18 Comments

1. Lola:

Just read through the article . . . I’m truly, sorely tempted to post a really snarky comment, but . . . I’m going through Orthodox Lent, so I’ll be biting my tongue.

Mar 30, 2005 - 9:27 am 2. LouMinatti:

Why should I read Tina Brown? I don’t enjoy reading a**-kissing interviews with the rich and powerful.

The reason blogs appeal to me is that blogging is open to anyone, not just elite reporters and columnists. And the sad (not really) fact of the matter is that there are many “amateurs” who not only write more interesting stories than the “professional” media, they write BETTER.

Mar 30, 2005 - 10:19 am 3. Buddy Larsen:

And look at the big numbers of folks who, in trying to express a comment, finally start noticing ‘writing’–from the nuts and bolts end of it. Suddenly, aHA! lots of little tricks in such big deals as NYT, Time, NewsWeek emerge like little signposts pointing you to pre-selected positions. Very illuminating, LouMinatti.

Mar 30, 2005 - 10:47 am 4. Kevin P:

Roger:

You don’t understand. Tina is a journalist. You are part of the great unwashed ignorati. The fact that you are a better writer and that while you were writing books she was doing tabloid stories on the sex lives of movie stars makes no difference. She is one of the priesthood. You are a lay person. That makes you a jackbooted east german secret service member. That makes her enlightened. It is not about the writing, it’s about the proper credentials.

Mar 30, 2005 - 10:48 am 5. jedrury:

Wouldn’t it be great if Huffington limited herself only to blogs?

She is such a hogget on TV that she takes that microphone and refuses to let it go and then talks and talks and . . ..

Mar 30, 2005 - 11:00 am 6. scaramouoche:

One wonders where she’ll find the time. She’s supposed to be writing a biography of Princess Diana. (Is there even a snippet of information about her that the world doesn’t know? If so, does it justify yet another exhaustive peroration on the subject? But I guess Tina, being Tina, will have some unique insights that have not occurred to anyone else before. That was sarcasm, by the way.)

Mar 30, 2005 - 11:24 am 7. Buddy Larsen:

BTW, I just saw singer/songwriter/author/humorist Kinky Friedman (used to open for 70s/80s Willie Nelson as Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys) interviewed yet again on TV. His campaign for Governor of Texas is starting to sound serious. Uh, scratch ’serious’, read ‘real’ (sez he’ll lower that speed limit to 54.99).

He needs 50,000 sigs after the two primaries in 2006 to get on the Fall ballot. There’s a potential Super Hat Trick here, first musician, Indi, Jew, and teller of embarrassingly bad jokes in Texas gubernatorial (should that be Goobernatorial?) history.

Interviewer asked him if a musician could run the state, he said “Hell, a beautician could run the state.

Call yer Texas friends, send ‘em here. He’s really not joking, he has a Palestinian business partner (imports olive oil) and a real plan for the Rio Grande border problem (the 1940s ‘bracero’ program)…already has reach inside both those areas. Plus he smokes cigars wherever the hell he feels like it, and promises to never lie without telling us.

Mar 30, 2005 - 11:34 am 8. Homer:

MMMMMmmmmmm……… Sounds like ghostbloging to me.

Mar 30, 2005 - 12:19 pm 9. utron:

Sounds like Old Media content in the shape of New Media. Maybe they’ll tart this up in some way the article didn’t describe, but right now I suspect Tina and her friends will discover that the blogosphere is less interested in their opinions than they would like to think. Add blogs and blogging to the lengthy list of subjects on which these people really aren’t terribly well informed. (Anybody know where James Wolcott ranks on the blog hit-list?)

Mar 30, 2005 - 12:58 pm 10. Kevin P:

Roger:

Call a group of people “the new Stasi” and two weeks later join the group. Does anyone else around here have whiplash at the intellectual flip flop.If she calls the repulican right the new theocracy does that mean she will become a Southern Baptist minister soon after.

Mar 30, 2005 - 1:03 pm 11. vegetius:

Hell, Tina Brown and her ilk never complained about the ‘Old Stasi’. Why would a new one bother them?

Mar 30, 2005 - 1:06 pm 12. Old Dad:

You can take Tina out of the tabloids, but you can’t take the tabloids out of…..

Oh, never mind.

Mar 30, 2005 - 2:47 pm 13. Roger:

test

Mar 30, 2005 - 3:41 pm 14. PJ:

Tina Brown is an irrelevancy.

Mar 30, 2005 - 7:28 pm 15. David Thomson:

ìShe’s supposed to be writing a biography of Princess Diana. (Is there even a snippet of information about her that the world doesn’t know? If so, does it justify yet another exhaustive peroration on the subject?î

Iím going to scream in horror. Princess Diana was essentially a boring individual who married the Prince of Wales. What more do I need to know? She is not worthy of an exhaustive biography. This may sound cruel—but I hope the book fails to earn even one thin dime.

Mar 30, 2005 - 11:36 pm 16. richard mcenroe:

Lola ó Can you bite your tongue and still fast? You might need to post something for the good of your soul…

Roger ó Of course Tina joined the “Stasi”… that black leather trenchcoat gets the style ho’s every time…

Mar 31, 2005 - 7:10 am 17. Kyda Sylvester:

Until now, I never deliberately read anything by Tina Brown nor about Tina Brown. I was sure that I’d want to furiously back peddle and restore that status quo but to the contrary I found both articles, unintentionally I’m sure, quite hilarious.

Tina Brown equates the blogosphere to the East German secret police.

Arianna Huffington thinks the people she seeks to recruit have interesting opinions and fresh takes on the hot stories of the day. (At least she recognizes their limitations as she assures them (us?) that our editorial team will fact-check and turn [their "takes"] into a blog post.)

Greg Lindsay (whoever he is) thinks said recruits are the cultural and media elite and that Norman Lear and Gary Hart are blue chip “public intellectuals”. And then there’s his final observation: And I’m about to finally find out: Will the return of Tina Brown’s diary mean that blogging has grown up, or just gotten old?

See what I mean? Hilarious.

Mar 31, 2005 - 11:33 am 18. freetotem:

As Utron says, this is merely the same usual suspects saying the same things in a different medium. They think the powerful thing about the blogosphere is not that it has provided the means to break the monopoly of people like them on the installed infrastructure of political expression, but just that people are more interested in computers than TV sets. There is a reason for this.

The political Left has a long history of focusing on exteriors (means of production, class systems, power infrastructures, etc.) and ignoring interiors (character, integrity, abilities, work ethic, etc.,) dating back to the time of Rousseau, who thought Man’s nature was inherently perfect, but “the system” was screwed up. That is why all their causes and solutions are exterior ones, focusing on “the system” and so on. And that is why, after losing several national elections, they are focused not on the content of their beliefs, but “the message,” or how the message is presented, or in this case in which particular medium the message is expressed. They don’t get that it is the message that is the problem, because the worldview behind the message is incoherent, self-contradictory and reactionary. Accordingly. they don’t realize their views will have just as little credibility and interest on the Internet as they do in all the media they still dominate.

Mar 31, 2005 - 12:45 pm

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