non-smug dem politics sites

yeah im not really interested in the content of any of this stuff so much as i am in the social positioning of TNI and FDB in the academic liberal blogosphere

this is one of my favorite politics blogs -- its not really "dem" though b/c the dude is british

http://potlatch.typepad.com/

I'm sympathetic w/ the 'lol tni' pov he is just approaching this from the wrong angle

freddie is infuriating as always but this is a fantastic list of bloggas

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-list.html

I'm assuming he means Daniel Larison, right?

greenwald is in a class of his own - he's beyond smug, every post is in some kind of righteous fury mode. i imagine him ordering a suboptimal cappucino: "That these so-called baristas can hand me this dishwater with smiles on their faces is simply astonishing. They have had every chance to make my coffee correctly, and at every turn have chosen not to. UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out that better coffee can be had two blocks away, at Venetia. These readers miss the point, which is not that good coffee may be had at some other establishment, but that this coffee, in this establishment is presented as good yet is clearly, to anyone who bothers paying even cursory attention, not."

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, March 10, 2010 1:33 PM (2 years ago)

i love GG but this is still one of my favorite ilx posts of all time.

haha

My personal hero.

i was legit surprised at that list when i saw it.

lol @ "cursory"

David Brooks. Just kidding, fuck that dude.

welp freddie is back to being impossible

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/10/critical-practice-doesnt-feel-good.html

larison has his moments but he really puts me to sleep a lot of the time. how many times can he quote some other guy calling romney a moderate and then spend four long paragraphs explaining why that's wrong?

gahhhhh

I bring this up in regards to Glenn Greenwald's thoughts on Zero Dark Thirty. Based on his Twitter feed, it seems he has caused a conflagration for daring to criticize the movie. The typical, and typically cheap, response is that he has no right to judge the movie without having seen it. Which would be true, were he commenting on its quality or its perspective. Instead Greenwald has a very basic point, one that is being roundly ignored: a film that has repeatedly and proudly been sold as "documentary" and "journalistic" contains a lie of profound importance. The movie, by all accounts, shows torture as being an indispensable part of the capture of bin Laden, an idea that has been roundly debunked and specifically denied by many people on the inside of the government. (Adam Serwer, with typical thoroughness and fairness, has the run-down.) To say that your movie is "a hybrid of the filmic and the journalistic," as the writer of the film did, when your movie depicts the use of torture as essential to captuing bin Laden is to tell a lie. And in a country of vitriolic anti-Muslim hatred, a dangerous lie. Whether you've seen the film or not.

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/12/bad-faith-and-zerodark-thirty.html

you disagree with that?

block quote otm

glenn greenwald as well

yknow freddie de boer is kind of insufferable

This post seems pretty sufferable though.

You can't say it's "true" that greenwald has no right to make aesthetic judgments about a film he hasn't seen and then turn around and say he's totally allowed to make political judgments about its content

he claims that "by all accounts" the movie shows torture as an indispensable tool and then later in the post refers to a piece -- by someone who, unlike serwer and greenwald, has seen the movie -- that argues the opposite

close reading HAS TO BE at the heart of criticizing (in a broad sense) the politics of a given text

i think that's true. i was grossed out by the trailer for this movie though, depicting as it does a targeted assassination as a "heroic" mission. greenwald should have watched the film first, but i have no problem believing that the film, like 24, glorifies torture. but he should have watched the film before condemning it for this.

i guess. i still <3 greenwald and h8 torture. but you made a good point and i probably shouldn't have 'leapt' to his defense that quickly.

weird stuff going on at lhote

freddie kind of getting owned imo, or maybe i find him so insufferable at this point that i cant be charitable

idk what you ever saw in that dude! just writes like some undergrad w/ a blog

live by the smug leftism, die by the smug leftism

haha i dont know either iatee

i feel like i discovered him when he was riffing on something i agreed with and i figured thats what it would be like forever now hes my #1 hateread

haha im the same as max. now when he pops up in my rss feed and i see a post that goes down past the bottom of my computer screen i just back away. can't do it.

You can't say it's "true" that greenwald has no right to make aesthetic judgments about a film he hasn't seen

He was making a journalistic judgment about a widely reported element of the narrative (in responswe to filmmakers' claims of "almost journalistic" intent; he's not a critic. I wish he had refrained until he'd seen the film (which he subsequently has), cuz the O-bot supermajority in film criticism has now boiled the case vs ZDT down to "GG didn't see the film."

i wonder if radical greenwald leftism requires the writer to be a total asshole or if it's just incidental and someone else could do a better job covering similar ideological ground

it's too bad GG has become the flashpoint for a debate on the incommensurability of aesthetics and politics--which I would want to see as necessary and productive for both--because his sledgehammer approach makes him an easy target to take down.

sorta the way being a Zionist is incidental to being a total asshole

oo, hot zinger there dr morbius!

ryan otm

that kenny piece you linked to on twitter is good

what is ryan's twitter?

^

would fav

@rawhit3

that's you, right? not some other texan basketball fan cinephile ryan

haha no i think there's only one of us

are there any other bloggers covering the exact issues GG is and doing a better job? serious q.

I've been reading him since 2006 and am bored with his style and approach. Charles Pierce is my guy these days; he writes so goddamn much though, at times two or three three-hundred word posts a day.

if you're worn out by GG, another guy who writes too much might not be the right trade

the GG posts that wear me out are the ones where he just complains about the stupidity of cable news -- i can watch the daily show for that.

yeah i stopped reading him regularly a while ago for that reason. he's obv still vital to the discussion on a lot of issues

Pierce is closer to James Wolcott's style, of which I never tire.