Monthly Archives: July 2010

Bloggingheads-ganza: The Intentional Idiocy of Byron York

Martin Schneider writes:
A few days ago Timothy Noah of Slate and conservative writer Byron York engaged in a Bloggingheads.tv “diavlog,” as they are called.
What to do when you are an “intelligent” conservative confronted with the proposition that FOX News is essentially a bunch of partisan liars whose work cannot be taken seriously? I don’t know—that’s not my problem. Byron York doesn’t handle it a whole lot better:

Here’s my little recap:
York: The New York Times is afraid of the power of FOX News and conservative talk radio, so it compensates for that power by forcing inflammatory to remain in a “freak show” zone of non-mainstream stories.
Noah: Couldn’t it just be that FOX News sucks?
York: Oh, no, not at all! There are terrific stories that FOX is reporting all the time that the Times ignores. For example, some NASA official said something nice about Muslims—and Obama maybe sort of agreed with him! Why is this not a major story in the New York Times??
Noah: Uh, why is that a story? Wouldn’t it be a story if a NASA official said something mean about Muslims?
York: I don’t know, it seemed like a pretty smoking story to me.
What my little dramedy above cannot express is the sheer number of boring seconds York, in his slow-talking way, dedicates to this utter non-story. Anything better than actually own up to the mendacious ways of FOX News.
A few minutes later, York mentions a silly comment on JournoList by Spencer Ackerman to the effect that, in the wake of the Rev. Wright problems Obama was facing in early 2008, that liberals should just pick conservatives at random and accuse them of racism. Noah says, basically, “Well okay, but it’s not like he acted on it.” York’s response to this is priceless, right at the 34-minute mark: “Well, people on the right believe that they have been accused of racism, on a number of occasions!” Really! Conservatives feel that they have been accused of racism…. why is that, do you think?
To this, Noah says, rather deliciously, that you’ve got a few things going on there, the original question was whether Ackerman did anything—he didn’t—and anyway muddying the issue is that, basically, conservatives do a lot of racist things. So there’s that. See for yourself:

The obtuseness on display here is fairly staggering. The coalition that makes up the Republican Party is structured around reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. That’s just Politics 101. If York thinks that racism is distributed equally across the political spectrum, he’s not qualified to write about politics for a living, period. So my conclusion is that he is lying.
One last thing. Towards the end they’re discussing the unemployment benefits extension that the Republicans blocked last week. I think nothing can describe current conservative obtuseness with respect to important policy issues than York’s insistance, with the country facing serious unemployment problems and possibly a double dip recession, that there’s a serious risk in creating a “dole” and making unemployment a permanent condition for many Americans.
That’s right: You can talk to conservatives all you want about the miseries of unemployment and the benefits of softening those miseries—conservatives aren’t interested in that! It’s much too satisfying to wag a scolding finger and imply that some minor negative externalities outweigh that positive good. That’s as good as conservatives get—Byron York is probably a nice guy, and he’s not dumb. He’s about as good as it gets, quite seriously. And he cannot be made to care about treating unemployed people well.
Noah is terrific again in just not buying into any of York’s nonsense. Noah admits that some studies have shown a small effect of the type York has mentioned. York says, Well, shouldn’t that be taken into account? And Noah says, No, it shouldn’t!

James Sturm’s Online Hiatus: Essential Online Reading

Martin Schneider writes:
I just stumbled on James Sturm’s experiment on Slate involving staying off the Internet for a few weeks and seeing what happens.
The results have been marvelous, witty, wise, insightful, hilarious, and resonant—it’s one of the best things I’ve seen in weeks. I think just about everyone would find a point of access here; that’s one of the great things about it. I’m going to embed a few of my favorite panels and then leave you to read it.

There are eight installments; this is the first.

The New Republic: Web 2.0 Fail

Martin Schneider writes:
During the World Cup, The New Republic had a pretty cool blog dedicated to the tournament, as they had in 2006. It was a fun, eclectic blog, and I enjoyed it a lot. I even wrote a post about Luke Dempsey’s brilliant found poem.
There were a few times I wanted to chime in a comment or two, as I often do elsewhere in the blogosphere. Much to my surprise, the site demanded that I log in before posting—not with my www.tnr.com account username—which would be fine—but with my New Republic magazine subscription account username.
That’s right: if you want to write “first!” in a TNR blog comment thread, you’re going to have to buy 20 issues of the magazine. For the record, the page they send you to is here.
Does that business model remind you of anything? The year 2000, maybe?*
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*I’m sorry if this is coming off as harsh, but it’s really meant as tough love. I know it’s a bad environment for magazines right now. But TNR pays really well-qualified people to blog for them, and those blogs are pretty awesome, and stuff like this just ensures that the money, time, and energy spent developing those blogs will not attract permanent users.**
** Could it be a browser issue? A cookie issue?

Who Will Win the Punctuation Popularity Contest?

Emily Gordon writes:
A few stars–and we don’t mean asterisks–are emerging in our punctuation-addressing contest to win Ben Greenman’s new book, What He’s Poised to Do. Here are the rankings of letter recipients so far, out of 82 entries and counting. What does this say about these marks, or about us as a society? We don’t know. All we know is, some of these little symbols are coming home with an armful of valentines (and a little hate mail), and some are Charlie Brown, weeping into their sandwiches. If you’re for the underdog, as we generally are, take a moment to send a note to, say, the solitary slash, or, for that matter, the ubiquitous but apparently invisible backslash. Send a salami to your manicule in the army! Keep those cards and letters coming.
The current rankings (to be updated frequently for those placing bets):
Ellipsis: 10
Semicolon (which has withstood some harsh attacks in the past): 8
Apostrophe: 7
Exclamation Point: 7
At sign: 3
Ampersand: 3
Asterisk: 3
Colon: 3
Parentheses: 3
Period: 5
em dash: 2
Grawlix: 2
Interrobang: 2
Manicule: 2
Question Mark: 2
Tilde: 2

Tied with one piece of fan (or unfan) mail each: acute accent, air quote, at-the-price-of, bracket, bullet, comma, curly quote, diaeresis, dollar sign en dash, exclaquestion mark, hyphen, interpunct, interroverti (formerly the inverted question mark), macron, percent sign, pilcrow, pound sign, quotation mark, smart quote, underline, Oxford comma.

No postcards, no wedding invitations, no junk mail, no J. Crew catalogue, no nuthin’: backslash, bullet, caret, copyright symbol, dagger, dash ditto mark, degree, ditto mark, double hyphen, inverted exclamation point, guillemets, lozenge, number sign (number sign! that’s the hashtag you use so shamelessly!), the “therefore” and “because” signs, slash, solidus, and tie.
Here are some stark and potentially upsetting images of those characters who have received no mail. Can you look into their fragile strokes and deny them the notice they crave?
\ • © ^ ° † ‡ « » ＝ 〃 ⁀ ◊ ∴ ∵ ¡ # / ⁄
Note: We realize that some of these marks are really less punctuation than they are typographical elements. But since they’re getting letters, or we think they should, we’re including them.

Pylcrafte: The Origins of “Pilcrow”

_Pollux writes_:
“Pilcrow” is a strange word for the punctuation mark used to signify new paragraphs. Lucy, one of the letter-writers in our ongoing contest in which you address the punctuation mark of your choice, had to look it up. We did, too. Where does it come from?
The words “pilcrow” and “paragraph” may have a common ancestor. Walter William Skeat, in his _Notes On English Etymology_ (1904), theorizes how the Latin _paragraphus_ (“paragraph”) eventually became the word “pilcrow.”
First, _paragraphus_ became corrupted as _paragraphe_.
_Paragraphe_ became _parragraffe_, to which an “excrescent t,” as Skeats calls it, was added at the end.
The variant _pargrafte_ appears in the _Ortus Vocabulorum_, a Latin-English dictionary printed in 1500 by the delightfully named Wynkyn de Worde. The variant _pylcrafte_ appears in another dictionary, the _Promptorium Parvulorum et Clericorum_.
So _pargrafte_ became _pylcrafte_.
“This is rather violent,” Skeats admits, but cites the change of r to l as a common occurrence in Indo-European languages. “Due to mere laziness,” _pylcraft_ or _pilcrafte_ became corrupted as “pilcrow.” Now you know!
Declare your love for the pilcrow “here.”:http://emdashes.com/2010/07/so-you-love-punctuation-write.php
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Resolved Answer: “I am obsessed with punctuation, why is this?”

Emily Gordon writes:
At Yahoo! Answers, the world is always ready with solutions, judgments, and miscellaneous gibberish. We would like to reassure “Lost.,” the writer of this lonely cry for help, that she is not alone, and should not despair! “What is causing this?” she writes. What’s causing this is a love for truth and beauty that will not be shattered by underminers, naysayers, and nattering nabobs of instant messaging, and nothing less. If only we could speak directly to her, we would invite her to enter our contest to write the best letter to a punctuation mark, which has 58 entries so far and counting.
Alas, she’s an anonymous anime illustration. In her honor, then, let’s write more letters to more punctuation marks, who are loved. Or sometimes (see below) threatened with legal action. You have till August 15 to enter, and, maybe, win Ben Greenman’s new book!