Michael Wolff of the Vanity Fair Roundtable offers an entertaining, somewhat pointed, and occasionally uncomfortable look at the structure and limitations of the liberal media universe vs. conservative alternative media. Actually, some of Wolff's barbed comments about liberal media styles struck rather close to home here on Winds of Change.NET.
"Now I am getting older, moving deeper, with my friend Atlas, into the middle ages. So it may be that I am missing the new trend. THE NEW EARNESTNEST the old New York magazine might have headlined it. MEET THE NEW OLD FOGIES. I'd have enjoyed a light essay on the subject by David Brooks.
Except that, judging by the commercial health of the liberal media — not least of all its systemic inability to get anybody under middle age interested in it — it may be that all the earnest, respectability-seeking old fogies are on the inside working for the liberal media while the wisecracking vulgarians are on the outside ignoring it."
Wolff uses the word "we" to describe the liberal media, and he certainly has part of the picture - when you ask which side seems to be having more fun these days, it's pretty clear. That's why Brian C. Anderson writes about South Park Conservatives.
As he wrtes about the world he lives in, Wolff also describes how status plays a role in the dynamics that he writes about - and we're talking status in a Bonfire of the Vanities kind of way. The part about getting his friend James Atlas into trouble when they publicly estimated that it took an annual income of $500,000 to be a Manhattan liberal may be the killer 'graph of the whole piece.
Vanity fair, indeed.
Meanwhile, here's another piece of the puzzle.
Brian C. Anderson was good enough to send this major South Park fan a copy of his book "South Park Conservatives," and the Vanity Fair article finds a lot of echoes with his excellent City-Journal piece on the new generation of campus conservatives. They were people who looked and sounded nothing like Bill Buckley - and nothing like the New York Times either.
A generation raised on South Park's wicked skewering of political correctness and idiocy isn't going to. A generation with more media choices than ever doesn't have to. And the market will correct the problem, given time. Hence the trends described in Anderson's book.
Vive le media libre.
UPDATE: Since the NYT forms part of both Wolff's criticism and mine, I offer its public editor's farewell "13 Things I meant to Write About But Never Did." Some directly hit what Wolff was talking about, while others are revealing or interesting in different (and in some cases, even positive) ways.
JUNE 8 UPDATE: Ed Driscoll adds more weight to all of this stuff with a series of thoughtful links around this theme.
You know, P.J. O'Rourke and John Hughes wrote a manifesto for South Park Conservatives twenty years before South Park. They called it "The Pants-Down Republicans". Also known as "Republicans Who'd Like to &%$# Jane Fonda".
Why aren't liberals funny?
A more specific (and financially pressing) concern would be: Why isn't Al Franken funny anymore?
Even more urgently: How much "funnier" is Howard Dean going to get, before they have to have him gunned down like Howard Beal in Network?
I should RTFL (Read The Fine Links) but I'll throw in a hit and run comment anyway: There are a whole segment of young folks who are neither South Park conservatives nor MSM consumers - they believe the MSM is a corporate sellout war mongering racist reactionary shillfest. Don't forget them.
lewy14: They aren't funny either. But they are somewhat colorful.
Ann Coulter
Hey, Im a soon to be 48 Year old foggy, and I grok the show.
Or does Ann not qualify due to a lack of Penis Jokes? ... oow wait, She writes for the other side dont she.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we must all become tax slaves, trade our cars for bikes, live in earth huts and study Marx and Chomsky and submit to a 80% world population reduction famine, or the planet is doomed, is not that great a material for humor, unless the advocates of the preceeding are the subjects therof.
Look at the great humor targets people made themselves attempting to discredit Anns Books.
And frankly, when I saw the mustard splotched M Moore screaming "Tear it all Down" waving the twin hotdogs ....
There is a reason a Characture of socialist weasel Moore or Kim Jong is funny while A Ted Rauls comic is not.
Perhaps they could hire that Sinead O'Connor to tear up more pictures of the pope.
The left have a history of tearing at the good and the decent, and it isnt funny.
In your haste to segue into your one topic of conversation, Raymond, you missed the best quotes from Coulter's unusually sober (for her) article.
While I'd normally echo Wolff on Michael Moore and say:
...if she can back up the following, it's serious commentary and damning as hell:
BTW, these stories are what made Matt Drudge the force he has become, with hundreds of thousands of readers per day. Fogies 0, wisecracking vulgarian 2.
Like I said, if this is true, the questions it raises are seismic.
Coulter has good ones every now and again. Heck, even lousy hitters can bat .200. And her off-the-scale snark (this article is actually very toned-down for her) might go over well with South Park Republican types, which would explain her draw on college campuses (OK, that and male hormones...)
Which may be a weakness in the South Park Conservative profile. Coulter is not the most careful source in the world, and there are lines that shouldn't be crossed without consequences. Throwing some boundaries out the window is an essenial survival skill in a politically correct culture. Throwing them all out the window is neither conservative nor a good idea.
Back up what ?
The story Drudge ran was that was #1 was directly about Newsweek spiking the story, it was Newsweek that had the story.
Wannita Broadrick, the woman that clinton raped while Atty General of arkansas, NBC Held the story untill after the impeachment, then it ran on Primetime, after that day the crickets chirped at the big three networks, not another thing was mentioned, it was if the entire presentation never took place.
If true ?
Says who ? where is the error ?
Her books are better on the facts than school science textbooks.
It seems to me you accept the FAKE fraud LIE of the conventional wisdom that she is loose with the facts, (FALSE) without having any evidence.
Her detractors are as well supported as the BusHitlers are, in fact the source for both is the same, and deserve the same consideration.
Before you begin the "If True" crap, perhaps a single presentable instance of dishonesty could come first.
[Marshal "Smokin Joe" Katzman: Raymond, this added nothing except a massive digression from the topic - and the 4 posts in a row was excessive. 3 are gone. Your point remains, and I'll answer it.]
Raymond,
I'm not fond of Ann Coulter, and I do not trust her - to a point where I will not cite her as fact without backup. This is a gestalt impression over time, and no, I am not obliged to justify it or spend my time researching links to show you why.
I will say that the article you referenced was a cut above other stuff I've seen from her, with a tighter argument than usual.
Dan Okrent is fearless. I dont think he's gonna be hitting the cocktail circuit in his retirement.
I would contest that they are a tighter argument than usual.
I would also say that it even as a singular example of leftist media being the leftist media, that it examples why we rail agaist the leftist media.
And does it not explain far more, NewWeek whaile used for example isnt the only example, and example the rule rather than the exception.
Which taken in total, might explain Why Ann might not be so over the top after all
Since when is objective reality over the top ?
And that reality being what it is, just might bring with it some heated, but well deserved invective.
What do they say about Ann that they dont say about Fox News for that matter.
And the deleted posts exampled outright media Lies, recent ones caught like the Ken Star interview.
Is Ann even within a galaxy of bald face LIE to that extent ? dowdification of quotes ?
So which deserves your smear, caught red handed leftist media, or Ann who none can find shit against ?
The End of Newsweek:
"The Day America Died" they call this week's cover story in the Japanese edition. The cover? An American flag in a trash can.
For some of us, there's more of Truth in that flag than in the "holy" Koran. Will we riot, and call for the murder of journalists, as so many Muslims around the world allowed themselves to do toward America at Hizb-ut Tahrir-led rallies?
From Grim's hall
And the original Riding Sun post has some updates.
So the same rag trashes america overseas, showing an Arafat style double speak.
So, we are supposed to suspend our value judgments for how many years ?
And is it possible Ann got her belly full, and made her judgment a bit earlier than some of the rest of us?
As you might be able to tell, part of my ethos is, if your right, well then your right, if you want to find fault, point out the error first, otherwise the debate is limited to what might be the proper verdict of the facts.