Hollywood, privilege and the fever swamp

Bear with me as I try to weave together three disparate threads into something cohesive.

Over the last few days, I’ve observed two similar phenomena. The first was Joel Stein’s column in the LA Times where he declared that the does not “support the troops.” It was a silly little piece written by a person with no expertise on the subject, but it caused quite a stir, exactly as intended.

The second phenomenon that I observed was a “denial-of-service” attack that was fomented against Kate O’Beirne’s book, and its listing on Amazon. A blog called firedoglake, largely written by a someone named Jane Hamsher, asked its readers to post as many negative reviews as they could, crowding out the legitimate reviews. They then aimed their love of free speech toward the Washington Post.

What do Joel and Jane have in common? Well, today, each of them was given an opportunity to make their points in a real live conversational forum. And in both cases, their heads were handed to them by more intelligent, informed counterparts.

Joel’s interview with Hugh Hewitt is here, and Jane’s forum with Glenn Reynolds and others is here. Read ‘em both.

Joel literally doesn’t have anything to say. And that’s fine, as Time’s Hollywood reporter, no serious person took him seriously.

In Jane’s case, she had one thing to say, really just an accusation, and one which was put aside quickly. She repeated it a few times, though on no occasion was it related to the question at hand. It was an embarrassing disaster.

Contrast this with Jane’s strident persona at firedoglake -- one of several blogs that Hugh Hewitt would describe as a fever swamp. The other that I’ve taken the time to read, and which is the prototype for the others, is DailyKos. (Fairness: LittleGreenFootballs is the right-of-center equivalent.)

What does Hugh mean by his term? Essentially, it is a blog which appeals to angry people who want to be around more angry people. I’ll spare you the many beyond-the-pale examples, others have covered that ground.

My main point about the fever swamp blogs: they exist for the self-interest of the people that run them.

Kos has parlayed his blog into a position of influence, and I am sure, decent income. Whether he means what he says is a distant second as to whether it increases his stature -- and he is honest about this.

Jane’s motives seem similar. I can’t imagine that anyone spends that much time stewing in their own juices. Rather, it’s an act that gathers attention from like-minded people. Perhaps a career can be built on it. Perhaps she can be the Courtney Love of the blogosphere.

Now, what’s the Hollywood part? Joel and Jane are privileged folks with backgrounds serving big media. Because they have some expertise in the means of distribution, they believe that we should find them interesting.

Read them or don’t, but do understand you are being played. If you must respond, model your approach after Hugh and Glenn -- thoughtful, informed, graceful to a fault and thoroughly unforgiving of idiocy.

Update: I promised myself not to link over to firedoglake, but this is hilarious. Jane apparently had no fewer than five people helping her in real time in the above chat, and still she got schooled. By contrast, Glenn appeared to be on his own and was blogging Wonkette simultaneously.

Comments

[rhodeymark]

Hi - nice blog but I wonder why you chose LGF to compare Kos to? Charles' posts and his commenters thoughts are two different animals. I don't see Charles himself as incendiary. Kos is more like Free Republic in format, but with more stream of unconciousness postings.