Better Than Ezra

those people who say
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Just who ARE those people, Joe?
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Again the only people I encounter complaining about the blogosphere are those whose self-interest and sense of privelege collide.

Speaking of Bloggers and Journalists and how to tell the difference….
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/17/maureen-dowd-admits-inadv_n_204418.html
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UPDATE: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in an email to Huffington Post, admits that a paragraph in her Sunday column was lifted from Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall’s blog last Thursday.

Dowd claims that she never read his blog last week but was told the line by a friend of hers. In a follow-up email, she forwarded her desire to apologize to Marshall, writing that had she known, she would have gladly credited Marshall.

Dowd notes that the Times is fixing her column online to give proper credit to Marshall and that a correction will run tomorrow;

“Told the line”?!?
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I think I know who’s telling a line…

Do as I say, not as I do:
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http://www.nypost.com/seven/05182009/gossip/pagesix/car_czar_steven_rattner_rides_over_viney_169861.htm

In a way I wish the Post wouldn’t hire good journalists like Ezra Klein and Eugene Robinson. They publish such awful rotters like Gerson and Krazyhammer (and far too many more to name), that I hate giving them any hits at all to get to the good stuff. Still, I’m glad he’s getting more prominently featured.
He’ll be David Broder’s age in 2065.

Off topic
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Did anybody see Pete Hoekstra walk back his definitive statement that Speaker Pelosi had been briefed about Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded after seeing the CIA documents? If you are wondering why nobody is talking about it today, so am I.
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http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=5121466&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/

Broder was born September 11, 1929. In 2065 he’ll be 136, and likely still getting it wrong.
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And why was I unaware previously that his birthday is 9/11? Conspiracy buffs, please address.

those people who say there’s nothing in the blogosphere but uninformed rant

I would say the elites who say things like that need to be circulated, especially if those elites brought us the joke that was the public runup to Iraq, our presently poor public conversation on the subject of climate change, the joke that has been our national conversation on healthcare, and our anything-goes political culture that brought us Sarah Palin as next in line to get her finger on the button…
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But that’s just me.

It wasn’t Tapped (one of the other blogs), it was simply Ezra Klein at The American Prospect.

those people who say there’s nothing in the blogosphere but uninformed rant
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Well, that’s a bit of an uninformed opinion. I think the left’s critique of the media is quite a bit like Ken Tremendous’s (or Michael Lewis’s) critique of Dusty Baker. It’s not that there’s something unalterably stupid about people in baseball front offices; it’s just that there’s a culture there that encourages and rewards stupid decisions. OBP is a better stat than AVG; reporting on the merits is better than the sort of “he said/she said,” “who’s up/who’s down,” substance-averse journalism exemplified by Jay Newton Small’s article last week about US torture policy and Nancy Pelosi under fire. Here’s a recent salvo in the print-vs.-blogs dust-up. You tell me, who looks better informed and more gracious, Bunch or Jackson?
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OT: Joe, last week you wrote here that releasing photos of improper conduct during the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations would increase the risk to “American troops and diplomats and international humanitarian workers.” The next day, the New York Times ran this article on page A1, complete with a picture of a young girl injured in a US attack. Did this story also increase the risk to American troops? Was the Times wrong to run it? Would the Obama administration have been justified in forbidding the publication of this article, or this picture, on the grounds you offered to support their decision to withhold photos from the public? As you can tell from my leading questions, I am skeptical that “it reflects poorly on us” is a valid reason for the government to conceal stuff from the press, and therefore the people.

Ezra Klein is the personification of blogger as careerist — he’s a good writer (as in prose stylist) whose has been on the make from day one. Klein has consistently treated mainstream journalists far more deferentially than his “blogging liberal” peers, inviting some of the most notorious “serious” liberals (like Joe Klein, and Jonathan Chait — writers who, like Ezra Klein, are more interested in advancing their personal agendas and keeping their sources happy than in truth-telling) to participate in “Journolist”, a once “secret society” of “liberal” journalists and bloggers who have done massive damage to progressive causes by determinine what is, and is not, “acceptable” opinion “from the left” within the mainstream media.

Speaking of uninformed rants. What I learned from TV this weekend:
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It’s OK if Republicans torture people, as long as they tell Democrats about it.
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It’s OK for the president to ignore a court order.
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The CIA has such an unblemished reputation for honesty, that to suggest the agency misled Congress automatically puts one in “hot water.”
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The Speaker of the House is in deep trouble because the minority party (which also has an unblemished reputation for honesty) said she needs to resign, a demand which is totally not self-serving!
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I also learned that David Gregory thinks a hard-hitting interview is when you say “So, tell me about X.”

I don’t know P-luk, aren’t The Krug and Yglesias in that secret society? I imagine them typing abstract secret handshakes at the outset of ea. session. EK certainly shifts the center-right Post a wee bit leftward. But I largely agree that his writing has always veered towards the safe, not necessarily CW but hardly envelope-pushing. Ideological rorschach Andrew Sullivan posts a lot more beyond-the-brackets content IMO, though his post yesterday made me vomit:
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http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/obamas-long-war-against-cheneyism.html#more
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Anyway, this Klein on Klein faux-progressive stroking is so cute. Here are a few authentics at work:
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http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/13/howard_zinn_i_wish_obama_would
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And I dug Better than Ezra!

This is the left’s critique of the media.
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The establishment media’s critique of extra-establishment media is there’s nothing in the blogosphere but uninformed rant.

[...] (h/t swampland commenter hellslittlestangel) [...]

I don’t know P-luk, aren’t The Krug and Yglesias in that secret society?
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the point is the way that Ezra Klein (and yglesias, for that matter) have placed self-advancement above the causes they supposedly speak for. EZ is an “acceptable” blogger that the Joe Klein’s and Chaits feel comfortable citing because EZ pulls his punches in order to make himself acceptable to the mainstream.

Well, P-luk, per Durbin’s comment, everyone else has sold out, why not “lefty” bloggers? Politics resembling art in this case. How many iconoclastic filmmakers or indy bands have I watched with anguish over the years making the move to populism/$. Personally, until we’re all at both ends of the PA Ave, pitchforks on high, nadas changing anyway.
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Do you think there are enough lucrative gigs out there for truly progressive bloggers? It’s hard for me to condemn a young guy like Klein for doing what’s in his professional interest. It’s easy for us to remain pure, as we all make our livings in other ways, right?

[...] Joe Klein at The Swampland [...]

Paul Lukasiak:
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Ezra Klein’s apologies for access-journalism/anonymous sourcing are particularly offensive, but what can you expect from a career liberal who founds a secret email group for Beltway pros to “express themselves in a way they can’t publicly”?
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That said, Ezra Klein, on balance, does much more good than harm, though, don’t you think? Remember his honest examination of the Obama campaign’s laughable “Universal Health Care” cheap sales brochure, for example?

Ezra Klein is a plausible young rhetorician, with no real experience of the issues he discusses, not much in the way of education, and little credibility as a serious advocate for anything but Ezra. All this said, there is something seriously creepy in seeing Grandpa Klein cozy up to him. Still, birds of a feather and all that. However, if you want one blog that has done serious damage to a very wide range of progressive causes, that blog would be the therapy site for deranged “liberals” known as DailyKos.

I love your headline there.

Junius, you’re so silly. I bet you’re a lot of fun to hang out with!