Conservative Blogs Doing Better Under Obama
Blogger Simon Owens is tracking the traffic of the 20 largest liberal and conservative blogs to see how they've fared since the election. The blogs have collectively dropped 109 million unique visitors from October 2008 to May 2009:
Right of center blogs weathered the post-election season a little better, falling only 37%, while blogs that were left-of-center fell by 64%.
Some blogs did better than others. Instapundit, for instance, was the only blog to show a slight increase in page views between the two months. Hot Air and Ann Althouse also saw a much less significant drop compared to all other blogs. Out of all the blogs surveyed, MyDD saw the most significant drop, with a decrease of 80% in pageviews.
There's always a slump after a presidential election as people who have been consumed with politics rediscover the rest of their lives, but Owens has found a dramatic difference in how liberal and conservative blogs have fared since the election. Partisan media tends to do better when its side is out of power, because that fuels more activism and passion than being in charge. Readership of The Nation doubled after the election of President Bush in 2000.
The Drudge Retort has dropped from 2.8 million unique visitors last October to 1.8 million last month. I was surprised to learn that the Retort has lost less of its audience than any other liberal blog tracked by Owens. The Retort's 36% drop is close to the average drop of conservative blogs.
I'm not sure why the Retort has suffered less of a post-election slump than Daily Kos, Washington Monthly and other liberal-leaning sites. One possible reason is that the Retort actively encourages conservatives and libertarians to contribute dissenting views, so some of those folks have stuck around to express opposition to President Obama and the Democratic-led Congress. I get bored with echo chambers, so I've tried to cultivate a more ideologically diverse audience than most political blogs.
Andrew Breitbart's Mad About Hollywood (Or Just Mad)
Andrew Breitbart's a right-wing journalist in Los Angeles who coauthored the Drudge Report for years without getting any credit. He now runs Breitbart.Com and Big Hollywood and writes columns for the Washington Times. Breitbart.Com, which consists primarily of wire content, receives 1.7 million unique visitors a month, an audience he built by linking to the site frequently while working for Drudge.
All external indicators would suggest that Breitbart has a lot to be happy about, but I've followed his work for years and he operates in a constant state of anger at the perceived mistreatment of conservatives, particularly in Hollywood. Since he's around my age, he's lived during an era in which the right wing was ascendant in American politics. I'm not sure he could have survived the '60s and '70s, back when conservatism was the marginalized ideology of Barry Goldwater and washed-up B-movie actors.
After the blog Gawker ran an item Thursday criticizing Matt Drudge's coverage of the Holocaust Museum shooting, Breitbart left the writer an irate voicemail complaining about the use of "right-wing extremist" to describe shooting suspect James von Brunn:
I'm basically fuming and I'm reading your ---- at Gawker right now saying that this guy is a right-wing extremist and it's such a ------- slander on people like me.
This guy went after, this guy was after neocons like me who are conservative. He had the address to Weekly Standard there. Conservatives believe in individual liberty. They don't believe in groups' rights. This guy's a multiculturalist just like the black studies and the lesbian studies majors on college campuses. This guy was a 9/11 Truther. This guy's hardly a right-winger. This guy's political philosophy is more akin to the drivel that you hear on a college campus that delineates us by group -- not by individuality. It's the exact opposite of my political philosophy.
It's deeply offensive that you would use this for political gain. I could care less how you describe me in regards to Drudge or anything, but for you to put on me this -------- crime against humanity -- so ---- you beyond the pale.
I don't pay much attention to attempts by liberals and conservatives to score points by branding the latest homicidal nutjob as a member of the other team. When you go far enough to the extremes, the right and left wing meet. But I love Breitbart's logic in calling anybody who maligns an entire race or religion a liberal because he's treating people as a group instead of individuals. So all racists are multiculturalists! Up is down. Cogito ergo stupidum.
Last month, Breitbart devoted his Times column to an apology to some protesters he flipped off in a rage as they marched past Shutters, a Santa Monica restaurant where he had taken his wife on a date:
... when one dude raised his fist like runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos did at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, I could not hold myself back. I jumped from my seat and bolted to the center of the balcony, where the American flag waved furiously in a now-harsh wind. Positioned next to Old Glory, I countered the young punk and reached out my right arm directing my middle finger in his direction.
As soon as my finger was raised, a phalanx of photographers began snapping away at the white middle-aged man wearing a white LaCoste shirt next to the old red, white and blue. Cognizant of the power of imagery, I owned the moment and refused to back down. The fist wielder immediately dropped his arm. I clearly had won and envisioned photos of the anti-antiwar protester making the front pages of the Los Angeles Times.
It turned out that the protesters were not marching against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as he originally surmised, but against the abduction of children to fight wars in Uganda and the Congo. Though Breitbart's apology was gracious, he makes clear that he would have no problems ruining dinner for his wife and other restaurant patrons if those other antiwar activists needed to be put in their place.
In a piece last year for New York Observer, writer Spencer Morgan managed to make Breitbart look crazy simply by following him around a few conservative social gatherings and quoting him at length. After Breitbart went on for hundreds of words about how "uninteresting" Hollywood is, and he declared that sex with Maggie Gyllenhaal would "almost disgust me," Morgan described him this way:
Mr. Breitbart grew up in Los Angeles. His father owned a restaurant, mom was a bank executive. At Brentwood High School he watched administration types socialize with certain parents in the entertainment industry. He got C's, played baseball, was a class clown, but hung out with the smart kids. He always suspected that school had been against him, a conspiracy theory that was eventually confirmed by a friend's mom who confessed to him that the principal had called her into his office to turn her against the young Breitbart. This, he says, was the beginning of a lifelong crusade against bullies.
I'm guessing that principal was a liberal, and perhaps even a black lesbian multiculturalist.
Leo Laporte is Bleeping Sick of Michael Arrington's Bleep
There was some unexpected drama this weekend when Leo Laporte, a longtime technology journalist well known for his work on TechTV, flipped out during a live Internet broadcast after his integrity was questioned by TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington.
Laporte has a reputation for being genial and non-confrontational, making it all the more amusing to see him drop a bunch of F bombs and kick the entire Gillmor Gang show off the air. After Arrington apologized the two mended fences, but I'm posting the video here to ask a broader question about how people react when they're the target of a tirade like this.
When someone you think of as a friend unloads on you in a moment of anger, itemizing the accumulated list of things that bleeping bleep them the bleep off motherbleeper, in most cases you probably make nice-nice with them later. Water under the bridge. Let bygones be bygones. Peace in our time.
But it's not like you forget the things that were said when the rage knob was dialed up to 11. So as you go forward in the relationship, do you really write off the comments as the product of a fit of anger? I think that most people go through life being nice to a bunch of people they don't like, because the cost of being candid is usually higher than the benefit of telling them off. This is particularly true at a workplace or another professional environment.
As nice as Laporte is reputed to be, if I'm Arrington I would not let the guy take me fishing out on Lake Tahoe.
P.s. If you're reading this and we're not strangers, do not interpret this blog post to mean that I'm hiding the fact that I do not like you. We're totally BFFs.
Teach Myself Novel Writing in 73 Days
I recently finished the first draft of Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours, the 22nd book on computer programming and web publishing that I've written in the past 13 years. The book comes out in September -- buy early and often.
I decided while working on the book that my next writing project would be a novel.
I've never written a novel before, so I sit down to work each morning with absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing. I recommend the experience highly -- when I was in my 20s, attempting things I didn't know how to do was second nature. That's how I got my first girlfriend, my first job, my first wife, my first house, and back on topic, my first computer book writing assignment. I was doing copy editing for Sams Publishing in 1995 as a freelancer, and a manuscript I was reviewing required so many edits I decided it would be faster to write books myself (I did not want for ego). So I pitched myself as an author to Mark Taber at Sams, got a couple chapter assignments, and moved up to books. I didn't know back then how much I didn't know, so I could tout my mad authoring skills to Taber without reservation.
Now that I'm in my 40s, I find myself sticking to the road more traveled. I do not as a rule enjoy growth experiences.
The novel I'm writing is a thriller about nuclear terrorism. I can't reveal more about the plot, because I'm afraid that if I do, it will completely remove my motivation to actually write the book. I began by outlining the story in full and have written a prologue and the first two chapters at a speed of around 1,300 words a day. At that rate, I will have completed a 100,000-word novel in around 73 days.
Please don't take my advice that a novel should be 100,000 words long. I don't know what I'm doing.
Groups That Pursued Tiller Share Blame for His Murder
With the murder Sunday of George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas, doctor who performed abortions, some anti-abortion groups that targeted Tiller's clinic, home and church for protest have moved swiftly to distance themselves from the killing. Jenn Giroux, the executive director of Women Influencing the Nation, posted this message on the group's web site:
Women Influencing the Nation condemns all form of murder. The murder of George Tiller is in direct contradiction with the beliefs and morals embraced by those of us who believe that every life is precious in the eyes of God and no individual has the right to take the life of another. We encourage everyone to pray for the repose of Dr. Tiller's soul.
Scott Roeder, the suspect in Tiller's murder, visited the group's web site ChargeTiller.Com, which led a petition drive calling for criminal charges against Tiller for two years. Roeder posted the following message on the site Sept. 3, 2007, according to the Wichita Eagle:
It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the 'lawlessness' which is spoken of in the Bible," it said. "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation.
Giroux's site described the doctor as "Tiller the Killer" and "the most notorious late term abortionist in the nation." The site's home page made the false claim that he was performing illegal abortions and had bribed Kansas government officials to get away with it:
Tiller has literally committed thousands of illegal late term abortions. Who is continuing to investigate that? Final note: Don't be surprised to see Tiller get off. Keep in mind that Tiller poured millions of dollars into getting this Attorney General's office elected to protect him. Do we really think that they will now agressively prosecute?
These quotes come from cached copies of the Charge Tiller web site, which was taken offline after Tiller was shot to death at his church. Giroux's a registered nurse and mother of nine who traveled from her Ohio home to Kansas to speak at legislative hearings urging his prosecution.
Tiller's abortion services were legal in Kansas, as demonstrated by his March acquittal on 19 misdemeanor charges related to abortions. The doctor was one of the only providers of late-term abortions in the U.S. because of anti-abortion activists who harass doctors at work, home and elsewhere. His clinic had been attacked by a bomb and he was shot twice in 1993, so activists like Giroux had to know that he could be the target of violence again.
Anti-abortion groups that go after individual doctors with rhetoric as strong as Giroux's share responsibility for his death. When you tell people that a doctor is committing murder and has bribed government officials to escape prosecution, you're encouraging people like Tiller's murderer to view violence as a justifiable act. Anti-abortion activists know this. Since 1993, there have been 14 attempted murders of abortion providers, 13 bombings of medical care locations, and now two doctors killed.
No matter how you feel about abortion, you should recognize that protests against doctors at their hospitals and homes are a form of political violence intended to stop Americans from engaging in a legal activity. If Giroux is genuinely remorseful about Tiller's murder, her group should repudiate the practice of going after individual abortion doctors the way they pursued Tiller.
Advanta Closes One Million Credit Card Accounts
Advanta, a credit card provider for small businesses, announced today that it is shutting down all one million of its customer accounts on May 30. As a longtime customer I was told today via email that I must stop using the cards in four days. The bank has reassured me, however, that I may keep paying the bill after that date. "You may continue to pay down your account balance over time, as allowed under your Advanta Business Card Agreement," the email states. Since Advanta has been jacking up interest rates like crazy lately, as the Los Angeles Times reports, it would probably help the company if I took as long as possible to pay the remaining balance.
I've been relying on Advanta for day-to-day expenditures while running World Readable, my network of web sites. I fortunately have a second credit card, which I set up a while back when poppa needed two high-definition TVs. I should be able to switch all of my recurring charges for the business to that account.
Because Advanta provided almost no notice, I've been scrambling today to download all of my transactions and billing statements, which I need for tax purposes. Because there are one million people with a compelling reason to be using its web site today, Advanta.Com has been crashing worse than our country's financial system. At the moment, the site says that I owe a balance of "NaN" dollars in my account. NaN is a constant value that means "not a number" in several programming languages, including PHP, JavaScript and Visual Basic. It could be worse -- there's also a constant called Infinity.
The weblog Consumerist broke this story eight days ago and provides a followup explaining why the company is in such big trouble:
Advanta's customers defaulted last month at a rate of 20.15 percent, compared with 17.31 percent in March, the company said Monday in a regulatory filing related to the Advanta Business Card Master Trust, which bundles Advanta's small-business loans for sale to investors.
Outstanding credit-card balances at the end of April were $4.5 billion.
I know one of the disgruntled Advanta customers quoted by the LA Times:
Television writer and producer Bill Taub, president of Jabberwock Corp. of Los Angeles, didn't notice for four months that the interest rate on his Advanta small-business credit card had jumped to 19.99% from 7.99%. A call to customer service got it dropped to 10.99%, but he said his request for a refund was refused.
"That was outrageous," said Taub, whose TV credits include episodes of Hollywood Babylon and Relic Hunter. He hadn't yet heard that Pennsylvania-based Advanta Corp., which has been hit with rising losses in its portfolio, won't allow any of its small-business customers to put new charges on their cards after June 10.
Taub and I worked briefly together in 1994 for Zing Systems, an interactive TV venture based in Denver that went bankrupt years before banks and insurance companies made it cool.
The Case of Ann Landers' Box and the Naked Man
A question this week from Annie's Mailbox, the advice column written by the editors of Ann Landers:
Dear Annie:
I am 23 years old and a virgin. I have never seen a naked man in my life because I believe virginity should be kept until marriage. The other day I went with my sister to watch my nephew's baseball game. He plays on a field that is uphill, so you can see the backyards of some of the houses across the street. My nephew had heard from his friends that one of the men in those yards sits naked in his hot tub. I always assumed this wasn't true.
When I got to the game, I instantly remembered those rumors. I didn't intend to be a Peeping Tom, but I looked around and saw a man in a hot tub. I assumed this was the guy, so I kept watching. Five minutes later, he got out of the hot tub and really was naked. I instantly got a headache and my eyes burned. I want to do something to prevent children from seeing him. I know he was in his own backyard, but you could see him clearly from the field. Would that count as public nudity? Do you think I should report him?
-- Scarred for Life
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