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Monday, Mar 07, 2005
right hook
"But success bred change. Along has come a new group of bloggers who aren’t mere “citizens” at all. On the left side, some of these became deeply enmeshed with political parties, “527s,” and campaign advocacy groups -- and are now a new generation of no-holds-barred partisans and major party fund-raisers, the liberal equivalent of George W. Bush’s “Rangers” and “Pioneers.” On the right, a number of these bloggers were already political operatives or worked at long-standing movement institutions before taking up residence online. They are, at best, the intellectual heirs of L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center and Reed Irvine, who founded the ultraconservative, media-hounding nonprofit organization Accuracy In Media (AIM) in 1969 as part of the first generation of post–Barry Goldwater right-wing institutions. At worst, they're the protégés of conservative fund-raiser Richard Viguerie and dirty-tricks master Morton Blackwell, who has tutored conservative activists since 1965, most recently mocking John Kerry at the Republican national convention by distributing Band-Aids with purple hearts on them."
Sunday, Mar 06, 2005
slap fight
"Confession: I used to find it exhilarating to read James Wolcott when he was writing in his fresh, careful, smart and unpredictable fashion about TV for the Village Voice and the exigencies of the cultural moment for Vanity Fair. But during the last few years, once he discovered his own simple, predictable, self-righteous, driving political convictions and decided to give them endless, repetitive vent, I have found myself wondering what ever happened to the terrific cultural critic he once was. Rage is easy. Preaching to the choir is easy. "Spouting the same old tailpipe exhaust," as he remarked recently about Charles Krauthammer, is easy. What Wolcott used to do is hard."