Bloggasm

David Zincavage: I am an aging boomer (who was at Woodstock), born in deer hunter country in Pennsylvania. I went to college, and lived most of my adult life, in New England. I am currently (temporarily) located in San Francisco. Married once with no children. I have run small IT, real estate, and business services companies, but prefer to think of myself as a sportsman and dilettante. My publications have been on topics asssociated with the history of the literature of the field sports, and have appeared in small, and very expensive, editions in the United States and Britain. I am working on a book on the field sports (hunting, angling, coursing, falconry) in the Middle Ages for an academic publisher.

A little while ago, we began having some traffic on my college class listserv in connection with an upcoming reunion. The presidential campaign was on, my class is full of veterans of the Vietnam Anti-War Movement, and I was soon arguing politics regularly via email. Having developed a morning habit of forwarding editorials, news stories, and amusing items from the web to classmates and other friends, I realized that I was essentially already blogging. It crossed my mind that it might be more considerate of me to go private and make reading my daily postings a voluntary proposition, and all we writers are vain and desire more readers anyway, so I was intending to start my own blog one of these days, as soon as I had more time… after I had made more progress on a book project with a looming deadline. But the indictment of Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby lit my fuse. I knew I was going to be posting my opinions on that subject in some volume, come what may, so I decided to get myself a few more readers. I started Never Yet Melted on October 29th.

Simon Owens: Let’s start it off with a potentially loaded question: Which liberal bloggers do you think create the most spin?

DZ: Daily Kos, Eschaton, Talking Points Memo,Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, Wonkette, Democratic Underground, Kausfiles.

SO: And if you had to pick a liberal blogger to label a worthy adversary, which blogger would that be?

DZ: I haven’t got a lot of respect for most people on the left. I’d be inclined to pick John Cole (Balloon Juice) or Andrew Sullivan, who have peculiar combinations of good and bad, left and right positions, and are smarter than the pure lefties.

SO: In which realm do you think George Bush is more successful: foreign or homeland policy?

DZ: He’s clearly much more successful in foreign policy, where he has, at least, succeeded in conquering, and occupying, two hostile Middle Eastern countries. We should probably also classify the administration’s success in preventing any post-9/11 incidents of mass terrorism on US soil as a deeply significant success in the category of foreign policy.

Obviously, the Congressional democrat minority has succeeded, by resorting to the use of the filibuster in the Senate on every significantly disputed item on the legislative agenda, in stopping any major domestic changes (tax cuts, Social Security reform) proposed by the administration. I personally think George W. Bush has been too timid, too reluctant to take bold steps in both areas, but I will admit that for a such a moderate Republican president, he has a remarkable gift for agitating the left and making it unhappy. It is that specific feature of George W. Bush’s leadership, which I most admire, and it is really only his capacity to cause leftists to seethe in rage and emit a fine spray of saliva when they talk about him, which truly endears George W. Bush to me.

SO: Have you ever been called out and/or had to correct an incorrect statement on your blog?

DZ: One does try to be careful. I normally avoid saying things I can’t fact check. In the matter of Valerie Plame, on 12/14, I published a posting in which I argued that she had to have been an analyst, since she was known to have been working in the Counterproliferation Center, and was therefore not an officer of the Directorate of Operations. I thought I was on safe ground, but a commenter, who signed himself “Charles Peirce,” wrote in and pointed out a published article, indicating that she had served abroad years ago, in the early1990s, in a covert capacity as a Non-Official Cover (NOC) operative. I re-wrote the posting, quoting and acknowledging “Charles Peirce.” Curiously, the comment then vanished. I didn’t delete it, so I assume its author did.

If I ever find myself to be mistaken, I will certainly make corrections.

SO: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

DZ: I find it impossible to avoid to making choices which must be nearly obvious. Little Green Footballs, Power Line, Belmont Club, Michelle Malkin, Instapundit all reside in a blog category of mine, taken from an earlier browser bookmark category, titled Essential Blogs. Now that I’m blogging (and trying to do it myself), btw, I perceive Glenn Reynolds’ genius as an aggregator in a far more vivid light than ever before. There are good reasons he gets those 150,000+ hits per diem.

You can find Never Yelt Melted over here