A lot of nonsense is being spewed in the comments section of an Instapundit post.
1) If you don't like to read about, say, sports in your daily paper, skip over the section and use it for your cat's litter box. Do not request that the editor remove the sports section. Just like you wouldn't want a rabid sports fan to demand the editors remove the arts section or the (main) current events section.
2) If the sports section were to be left out of the paper, you wouldn't get 8 or 12 more pages on Arts or on Current Events; you would simply have fewer pages in your newspaper. If you don't like an op-ed writer and ask for (and get) his removal, it does not mean that the pundit(s) that you do like will have more room for writing on the op-ed page; they will have exactly the same space.
If Stephen Green, Ed Driscoll, Sarah Hoyt, Gail Heriot, Mark Tapscott, David Bernstein, Robert Shibley, and/or Austin Bay — I'm sure I am forgetting one or two — were to heed some cranks' calls to leave Instapundit, you wouldn't get more posts from Glenn Reynolds, you would have exactly the same amount of posts from the Blogfather (as well as exactly the same number of posts from all the guest posters, if any, who remained). And you would have fewer things to read. Anything, any subject, or anybody you don't want to read, simply skip them over (see 1 above)…
3) In that perspective — and this also applies to the cranks complaining about reading the same type of message over and over again — you do not seem to remember the
Republicans' 1980s hero (fully deserved), who never hid that he repeated
the same basic message for years on end, which led to the ideas getting more and more widely adopted and himself — I am speaking of Ronald Reagan, natch — emerging as candidate for the White House
4) Indeed, with Fox News veering left, there are fewer and fewer news sources to read and trust. I don't want fewer; I want more. Or at least the same.
5) What's with the Ed Driscoll animus? Personally, I read, and/or agree with, perhaps 90% of what he posts. (Full disclosure: I know Ed personally, from having visited him and his wife at their Texas ranch — as well as his (highly impressive) sound studio — one memorable afternoon and evening four years ago.) I agree that for someone of Jim Treacher's intellect, his animus towards Donald Trump is incomprehensible, but that doesn't negate the many good things that he has said, not least his Twitter definition of modern journalism (which, indeed, makes his Trumpitis all the more baffling)…
You do not like Ed's long posts? Based on Glenn's (recurring) take on the Democrats' declarations on Saddam's Iraq prior to the Dubya administration's invasion, they are meant to provide all the information, i.e., all the ammunition, that you need in a particular debate (verbal or written). In fact, several of these lengthy pieces have proven invaluable over the years.
To mention only the first two that come to mind:
• Ed's take and insights on Star Wars and George Lucas
• And his revelations about the Democrats' slander of every Republican candidate as an Adolf Hitler-like fascist as far back as… 1940 (!!)
In online debates, often I don't bother to argue; I simply post a hyperlink to Ed's (or Glenn's, or Stephen's, or Sarah's, or Gail's, or Mark's, etc…) Instapundit posts
6) What is really worrying is the comment below: Is what the priestess says true (I have only heard positive things so far about eradicating section 230) and can someone with a legal mind — Glenn or somebody else (I'm sorry, I forget the name of the expert with the Russian name) — look into that?
7) Someone mentioned, tongue-in-cheek, Glenn's and the guest posters' writing styles, so to end this post on a lighter note, check out the piece called Entertainment During the Coronavirus Lock-Down: Do You Know the Rules to the Instapundit Game?
Update: I don't know what the deal is with Instapundit; all the comments (over 370 total so far) criticizing the blog and its bloggers seem to have remained, while my post defending Glenn's guest bloggers (which basically is/as the same text as this post) has vanished… I posted it three times, getting the message "considered spam" twice (because of the html langauge and the hyperlinks?). Maybe (hopefully) it's some technical bug, but… I don't know…The … Instapundit game … should only be played, really, by veteran readers of the Glenn Reynolds blog …
The goal of the game is to read a post on Instapundit, while keeping the name of its author hidden below the bottom the screen.… What you have to do now is figure out, to the best of your ability, who is the author of the post!
Instapundit was my home page for many years, but I gave it up about a month ago because of Driscoll. I didn't like his continually bumping his own, self-serving pop music contributions, and found his long posts annoying in that they were merely cut and paste jobs from other sources, and so long that it was tedious to scroll past them. Since Sarah Hoyt was generally the only one posting in the post-midnight hours, her stuff could be easily skipped, but Driscoll was all over the place.
ReplyDeleteI will just say this about that - I recently found out I've been shadow-banned at Instapundit. I frequently comment there and never realized that shortly after posting my comments, they disappeared. No notification that I had been banned or what for (and I really can't imagine what I might have said) and of course no chance to defend myself, not even a straight-up denial-of-service to at least extend me the courtesy of telling me I wasn't welcome there. It really left a bad taste in my mouth because shadow-banning is such a cowardly act I'd never expect out of that site. I still check the site several times a day because it is one of the most useful sites for keeping up with the national conversation, but it still leaves me somewhat disappointed to know they'd pull that kind of crap.
ReplyDeleteUsing a third party plugin from a converged company is problematic, discus.
ReplyDeleteEd has done good stuff on music, but I skip the political stuff.
I freely admit that Ed (and to a lesser extent, Bernstein, although that's mostly due to his posting less) has been annoying the heck out of me.
ReplyDeleteHe keeps insisting that the election was not stolen, despite all the evidence it was. Rather than engaging on the facts, he prefers a snooty dismissal. And he makes the statements as gratuitous asides.
Ditto the Jan. 6 protest. "Nobody can defend?"
Really?
Setting aside that I've been at parties which have had more property damage, that the attendees were remarkably well behaved given the provocation, and that a young lady was murdered...
Congress would be much improved if some (or all) of its members were tarred, feathered, and paraded around on a rail.
THAT is "who we are".
I am not moving on.
The election was flagrantly stolen.
We address this and fix it, or the Republic is dead.
You make fine points, this is just a technical point.
ReplyDeleteAnd you would have fewer things to read. Anything, any subject, or anybody you don't want to read, simply skip them over (see 1 above)…
The slight issue with this is that the format of Instapundit makes that very challenging as the author of a piece is placed... at the bottom.
So if you're scrolling on your phone (as I do) if a piece is very long, you will be most of the way through it before you see who it is by. For the above to work, you would have to scroll to the bottom of each item, check the author, and then (if you like them) Scroll back up to read. It's an extra point of friction.
Not a big deal for me (the most frustrating writer I find on there is Driscoll and only once in awhile) but I can see where the interface design makes that proscription a challenge.