Bloggasm

Hey Jonah,

You know that “MIT study” that you cite in your column titled “Why we need nukes and Gitmo“? You know, the one that says that homeless people supposedly have twice the global footprint than average? You do know that that wasn’t an MIT study at all but instead was a class project done by a bunch of MIT undergraduates? And that it included in its calculations the carbon footprint of the entire US infrastructure and just basically divided it by the number of US citizens, rather than actually determining the carbon footprint of homeless people?

If you ever need someone really good at Google searches to fact check your articles for you, you can always forward them to me.

Take care,
Simon

Kenneth,

I just read your article about Polar Bears, and came across this line:

“In October 2007, NASA announced the results of an in-depth study of Arctic sea-ice melting and found that what has caused the unusually large melting seen in the last eight years was not greenhouse gas-induced global warming.”

Wouldn’t you say this is fairly disingenuous, considering that “greenhouse gas-induced global warming” was never once mentioned in the NASA press release you cite? A person reading that paragraph in your piece would think that the NASA study addressed green-house gases and concluded that they had nothing to do with the ice melting. The press release does not really address what is causing the wind patterns, and whether they have been caused by green-house gases. In fact the release attributes the patterns to “Unusual atmospheric conditions.”

How familiar are you with the cause of wind patterns? How familiar are you with the effects of atmospheric temperature on wind?

What do you have a degree in?

Why do you cite mostly news reports in your study, rather than peer-reviewed literature?

–Simon

Last week I published a study showing that four major conservative blogs — michellemalkin.com, redstate.com, littlegreenfootballs.com, and powerlineblog.com — focus almost entirely on non-policy issues in their Obama coverage. Instead, they focused largely on guilt-by-association stories by hyping every controversial figure even vaguely tied to Obama. For instance, they published dozens of posts criticizing Obama for serving on a few panels with Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers (even though Ayers wasn’t a member of the campaign) and the fact that Hamas had issued a quasi endorsement for Obama.

Over the weekend, Newsweek broke a major story that McCain’s handpicked choice to manage the GOP convention this summer is lobbyist Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma’s repressive regime. It has also been revealed that Doug Davenport, a regional campaign manager for McCain, was a lobbyist at the same firm who worked directly on the Myanmar account during 2002.

In the short span that the Newsweek article has been online, it has become one of the most widely linked news articles on the web.

But guess who’s missing from that long list of blogs who have addressed the article? You guessed it, the four blogs in my study. The blogs that went to any length to launch guilt-by-association attacks on Obama for people who weren’t even involved in his campaign (Ayers). Now here we learn that McCain’s hand-picked manager of the GOP convention (which is a metaphorical representation of the entire Republican party) and one of his regional managers were lobbyist trying to spruce up the image of a repressive regime that is currently getting a lot of negative news coverage, and not a single one of these blogs think it worth mentioning?

Sorry guys, you make the rules. Now it’s time to play by them.

It’s been over 24 hours since the story broke. Let’s see how long it takes them to address it, if ever.

Updated below

In a recent post criticizing blogger Michelle Malkin, I said that she “will stop at nothing to drag her opponents through the mud, often at the expense of actual facts.” And then, once she’s been caught in an error, “she spins her way into oblivion by backtracking on just about every incorrect claim she had made.”

To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at Malkin’s “lead story” for today, a post titled “Question of the Day: Where did the DNC get its IED footage?”

It hit the web at 11:43 a.m., and highlights a recent advertisement made by the DNC that shows a very brief (less than half a second) clip of a bomb going off near American soldiers. Malkin takes the clip and asks where the footage came from. She then favorably block quotes a source that accuses the DNC of getting the footage from terrorist jihadis “who videotape IED explosions that kill American combat troops. The jihadists place the video on the internet to tout their ‘kill Americans’ campaign success.”

After the block quote, Malkin writes, “they’re certainly dumb enough and indifferent enough to our men and women in uniform to incorporate jihadi propaganda into their campaign ads.”

Next, she posts an “update” at 11:56 a.m. claiming that the DNC got the footage not from a terrorist website but from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. She then asks where Moore got the footage from (thereby passing the ball to him) while also accusing the DNC of plagiarizing Moore.

And then finally, she posts a second “update” at 12:12 p.m. pointing out that the footage actually came from a network news source from right after the invasion.

The post then ends with a long quote that accuses the DNC of exploiting the images of soldiers being blown up for political gain.

So just to recap for those playing along at home, here’s the narrative that takes place on a single post over a span of 29 minutes and 500 words:

1. The DNC is using terrorist propaganda videos in advertisements to attack John McCain. 2. Actually, Michael Moore is using terrorist propaganda videos in advertisements to attack John McCain. Also, the DNC is plagiarizing Michael Moore by using footage without permission. 3. Actually, neither Michael Moore nor the DNC is using terrorist propaganda videos to attack John McCain. They were both using footage from a US news network. But that’s not the REAL issue here. The REAL issue is that they’re using videos of soldiers being blown up for their own political gain.

According to Malkin’s sitemeter stats, around 16,000 unique visitors went to her site during the hour in which this was posted. The time lapsed between the initial posting and the final update was about a half hour. So that means about 8,000 people visited her site in between the posting and the update, not counting all the RSS feed readers. Depending on the number of people who checked back at the site to see the new update, that means that as many as 8,000 people went out into the world today thinking the DNC is using terrorist video footage for its advertisements. And who knows how many people they will repeat this lie to.

And Michelle Malkin has the gall to criticize other news networks? Imagine if a mainstream news source had committed such an act targeting a conservative; she wouldn’t have stopped attacking them for weeks.

UPDATE: Surprise surprise. It turns out the footage came from Getty Images. Various reports show that it was licensed legally. So no copyright infringement and no terrorist propaganda video.

(Updated below)

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is pretty much the slime of the blogosphere, right up there with Perez Hilton. And I’m not just saying this just because of her political views, which are often nasty. Some of her blog posts, especially the ones that have lots of updates, are almost completely unreadable. She doesn’t comprehend that to understand the update we have to know what the post is about — she throws them in haphazardly and then sprinkles the post with links without giving indication of where they’re leading. I am utterly perplexed as to how she has become a popular blogger and can only conclude that she benefits from her frequent appearances in mainstream media outlets like Fox and the echo-chamber quality of the conservative blogosphere.

Given this, I’m seriously confused as to why possibly the best magazine publishing today, The New Yorker, wanted to write a profile on her. Granted, I don’t doubt for a second that the magazine would have taken plenty of swipes at her — possibly even shredding her to bits — but why even give her the satisfaction of devoting 10,000 words about her so that she can go run to her fellow bloggers and whine about her unfair treatment. Here’s an email exchange between her and staff writer Rebecca Mead:

Dear Michelle Malkin,

I’m a staff writer at the New Yorker, and I’m eager to write a profile of you for the magazine. I’ve been reading and watching with interest your commentary on the election, and — particularly with McCain rising — I think this could be a great time to look at your work and career and influence. I’d hope to come and spend some time talking with you, and watching you do what you do. Is there a number at which I could reach you to talk about this further? You can email me at this address or call me at [redacted].

Looking forward to speaking with you,

Rebecca Mead

*

Dear Patricia Jackson,

I’m a staff writer at the New Yorker and am trying to get in touch with Michelle Malkin, with a view to writing a profile of her for the magazine. Can you let me know the best way to reach her, or put me in touch with her?

Thanks,

Rebecca Mead
[phone number redacted]

*

I’ve got a mssg from Rebecca Mead of the New Yorker looking for your # — is there one I should give her?

– Mark Cunningham
Oped editor
NYPost
[phone number redacted]

*

Dear Michelle Malkin,

I am the editor of The New Yorker magazine, and I believe that you have
received some sort of contact from our office, but I just wanted to assure
you that our desire to write about you is serious and genuine. I can be
reached through email above or [phone number redacted].

Best regards,
David Remnick

*

On 2/16/08, Michelle Malkin wrote:

Thanks.

*

Dear Ms. Malkin, “Thanks…” but can we talk? I am at home at [phone number redacted]. Best, David Remnick

*

Dear Mr. Remnick,

Again, thank you for your reassurance that your magazine’s “desire to write about” my work “is serious and genuine.” I have no doubt that your writer is serious and that your interest in printing some sort of profile for your audience is genuine.

The question is: Toward what end?

No disrespect to you and your august publication (of which my beloved in-laws are longtime subscribers), but I have neither the time nor inclination to sit down with your staff Jane Goodall and serve as an anthropological specimen for The New Yorker’s readership. If I want to play ape for amusement, I’ll do it for my kids.

Best,
Michelle

I find it especially funny that she tries to take swipes at Mead, even though she’s not half the journalist Mead is. It’s because she knows that Mead will actually ask her hard questions, unlike the folks who wrote a puff profile piece about her at The Baltimore Sun.

Oh well, it’s not like this should actually cause Mead to abandon writing a profile — she can just do a write-around. This would be great because write-arounds are often much more harsh and blunt on the profile subject.

UPDATE: Note to Michelle Malkin. If you put quotes around a word, for instance, the word “scoop,” it’s usually a good idea to make sure that the person you’re targeting actually said the word. Otherwise it pretty much ruins the entire premise of your blog post. I find it also funny that she insinuates that I was “ripping off emails” by posting them and not providing a link. I find this funny because I found out about those emails through this post where she heavily block quotes a Politico story while expressly refusing to link to it. Better luck next time.

UPDATE 2: Below you’ll find a screen shot of what Malkin would call “blogging.” Yes, that’s the subject line of her blog post. No, Malkin doesn’t understand the basic concept of readability.

I’m certainly not the first one to ask this question: If either Obama or Clinton had claimed — on four separate occasions — that Shiite-led Iran was taking in and training Sunni-led Al Qaeda, wouldn’t it be played out over and over on an endless loop in mainstream media outlets?

Yet when McCain does this, not only does the media barely cover it, the reporters start making excuses for him when they do mention it. This is absolutely sickening, especially as the press — who don’t even try to hide the fact that they’ve been courting McCain — paints him as a foreign policy expert.

He just can’t seem to catch a break:

His first column for The New York Times’ op-ed page last Monday held a major attribution “error”, and then the paper’s public editor called his hiring a “mistake.” Now a key claim in William Kristol’s second column for the paper has been undercut by a news article at the Times a few hours later.

Maybe three times a charm? If a clock can be right two times a day, then I’m sure he can get something right in his third column.