without eventually being accused of saying they are one and the same.
btw, saw your comment about JA. Good one.
FYI, if you want to link to a particular comment here, rather than the entire page, you can use the hyperlink embedded in that comment’s timestamp. Just like CiF, pretty much.
Tea and chocolates isn’t from Salon. He has a contributer tag at The Graund, and he displays all the classic traits of being an empire excuser.. a distinctly British attitude I’ve noticed since the move.
This protest shit is cray, BTW.
024601,
Nobody could possibly think so. She’s worked at the Guardian for years. Did somebody suggest she was?
024601;
I’m relentlessly more polite and forgiving than Greenwald as a rule, but I will point out in this instance that the requirement Greenwald has for carefully reading his pieces before commenting applies here to both the original columns, and ALL the comments in the attending threads.
I’m nowhere close (yet) to calling anyone intellectually lazy and vacuous, but I could get there, given the chance.
024601
Wow. That seemed to be the case on ONE thread attached to a non-Greenwald piece, tho Americans were all about defending empire as well. But there appears to be plenty of people in the UK who do not “excuse empire” in other comments sections, and certainlyin Glenn’s. Terry5135 — who traveled from Salon, is just one. Then there is that Berchmans fellow. And, perhaps you did not realize it, but some of the individuals who are long-time participants at this site are from the UK. I’ve not noticed them to be excusing empire!