Meet the anti-Andrew
I expect every last blogger to note the irony that infamous anti-blog attack dog Eric Alterman now has a blog, on the MSNBC website. (I found out about it through Instantman, for the record.)
Alterman continues the snarky comments about The Evil that is Andrew Sullivan, whom he has never forgiven for that post about the tuna sandwich. His caricature of andrewsullivan.com as nothing more than narcissistic babbling about "how things are going in his bathroom, his dinner dates with Hitch and his car ride dates with Drudge" is manifestly inaccurate, but Alterman has repeated the litany so frequently that it has become something like Alterman's motto (except that you have to put "no" in front of it, or draw a red line through it.) That, apparently, is his grand plan-- to be the ultimate anti-Sullivan. My impression upon reading Alterman's initial attack on Sullivan and the blogosphere, was that he really didn't "get" blogging: "what most offends him about Sullivan's blog (the stridency, the personal slant, the immediacy, the lack of editorial distance) are precisely why people read blogs." This still appears to be the case, but we'll see how he does. Sullivan has been severely criticized recently for lack of good behavior as a blogosphere citizen, but there's no question that he is among the best at what he does, even though he should link more often. His blog is staggeringly popular because of how great it is. And to match that, Alterman is going to have to do more than avoid posts about tuna sandwiches. I'm sure he'll come up with new and original ways of attacking his nemesis, anyway, and that ought to be fun. The blogosphere can always use a new whipping boy, for those slow Guardian days.
As for the non-Sullivan content, it remains to be seen just how enthralling a pro-antiAmerican blog will be. Are we to expect posts like "glad to see that the BBC is continuing its policy of referring to Hamas as 'activists' while calling the IDF 'death squads;'" or "I have read the Independent Argument section and I find myself in complete agreement;" or "here's the ugly truth about the war on terror that no one is permitted to utter: Bush is an idiot." Actually, I hope so (for whipping boy-fish barrelling purposes.)
Alterman mentions the initial "stay tuned for actual content" message at the launch of the Kausfiles, and promises that his blog "will be more interesting than Mickey’s was on that first day when he had nothing at all on it." Judging from the "slow rollout," I'd say that so far they're about even as far as interesting-ness goes. Welcome aboard, Eric, and good luck trying to out-Andrew Andrew. You're going to need it.
Posted by Dr. Frank at May 21, 2002 12:31 PM | TrackBack