The solution: More wingnut welfare. The problem: ??? [UPDATED]
When I graduated from college at the start of this decade, there were two things I never thought I would witness in my lifetime:
- The Red Sox winning the World Series.
- The election of a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency — a guy who would drive wingnuts so hilariously crazy that they would go on television and claim that he was speaking in a secret code to Muslims telling them that America was ready to submit to Sharia law.
Now I have seen both of these things in just under a decade and I feel strangely empty. Does my life still have purpose?
Oh well, I guess I still have Erick Erickson to laugh at. Check this out:
ABOVE: Erick “The Dim” EricksonRebuilding the Movement: Online Investment
Posted by Erick Erickson
We’ve talked a lot about rebuilding the party. Let’s talk instead about rebuilding the movement.
Every day in Washington, there is some right-wing group somewhere bemoaning the efforts of the right online. Sadly, for them and the rest of the right, their first thought is “let’s do it ourselves”, instead of “let’s invest in the existing talent.”
There’s a reason for this: the existing talent sucks. That’s why they’re bemoaning you. No smart lobbying group wants to pay you guys six figures to run a public relations campaign only to have it devolve into 50-page manifestos describing how Democrats hate black people because they nominated a black guy to run for president.
It’s often bemoaned on our side that the left is much further ahead online than the right. This is true. The left has larger blogs than the right, though I still think the right has many more sites than the left.
I.e., the left blogs are more widely-read, but the right has a bunch of crappy blogs written by guys living in Montana shacks who post from their dial-up connections.
One area where the left has done a much better job than the right online is investing in blogs as a component of left-wing activism.
On the right, Heritage has its blog. Club for Growth has its blog. MRC has its blog. The GOP has its blog. The list goes on and on and on. When the right wants to get online, each organization does its own thing. That’s just the way its done.
To be sure, on the left, there’s a bit of the same thing going on, but then you’ve got groups like Media Matters that function more or less to subsidize left-wing bloggers. Oh sure, they say they are more important than that, but they aren’t really.
Gavin adds: This is one of the things, yesterday evening, that made me extend past the lower right corner of the panel leaving just my shoes sticking up surrounded by a dust cloud, with a bubble-lettered “OOF” on top tapering rapidly back to a cornball vanishing point, if you know what that feels like.
Mr. Erickson is paid to do RedState by the company that bought it from him and the site’s other founders in late 2006 (the company being Eagle Publishing, also the parent company of Regnery and the Conservative Book Club). That job is one of a stupendous array of wingnut welfare opportunities subsidized by innumerable foundations, nonprofits, private companies, and occasionally single right-wing billionaries acting alone, that has created an entire worthless pundit class of know-nothing conservative me-toos and arguers — literally hundreds in number — who do nothing but gas off misinformedly and be sloppily wrong about everything in a certain, expected way, for which they’re rewarded in cash, fellowships, laundered cash via hugely overcompensated speaking gigs, gobstopping article fees, book contracts with thousands in guaranteed sales via Eagle Publishing’s buy-its-own-books-and-give-them-away scheme, rigged chances at the bestseller lists via the same, endowed chairs of X, board memberships, project funding, consulting fees, research grants, and probably old parchment maps with a dotted line leading to a big, fat ‘X’ where they can dig down three inches and find a chest of doubloons that was buried there for them that morning. Golden tickets to Wonka’s chocolate factory.
I mean, fine, I’m trying not to get too far into this, but but Media Matters does what, now? They subsidize whom, exactly? ‘Groups like Media Matters’ comprises what, Media Matters plus Imaginary Soros Thingy, plus aah-whatever-let’s-just-round-it-up?
Oh God, Erickson, why can’t I quit you?
More importantly, though, is the advertising component. What is the online advertising budget for Heritage? What about for AEI? What about for Americans for Tax Reform? Family Research Council? Leadership Institute? NFIB? NTU? National Right to Work? Club for Growth? The list goes on.
See, it’s happening again.
In the past few years, SEIU, AFL-CIO, NEA, DCCC, and a host of other left-wing organizations have been buying ads on left of center blogs keeping those blogs going — allowing the bloggers on the left some financial incentive to keep blogging for the left.
Yeah, billions of dollars in funding, a middle-class salary for me, but hey, no, what about some right-wing foundations that are blowing lots of money around, sure, like a giant leaf blower in a basketball court piled with money, but what about their online advertising budgets? No really, what about them, because I didn’t bother to find out? What about this one? What about this other one? The list of ones I am listing goes on.
And wait, OMG, since everything must involve an invidious comparison between the good-us-people and the everything-bad-them-people, some unions have blatantly bought ads on left-of-center blogs during the past few years, giving money to them — money to them. They use this money to keep blogging, yet we received none of it!
Pajamas Media cuts off its funding to a bunch of B-list right-blogs, and what, within a week, everybody is looking at everybody else and seeing a hot dog? Erickson actually does look a little like a giant hot dog. I’m not saying; I’m just saying.
[Gav out]
As someone who has made some small amount of money off blog ads over the years, let me assure you that I still have to work a full-time job. The “financial incentive” I have to keep blogging basically amounts to a six-pack of beer at the end of the week. It’s appreciated, sure, but it’s not something I can quit my job over.
Hell, Republicans are supposed to be smart business people, so take a hint: Put up an ad on a right wing blog to promote your business and you get to deduct the costs of advertising1. If you were to make a cash contribution, there would be no taxable benefit to you. If you are a doctor and you put an ad in the yellow pages, you deduct the cost as the cost of doing business. Same with a blog in your state. Same here at RedState.
In other words, “MORE WINGNUT WELFARE!!! NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW!!!! IF THIS KEEPS UP I MIGHT HAVE TO START LOOKING FOR REAL WORK!!!! AND I HAVE NO SKILLS!!!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAY-YELLLLLLLLLLLLP!!!!”
UPDATE: While mocking Erickson has provided me with a new feeling of purpose, this video is once again sapping my will to live:
)
(Via.)
And, I can’t give up my pajamas.
I watched the video without sound, and was left utterly baffled as to the point of the exercise. I did experience some slight nausea, as well as a funny feeling in the nether regions (not “tumescent” so much as “in full retreat”).
Is that what they were going for?
Erick Erickson has at least two de facto non-profit blogs, a job in government, and a law degree, all things the right wing heartily* admire. Woe to us if he and his conservative capitalist coterie** ever go Galt!
*well, “hardly” kind of sounds like “heartily,” anyway. I almost went for a sort of “admire to a fault/default” thing but meh.
**a French word meaning a small ilk: quarter hinds, little sons of biches.
Wuzza-wuzzup, loony libs? The Cool Coach has a new book out, published by Regnery Publishing! Suck on that, Sadly, D’oh! Just you wait…thousands will line up to buy Liars: How Loony Libs, Silly Socialists, Loser Lefties, And The Obummer Are Ruining America But Will Be Stopped By Boss Bobby Jindal And Super Sarah, The Power Palin! You can even get a two-pack with The Great One’s new book! Badoodle-boo-yeah!
Urban OUT.
Shorter Erick Erickfils:
Gentlemen, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!
There’s a reason for this: the existing talent sucks. That’s why they’re bemoaning you.
Brad, you could have ended the post right there.
These jackasses are the precise reason why the Republican party is about as irrelevant as, I don’t know, the Prohibition Party.
Wen ur man es en da Wite Howse an yoo loose dat an da Kongriss, ur doin et wrong!
Insult to injury- I saw more conservative ads at 538 and TPM during the election than liberal ones. I guess they know where value lies…
That pic of Eric has the pink flabby mattress-faced look I associate with one Doughy Pantload. Separated at birth??
I look forward to the lengthy NPR interview! Good luck!
To be sure, on the left, there’s a bit of the same thing going on, but then you’ve got groups like Media Matters that function more or less to subsidize left-wing bloggers. Oh sure, they say they are more important than that, but they aren’t really.
MEMO
TO: Self
In Re: Media Matters Subsidy
Please remember to send goons round to David Brock’s house, because he’s woefully late with this month’s check.
Erick Erickson has at least two de facto non-profit blogs, a job in government, and a law degree, all things the right wing heartily* admire. Woe to us if he and his conservative capitalist coterie** ever go Galt!
You laugh, but if he ever DID go Galt, I predict Sadly, No! would be hard-pressed to find a replacement source of equal buffoonery.
Mark my words, libbats, you’d be begging him to come back!
Please don’t mock Lost Vikings by likening it any of these rightwing shit-for-brains.
Even Olaf the Stout had better ideas than those people. And his ideas usually just involved eating something.
Republicans are supposed to be smart business people
Either they are, and that would explain why they won’t throw money at jackasses like Erickson; or they are not, which totally fucks the premise of Erickson’s argument.
How, exactly, does Media Matters “subsidize” liberal blogs?
Erick Erickson is a god-damned idiot. Also.
How, exactly, does Media Matters “subsidize” liberal blogs?
I gave that some thought, and the best I could come up with is that little widget that MMfA lets you post on your blog that directs traffic to them.
I don’t recall any subsidy scheme, but those are pretty ubiquitous in Blogtopia (© Skippy) and my guess is, Erickson has seen them all over, and figures we must be getting money from MMfA, instead of us giving over small chunks of our real estate in exchange for….um, well, nothing.
First thing I learned in my MBA program is that insulting your clients as stupid because they won’t buy your service (ads on Red Stupid in the above case) is a sure fire way to drum up business. Republican business genius in action.
And might I add it’s a damn good day to be a Vermonter.
Hm, maybe we should pull a “SadlyNaught,” and offer to buy up the ad space on his site?
Think of the cognitive dissonance that would cause.
I was saying ‘Booerickson’…
Apropos of nothing, the other day before I realized I had a conscience I had thought of creating a product comprised of some kind of edible fern (which do, in fact, have more chromosomes than us by a factor of several dozen) and sell it to wealthy Republicans as ‘The Miracle Potency Aid Obama/Barney Frank Doesn’t Want You To Spend Bailout Money On!!!’; it would (in addition to inscrutable gibberish claiming to be Taiwanese) involve the Potency Secrets of the Bell Curve, with the fundamental claim being that poor people’s obviously inferior food contains hidden chromosome enhancements that allow them to continue to breed at their obvious rapid pace.
The punchline is that, in addition to the promised cent of every dollar ordered that would go to the Brookings Institute or someone, everything outside the operating costs would go to the NAACP.
Kind of a way of reminding people that laetrile and most other big-name new-age horseshit was originally made mainstream by Birch Society wankers. But again, that was in the hour or so after I’ve decided to take a shower in which I am a Randian superman, not bogged down by morality or consent. This is why I try to remain filthy at all times.
Edroso has a post on yet another one of the Laz-E-Boy Viking’s ruminations. And he wonders why he still hasn’t gone pro.
“Subsidize”…
Erick, I do not think it means what you think it means.
I guess (and it’s only a guess) that Erick means Media Matters “subsidizes” liberal blogs by providing them with material. MM’s vast and bottomless coffers of Soros-cash allows them to do expensive investigative reporting, to provide subject matter for Left Blogtopia.
And since that’s all MM does, that means they’re not important.
Of course, back on Earth, MM simply listens for stupid wingnut talking points and memes being picked up by mainstream media outlets and calls them out on it when it happens. This is not a cash-intensive operation, Erick. All it requires is steely resolve and an iron-clad stomach to subject oneself to the insane babblings of the right-wing noise machine, and report on it.
Erick is now implying that Levi Johnson and his sister did the nasty:
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/04/06/levi-johnson-jumps-on-the-sarah-palin-gravy-train/
He’s a real fucking piece of work.
Erick Erickson has at least two de facto non-profit blogs, a job in government, and a law degree, all things the right wing heartily* admire. Woe to us if he and his conservative capitalist coterie** ever go Galt!
The blogs I’m aware of are Confessions of a Political Junkie, Peach Pundit, Blog Macon, and the big Red State. He also has columnist at the Macon Telegraph. And don’t forget the Twitter!
Erick Erickson has at least two de facto non-profit blogs, a job in government, and a law degree, all things the right wing heartily* admire. Woe to us if he and his conservative capitalist coterie** ever go Galt!
The blogs I’m aware of are Confessions of a Political Junkie, Peach Pundit, Blog Macon, and the big Red State. He also has column at the Macon Telegraph. And don’t forget the Twitter!
I am frankly disappointed in Erick and his lowly groveling for operating funds. Do you think JOHN GALT ever begged for money? I think not.
And I think it is an important point to be made in his comment section. Don’t you?
At least he hasn’t taken donations to put a hit on him yet. I imagine Malkin is gearing up for it – figures that’s what America’s hungry for after its long six weeks in the woods.
Yeah, baby! It looks like I already said that, but I got the big double post anyway!
I’m watching the MN ballot counting. Thye’re opening the “impropoerly rejected” ballots as determined by the Court. It’s running about 4 or 5 to 1 in Al’s favor.
Also, yay Vermont!
If you’ve got your Suck Button taped down at “10,” hoping out loud for hawt monster piles of easy cash via ads (in mid-recession no less) may be a symptom of unreasonable expectations.
Folks like He Who Is Red make me strongly suspect that “Peak Irony” is either mathematically impossible or equivalent to infinity.
One of my first (of many) “Sadly, No!” learning moments was going on wingnut blogs for the first time & being cyber-molested by the ophidian nightmare of Anne Coulter pop-ups … & savoring the lulz of seeing a girl I’m pretty certain is a porn-worker modelling for one of their unfunny tee-shirt ads.
Yes, Erick’s is a bold & cunning plan – because everyone loves ads so fucking much … nothing will make these pudspankers more popular faster, you betcha!
MMM, MOAR ADZ PLZ!
Shorter Erick Erickson: I can’t fail, I can only be failed.
Gosh, he was really relying on those Dr. Denton Media ads. Anyone taking bets on how long before he’ll a) Blame this on the Fairness Doctrine and b) Demand a government subsidy?
This is why we can’t quit Ericksod.
Oh lawzy I hope he never gives up dat bloggin.
Also, Franken now up by 280 votes. Net gain of ~60 so far.
I dreamed of a kind of Omnichord-like instrument that was all strum pads: there was an area of the pad that’d produce a normal chord and it’d get varied if you moved a particular direction in order to produce a mood. There were two moods I can remember trying: one I forget, the other was “Goat”.
That must make you feel awful sheepish.
That Sarah Palin video would have actually have been pretty good if they had gotten Isaac Hayes to sing the song.
Don’t knock Pajamas Media. They’ve got that ZoBama guy, and he’s awesome.
Incidentally, I have a theory about making blogging a lucrative enterprise and intend to try and work on it once I’m living somewhere less horrible and on my feet again. The main idea is a kind of blogging Topatoco, and given that I (a) am in a career arc that involves a decent amount of spare time and (b) have no real threat of winding up on the street in the event of financial ruin, I think the investment and risk are worth it – I’m just some pissant with a knack for dick jokes anyway.
Are you made of poison, Alec?
Wow. I never saw that video before. Thanks for nothing,.
Maybe this will make you feel better, Brad.
Yeah, I’d shag Sarah Palin.
Have I missed the point somewhere?
Pajamas Media cuts off its funding to a bunch of B-list right-blogs, and what, within a week, everybody is looking at everybody else and seeing a hot dog? Erickson actually does look a little like a giant hot dog. I’m not saying; I’m just saying.
And you, my fine fellow, are so going to Hell.
PeeJ, if you stoop to quoting Pippin again I will be compelled to go Galt — and I don’t mean McDermott.
And a licensed attorney.
“The “financial incentive” I have to keep blogging basically amounts to a six-pack of beer at the end of the week”
I bet if you didn’t drink those snotty, elitist, leftist microbrews you could get a 12 pack, perhaps even an 18 pack.
“If you are a doctor and you put an ad in the yellow pages, you deduct the cost as the cost of doing business. Same with a blog in your state. Same here at RedState.”
With this kind of logic, it’s no wonder advertisers avoid Red State and their Trike Farce.
Erick, doctors and many other business people advertise _locally_. They are not trying to generate business from the nationwide population that a blog can reach. And all those non-profit “think tanks” you list – just what would they be advertising? Face it, you’re asking for charity.
(which do, in fact, have more chromosomes than us by a factor of several dozen)
I’m thinking Erick might have one or two more than we do…
I bet if you didn’t drink those snotty, elitist, leftist microbrews you could get a 12 pack, perhaps even an 18 pack.
Or an eleventyoneone pack!
yeah, that was my guess too…but really, if this is true, wouldn’t the fact that erick and his fellow hotdogs are saying and doing these insane things to begin with actually make THEM most responsible for the vast left-wing conspiracy to lie around all day eating bonbons and swimming around in our money rooms while eagerly awaiting the promised beginning of america’s submission to the taliban?
ps: that video had me shaking my head in amazement for the full 3:02. WOW.
I can’t even fucking imagine the kind of business you’d get as a doctor advertising on Redstate. Are you looking to tell your audience you think the link between cholesterol and heart disease is crap? That you won’t take their insurance unless you can make 100% sure they’re not self-employing upper-middle-class SCHIP moochers? That God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and insulin shots? “What do you mean, ‘mold-borne illness’? Oh God, it’s another jihadi here here to destroy our property values with taqqiya and then dhimmitude, jizyah, and shahanshah! Someone get the epsom salts, I’m about to swoon!“
I still can’t decipher Gaffney’s code. I think my CRM-114 discriminator may have been broken.
Please don’t mock Lost Vikings by likening it any of these rightwing shit-for-brains.
And real Vikings would look at him, kind of go, “Phfftt,” and decide to use him for ballast.
Incidentally, the next time you run across one of these VDARE types, remind them that Virginia Dare was not the first white baby born on the North American continent; that singular honour belongs to Snorri Thorfinnson. (Knowing the average amount of brains one of those folks has, they’d rename their organisation SNORT.)
I can’t even fucking imagine the kind of business you’d get as a doctor advertising on Redstate.
“Now turn your head and cough.”
And real Vikings would look at him, kind of go, “Phfftt,” and decide to use him for ballast.
Noooooo, we have vooden holled sheeps! We vooden want da holl tew roat!
Candle vax, mebbe whale oil lemp.
Wayne Gretzky has a new book out?
Dover sends me spam:
the ophidian nightmare of Anne Coulter pop-ups
That brings certain scenes from Lair of the White Worm to mind.
Wouldn’t it be funny if someone got hold of the real Urban Meyer’s e-mail address and forwarded him all the posts that babble-boodle-doodle has been writing under his name?
Gaffney showed how it’s done. Did he answer one thing he was asked? No.
You get going on something and bang away at it, talk over the other people and pretend you can’t hear them. Acknowledge them occasionally, but get back onto the Main Theme.
BTW my suck button is stuck on eleventy. Jim for the win
Hahahahahahahahahaha…..hhh….hahahahahahah……..h.h.hah.h…ha…hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaha.a…..
…….hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahhahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa….
Erick actually raises an interesting point. Say you’re Richard Mellon Scaife, and you’re trying to prop up a failed ideology. Who do you dole out your cash to? Fox News and its sexagenarian demographic? Townhall and its endless ranks of George Will wannabees? No, you want the blogger with the tiny (but still large by wingnut standards) audience of cheeto-huffing basement dwellers who managed to get profiled in Newsweek a few months back. He’s the Wingnut of the Future because he’s hep to all that internet stuff. He’s the man standing athwart the infotainment superhighway yelling “Socialism!”
Give your money to Erick, Mr. Scaife! It’s the only way to rescue conservatism!
Are there any pictures of Palin where she doesn’t look like she’s forgotten her meds or is mildly concussed?
My favourite bit is the guns = freedom bit. Never forget They Hate Us for Our Freedoms. But they should have had her driving an SUV. And why were there no pictures of her praying or casting out witches?
i’m gonna be sick. srsly. [dry heave]
Someone get the epsom salts, I’m about to swoon!
How is a sitz bath going to help?
Frank Gaffney is a freakin’ strategic genius, if by genius one means a complete ignoramus. I mean, these guys are supposed to be the national security party? Wow.
Olaf’s in another timezone!
Aw, what a video. That’s what you get with the little program that comes with some Macs, right? You give it a pile of pictures and a song and tell it how long the song it, and it does the rest.
Looks like they just googled on “Sarah Palin,” and didn’t notice that some of the pictures are from that porn movie. They’re the ones with gravitas.
The sound track is really state-of-the-art too, the way they put her voice in the background a couple of times. I liked when she said, “But I really want to be a veterinarian, because I love children!”