At Rebecca's request, I'm addressing the online, latter day, Dylan. Don't expect this to be a regular thing. Let him play as stupid as he wants to be (with the same tired song). We link to the site for the archive. (And didn't Dylan promise he was packing it in? Remember big changes, months ago we were told 'big changes,' were in store and he'd be focusing on education?)
A few weeks back, I was playing with an entry called When Boring Met Nora . . . Because he had a snit fit over her picks for three who needed to be punished in 2000. There wasn't a way to make it funny. And I really don't want to do the daily response to our latter day Dylan. (When you see someone lose it each day, it's better just to ignore it.) I will note that there is only his opinion -- as always -- and that it's just so much fun to go after a woman.
Do you think he grasps that she's writing humorous pieces? I don't.
I wouldn't have gone with her three choices but those were HER three choices. I don't question her right to pick whomever she wants. (She is Nora Ephron, by the way.)
Also, our latter day Dylan seems unaware that what he does (over and over), she did years ago, decades ago and could still do that if she wanted. She's doing humor writing. He has no sense of humor (and probably doesn't think women can be funny -- he doesn't appear to think they can do much of anything).
So Rebecca and I were going through her e-mails and 2 copies and pastes of online, latter day were sent to her. Today's piece and yesterday. We were laughing at them so loudly so I may be fuzzy on some of his specifics. I'm not rereading them (once was hilarious, twice would be sad).
But here's the rundown. On Monday, he picks nits because someone credited him with covering a topic in 1999 or 2000. He picks nits because he was doing way before (or way after, who knows, who cares?). I'm actually not surprised he picks nits. He has been doing it before . . . and after. It's the only song he knows how to sing: "My College Bud Was Attacked."
Surely, that is the most pressing story in the world and we can be sure that, come 2009, he'll still be covering it. But he's correct, he's been doing it forever. Little else, but he's done that.
And what's been the pay off? Supposedly, he wants to teach us, right?
Who Will Teach The Teacher?
(Not me. I avoid his writing.)
Someone needs to. When you want to compare what was done to Al Gore and John Kerry in their respective presidential runs, if you want to say that the press was better in 2004, you need some teaching.
John Kerry had the Not So Swift Floaties. He had the band aids with the little purple hearts on them worn at the GOP convention to much laughter -- while we're at war, while the puple heart is being given out. He thinks the press did a better job?
It's all about Gore, always about Gore. Jimmy Carter and everyone else didn't suffer dirty tricks or, if they did, it wasn't like what happened to Al Gore.
In today's piece, he's back to slamming Jane (he really hates women, doesn't he?). And Atrios and either we didn't move the cursor over the third person or I'm blanking.
But Joe Klein, only the real people, the really reals (as Natalie Wood might term them), will tell you the truth about what Klein wrote!
Klein told the truth about what happened in a recent column.
About what?
About Al Gore. So it's time for our online, latter day Dylan to play "He's my hero" yet again. (Guess he forgot about the snit fit Klein and another of his heroes got into?)
They're lying, Jane, Atrios and the third person, playing the public. (At least he doesn't rip off Hunter S. Thompson's phrase again -- shouldn't teachers know to credit others?)
They're lying, he tells you, because they're choosing to highlight other aspects of the column. (He doesn't use the term "lying" -- he's apparently trying to work in a new catch phrase -- not unlike Freddie Prinze Jr.'s failed one.)
Now some might think they're highlighting something because that's what stood out to them? Not our all knowing Dylan who tells us exactly why they highlight. (For the record, if I tear into a Times' reporter here -- or anyone -- I've usually made several calls -- "That makes me a reporter! Just like the New York Times!" -- and done a little background work if it was needed. Sometimes it's not needed, as with tomorrow's story that I got a call about this afternoon.)
So might they be highlighting whatever they're highlighting because it's what stood out to them?
That's if they're even highlighting. A lot of times, Atrios just puts a headline and a link to stories he doesn't care for. So how's he misleading? Anyone can use the link and judge for themselves.
Here's another point -- maybe they aren't single-issue people? Al Gore may not be their single issue. While he may be willing to suddenly forgive years and years of Klein-isms, the fact that Klein finally tells a few details about election 2000 may not mean ___ to them.
They might, for instance, think that, as we approach 2008 and Klein's turned himself into a joke, if he wanted to lead as a pundit (instead of being the joke he made himself into), it would make sense that he'd toss out a few morsels about 2000 to get a little cred for 2008. (Oh, Joe, it's not that easy.) Having attacked "liberals" or the "left" (depending upon who tells the story), maybe he realizes he's in a bunch of trouble in terms of (mis)shaping another election?
Is Jane the type to think only, "Okay, today. What does this mean for today! Right now!" She's got a longer range view and doesn't tend to get stuck on something like "Do I have enough gas to make it home" day after day when the issue is fuel efficiancy.
But that doesn't enter into our online, latter day Dylan's (soft) head. He just knows what Jane did (and Atrios and the third person) and why they did it.
Considering how many times he's railed against Klein (Joe, of course, Naomi's never mentioned -- he's not interested in women or, apparently, Iraq -- His t-shirt reads: "My country went to war and I stuck to pre-9/11 topics!"), it's a bit surprising that he wants to praise and gush today. Give it a week.
I don't know why they're not impressed with Klein (Atrios, Jane and the third person). I'm not because you don't lie like he did and continue to pass yourself off as journalist.
That he lied about being the author of Primary Colors should have had him drummed out of the press corps. I don't worry a great deal about it (others have gotten away with their own crimes) because my calander shows 2006, not 1996.
I guess it beats more 'questionable' attacks on Joe Wilson but I'm not sure by how much.
He's got one song to sing and he's sung it over and over: "They Was Mean To My College Bud."
He's tried to come up with another evergreen but somehow "Joe Wilson Is A Liar" didn't go over well. Nor did, "I Like Schools." (Which must be why the much talked of -- that site has a lot of talk -- "change" never came. In fact, were he a songwriter, he might have attempted to sell Sam Cooke on singing, "A Change Is Not Gonna' Come.")
I'm writing about it because Rebecca asked me to. (And I honestly didn't have any thoughts on an evening entry.) (I spent most of my day at a hospital with real issues of today on my mind as opposed to reliving the 2000 election press coverage for the sixth year.)
He's got a real problem with women. I wish, regardless of what he covers, he'd address that. He's got a limited reading list (Time, DNC periodicals, the Washington Post and the New York Times). Even with those limitations, he once stood among the best. Now it's just a slow, daily decay.
He wants to tell us all that yet another post on Al Gore is somehow going to help us all understand and yet there's no indication that he understood what went on in 2004 -- this despite griping out a reader in an e-mail where he stated something like, unlike the reader, he wasn't just going to sit around and bake cupcakes. (He can be pretty nasty in those e-mails. Everytime one gets forwarded, I wonder if the intended reader goes back to the site.)
(I can be nasty as well when someone tells me I wrote something I didn't. Jess thinks maybe they've got some sort of feed reader. Whatever the reason, let me repeat that when I say we'll highlight Margaret Kimberley and we provide an excerpt, that's Kimberley's writing, not mine. Week after week, I'm accused of writing what she did -- here's one clue for the confused, she doesn't have typos or spelling errors. I've never enjoyed being told I did something I didn't do. When someone wants to gripe that "You wrote . . . And that's just wrong because . . ." If I didn't write it and have had to read through their cursing me out for it, I will bluntly suggest they learn how to read.)
He doesn't appear to get 2004. Or maybe it's the fact that he didn't go to college with John Kerry? I don't know. But 2004 wasn't an improvement and the problems with the press didn't start, election wise, with Al Gore.
So it's hard to read that day after day (which is why I don't read it all unless someone e-mails a copy and paste with an urgent message). Did he lose it? Or did the sameness of it leave him with nothing? (Sort of like planting a crop in the same area year after year or going to the well one too many times?)
I don't know. I know that he thinks Jane Mayer is worthy of slamming for suggesting that sexism may have come into play in some of the critiques of the press coverage of 2000 election.
I don't think that's even open to debate. I don't think it is for 2004. Elisabeth Bumiller? Knee pads. If Bumiller's the only problem (or the then-Jodi Wilgoren -- and we don't highlight her here anymore because I do not believe that once you have a professional name, you then change it -- you work hard to earn your name, you might simplify it or hyphenate it but . . .), then we're talking about a very small problem.
Is Margaret Carlson the only guilty party of 2000?
Or CCC?
Those are the names that stand out because that's who gets beat up over and over.
We went after Todd S. Purdum here (who could handle it) for that reason. The fact that, and this is so true of our online Dylan, a man could redeem himself and get waxed over but a woman never had that shot at redemption. Broder's an idiot one day, a week later he's not. Klein is a current example.
And the critiques of women are different than they are of men (and that's more than just our online Dylan who's guilty of that). They're very personal about women. Which is why, here, we laughed over Todd S. Purdum's smelly jock and how the fumes were rotting his brain. (Purdum, as noted when the joke started as well as a few months back, doesn't smell.) But it's "knee pads" and it's "whore" and it's so much more.
Use whatever language you want. But if you're really going to town on women and you're giving men a (by comparison) pass, don't be upset when people notice that. Outside of Atrios, our online, latter day Dylan has never gone to town on a man. (I'm referring to the f-word being tossed around repeatedly at that site in one entry some time ago.) (Which we parodied at The Third Estate Sunday Review. Compared it to his Scarface phase.)
It's not that women are above criticism, they aren't. It's that the criticism isn't equal. There's a real go to town quality when he rips apart a woman that's missing when it comes to a male. (And not noting that his buddy repeated the lie that Naomi Wolf was a "fashion consultant" for Al Gore -- she wasn't -- when he mentioned that awful book was really sad. So is tearing into other writers for that lie over and over but never mentioning that his buddy put it into print in a book -- which may live on long after the Dick Morris', or whomever, TV appearances fade from memory. For a teacher not to grasp the importance of books . . .)
I believe he wants to write a book about the 2000 election now. Big mistake. Not because he won't find a publisher. Mary Cheney did. (And we didn't write that it performed badly on the bestsellers because we covered the fact that it wasn't selling when it came out. That was one phone call.) But does he really think that a) there's that large of an audience for the 2000 election after all the books that have glutted the market on the topic and with this being the year 2006? b) that having posted pretty much five times a week on this subject beginning in 1999, he has something to say that he hasn't already said? c) that people are going to pay money for it when most will think, "I can go to the website"?
Entry is taking longer than planned. Needed to do what the Times call "research" (made three calls! I'm ready for their front page!). "I wouldn't make that deal" was the response on a book proposal. For the reasons I outlined above. Plus, one said, "You know it's going to be a clip job."
If he can make the deal, go for it. But don't expect it to sell. "The earliest he could complete it and it could be stocked would be 2007. Are they going to file it under 'history' because it's not 'current events?'"
It is 2006. The United States has troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran and North Korea on the apparent horizon. The topic has been covered and it's not "hot." A first-time book author (I'm assuming and so were they) isn't going to find it easy to move books on that topic. Which led one to call him the Don Quixote/Quijote of the net.
I don't despise the guy (I do find him boring for over a year now) so I'll pass on this. I brainstormed with one of the callers on what our online Dylan could write that would sell? He could start working on a book about John McCain and the press. With McCain a presumed candidate for the GOP presidential nominee, there would be interest in that. It would even allow him to work in a chapter on Gore's run where he could compare and contrast the coverage.
Short of Al Gore declaring a run, no one's interested. (If he did declare, even a clip job could sell.)
He needs to do something. Write a book, find a new "song" (education didn't "sing"). Hopefully, we can make this the last time we note him unless he has a rebirth of some sort. I honestly find what he does currently beneath him. It's like a ninth grader wanting to impress you by reciting multiplication tables. Yeah, that was something, when s/he was in third grade, but in ninth? He's capable of so much more.
Rebecca just announced she's posting and Elaine's already posted so I need to stop here.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
