Outrage Monger

Jeff Jarvis finally cranked up the outrage machine enough to get back at me for the conservative blog taxonomy thing:

A certain blogger and comment troll I won’t name or link to - nya, nya — has been getting lots of links in the last two weeks with his list of ham-handed, sophomoric insults, some sexual, aimed at those he thinks are right-wing bloggers.

He then selectively quotes one part of one exchange I had in his comments to justify the troll remark, while not linking or including any other of my many comments on his site.

Another example of my "trollish" comments that he missed:

We won, destroyed the Viet Cong as a fighting force. The media called it a loss.

I think most people agree Tet was a military disaster for the VC. They expected the people of the RVN to rise up and - guess what - they didn't. The US won many set-piece engagements. There just weren't enough of them to make a difference. They preferred to fight as guerillas, which we never countered. They did develop counters to our tactics, though, like "hugging the belt". And all the competence in the world couldn't change the fact that our ally was the corrupt, inept army of a corrupt, inept government. The NVA/VC didn't beat us, and neither did the media. ARVN did.

And this, on the Rather mess:

The reaction to this admission seems disproportionate, Hubris. CBS screwed up in a major way, the screw-up was revealed, Rather has apologized (and I assume will again on-air) and the president of CBS news has apologized. Despite bald assertions by people like Misanthropyst, there is no evidence that CBS intentionally promoted bogus goods. When I mentioned other journalists who have been used to transmit lies above, rather than making a tu quoque argument, I was pointing out that stuff like this happens sometimes.

And:

My basic problem with the Blogs Triumphant thing is that I don't understand how it is we're supposed to be taking over reporting. Jarvis waves his hands around and says, "Open sesame", but it's not clear what that means. Disclose interview notes? Disclose draft stories that got spiked? All this stuff that was not verified or discovered to be actually false, given permanent life on the web? Two words: legal liability. Also, what's the relevance? Jarvis also goes on and on about "the news is a conversation", but you can only have so many conversations and actually understand anything, much less have time to do your job. When it comes down to it, you have to separate out the noise and decide for yourself if a fact is true. What's the alternative? Take a poll of commenters at Little Green Footballs?

Right now there's already a pretty good relationship between bloggers and journalists. They read us, we read them. Some of them are us. Maybe this publicity will get a few more to read us. But that's basically it. There is going to be no magical process where we all collect and report the news and it's a much better product. That's just a libertarian fantasy.

On media coverage of the political conventions:

We're talking about convention coverage. Jarvis blasts journalists for going to the Dem convention, because there is no news there, but praises bloggers who go. Why? Because Jarvis has it in for journalists. Well and good, but let's please make it consistent. If he thinks the conventions are unimportant, why should bloggers go? I say conventions are pure entertainment and theater, but let's not pretend that entertainment and theater are politically unimportant in the US. And it's strange to have Jarvis criticizing something for being about entertainment; after all, Jarvis' claim to fame is editing an entertainment, not news, publication.

On John le Carre:

He clearly believed in the moral equivalence of the west and the soviet union. He believed the soviet union had the economy they claimed and would eventually out produce the west.

On what do you base this?  He certainly seemed to consider the officers of western and Soviet intelligence services to be morally equivalent. As for the rest, he was clearly disappointed that the Soviets were thugs and tyrants, when the Russians had tried so hard to pull their society out of the Csarist muck. All along though, he was clear that they were thugs and tyrants, as a group. Of course, he could treat individual Russians as people, not as stereotypes.

Jarvis - I read those books. In all of them, everybody was vaguely venal. Nothing was ever stated as baldly as in that one quoted paragraph.

The entire plot of Honourable Schoolboy (1977) turns on a CIA betrayal of the Brits, in which they conspire with drug dealers and precipitate the murder of a heroic British agent. True, there isn't a single paragraph of such force as the one you quote in his work pre-Russia House.  But if he is being strident, it might be because he's unusually provoked.

Clearly, I have nothing of substance to say. 

Not that I am above a little invective:

Mithras believes that Spain deserves this because Aznar supported the US in Iraq

Christ on a broken crutch, can no one here follow a logical thread? 

Here we go.  Everyone ready?

1.  Jarvis avers the Spanish people are angry about the bombings.  Grrrr.  See how angry they are.
2. Jarvis implies that the Spanish people will now unite with, um, people like you in wanting to go invade whichever country Bush points to.
3. I point out that the Spanish people opposed the invasion of Iraq and, if the bombings are actually by al Qaeda, they will vote the government that brought them into that invasion out.

Follow so far?

Now, nothing I have said - and nothing the Spanish people have said - implies that Spain deserved to be bombed.  So just slap that thought out of your tiny minds.  Because there are just too many of you all for me to do it.

And how did the Spanish people end up voting?  Remind me.

Today Jarvis also says I am "the guy who tries to decree who’s liberal."   He's referring to this:

Jarvis's approach - you could call it his "marketing strategy" - to blogging is to take the position that he is "the liberal Democrat who criticizes other liberals and Democrats." That way, it shows his dedication to principle, his knowledgability of the subject, and purity of his motive. It's instant credibility. It also makes people madder quicker and obviously appeals to the enemies of liberalism as much as its friends, both of which are good for the hit count. It's like a family member tossing out verbal hand grenades at Christmas dinner, which I think someone else said in describing this whole discussion.

It might be this is all a cynical ploy on Jarvis's part. He might be a conservative Republican who calls himself a liberal Democrat (and adopts some "safe" critical opinions of some things conservatives and Republicans do) just to gain that "instant credibility." That has the elements of a joke: "See how stupid those liberals are? I can completely snow them!" I would just like to find out if he's laughing with us or at us.

You want to come sit at our Christmas dinner table? Prove you're cousin Jeff, not just some random guy off the street who is posing as him. You're a liberal? Show us your bona fides. That's all.

I still think the criticism obtains.  He never really had a reply to it.

Jarvis' problem, I think, is that he wants to define himself the way he wants, to maximize his popularity, and what I have written about him shows what a tap-dancer he is:

Here:

I'm a corporate lawyer. I know law pretty well. When I am responding to the comments of someone who is an actual expert in some other field, I try to be appropriately modest in my criticism. Unlike Jarvis, who feels free to call a middle east expert "pond scum" and someone who has long studied the CIA as engaging in "blood libel."

See, Jarvis's hysteria springs from the fact that he doesn't actually know anything about these topics, so he has to gin up an outrage angle and then work it, work it, work it. And when the people he is attacking respond to his rabid-squirrel act by patiently explaining what they said, he accuses them of being the hysterical ones (e.g., "sputtering, spitting, spewing, and spinning" - Jarvis also has this unfortunate love of alliteration, like an low-rent Bill Safire, but that's the subject of another post.)

Also:

I love this criticism, coming from the creator of Entertainment Weekly and the TV critic for TV Guide:

It is as if we have turned over the body politic to a People magazine mindset -- the dark side of People magazine: It's all about personality. It's predicated on the belief that a single famous person actually matters. We might as well pick our winner on American Idol, the way this is going.

So comical that a TV critic thinks politics is shallow.  It's like hearing from Courtney Love on the dangers of drug abuse.

Yes, let's consider the source.

Comments

[Kevin K.]

Nice work, Mithra. He completely side-stepped my comment in the post about you when he responded to me. I'm somewhat shocked that he didn't address white power boy at all, though:

The Democratic party is built on anti-white racism; without that it would collapse.

That's the core audience Jarvis has been carefully cultivating with all of those Instalanches and Malkinlanches. Let's face it, people aren't stopping by for the long-winded "citizen journalist" posts. You'd think he would've thrown a "damn straight" in the direction of the little fella. Or, conversely, if he really is the liberal he claims to be, a "what in the fuck are you talking about, David Duke?"

[Hal]

Carefully cultivating? It seems more instinctual than deliberate to me. Jeff's more of a wanna be groupie than a ring leader.

[Mithras]

Jeff's more of a wanna be groupie than a ring leader.

He is, but he's also clever. He knows marketing, and branding, and product positioning. Too bad he doesn't know honesty and integrity, too.

[Al]

Why do you even bother?

The business of Jarvis is promoting Jarvis. The guy is an old media whore who has seen the writing on the wall and is desperately grasping at straws in an attempt to remain relevant.

His only problem is he doesn't know which the way the wind is blowing and rather than being caught going in the wrong direction he plays both ends. He's Kos without the readership or intelligence and Charles Johnson without the courage and conviction required to pick a place and stay there. Jarvis defines mediocrity and despite his protestations to the contrary is one of the most politically correct bloggers out there.

Like Jeff often says, consider the source.

[Smug Canadian]

If I were a chick I wouldn't date a blogger if he were the last fecund male on the face of the earth.

[loser]

Wow, these blog pissing contests are boring, right though you may be, when you wrestle with a pig, you just get dirty and it annoys the pig.

btw, it's spelled "djinn".

[Norwegianity]

I am just appalled! Jeff Jarvis personally knew people who died on 9/11! Jeff Jarvis can NEVER be criticized — not ever!

[Hal]

He knows marketing, and branding, and product positioning.

I don't see much evidence of that. I'll admit he's fantastic at self promotion, a sort of self branding and he certainly positions himself as a product, but someone who has these skills usually has a track record of doing this for others, not just themselves.

Maybe I'm just missing it and he's got a track record a mile long...

[J Pierpont Flathead]

Jarvis banned me years ago for being a troll, using the work fuck in his comments and thereby harming his child, not posting under my own name, and actually while not nearly as clear or knowledgable as you, trying to participate in the debate.

I adopted Moses Wine a few weeks ago and was very polite and never trollish on Roger Simon's site, but he took only 10 days to ban me.

Jarvis' key is that he is an old boy in the old boy network of journalists. And by posing as lib that bites libs he makes a claim to objectivity. So few real journalists will smear him, and most will go to him for a quote.

But most of what he does is contradictory and hypocritical and nonsensical.

You do have him pegged, he is yet another blabbermouth that tries to authoritatively spew on any issue of the day, regardless of how little they know about it. Andrea Harris too.

[Paladin]

CBS screwed up in a major way, the screw-up was revealed, Rather has apologized (and I assume will again on-air) and the president of CBS news has apologized.

You mean unlike this

or

this

[WTF]

If you name your blog a term of endearment for your "vibrator" people might be inclined to make sexual suggestive comments and inyerendos.

[kth]

If you won't say it, I will: if you supported Bush's decision to invade Iraq, just at the moment that the inspectors were correctly declaring Iraq to be WMD-free, you aren't a liberal. End of story.

[WTF]

"btw, it's spelled "djinn"."

No. It's spelled "gin", loser.

We are not talking about Ali Baba, genies and magic lamps here.

It may have reference to a cotton gin.

[Kathleen]

clearly JJ doesn't actually know what a troll is. he should check out some liberal sites sometime. since he is such a liberal and all.

[Eligere]

Wow. My cat just tossed up something very like what remains of Jeff Jarvis. Better informed obviously.

Nice work. :-)

[Hubris]

Those threads made me teary-eyed with nostalgia. We used to really talk.

It's like I don't know you any more.

[Yossarian]

What kind of corporate lawyer doesn't support our preznit? You are a strange person, Mithras.

[djangone]

Is the comments section at Jarvis still filled with loons? It really doesn't reward being taken seriously. I remember 'Hubris' from my couple of weeks. Best of all was 'Kit' or 'Kat' or whatever her name was, who sauntered in with posts that resembled the addled jottings of a schizophrenic taped to a telephone pole.

Jarvis and his site aren't worth even a line of copy. He's a simpering coward, and he gets the comments he deserves.

[Randy Paul]

Re: Spain,

It wasn't just that they voted out the government that brought them into the war, but they voted out the government that then went on to lie about the cause of the bombing. So in other words, the Spaniards voted out a government that got caught in a lie (and btw, continues to try to link ETA to the 3/11 bombings).

Would that my fellow Americans had had the good sense to do the same last November.

[Hubris]

Hi, "djangone." I actually remember reaching some kind of mutual understanding with you. Try reaching through the archives to find where I was a "loon."

Don't be embarrassed just 'cause the kool kidz are watching. As I remember, while we were civil to each other, you were still totally badass. Really. Fierce.

[djangone]

Oh yeah, Hubris. I was probably thinking about someone named H0mi or god knows. Or is H0mi on my 'side?' The mists of time and all. Certainly there were about 20 loons for every one semi-decent commenter. I was more referring to Kat, who tends to stand out in my memory for her dementia.

[ahem]

Jarvis is good buddies with John Gibson at Faux News, and backed him to the hilt after the British TV regulators slapped Gibson down for lying through his fat ass. (Faux is broadcast on Murdoch's satellites in the UK: audience, approx. 12.)

[search engine]

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