January 9, 2007
I'm back!
Were you worried? That was a scheduled outage by Blogger, and I wish I'd put up a warning so you wouldn't think something terrible had happened. Maybe you used the time wisely and viewed the new BloggingHeads with me and Matthew Yglesias. I can't help noticing that a lot of Althouse haters have decided to drop comments over there. People find it so hard to believe that I'm allowed to participate in the illustrious BloggingHeads project... and that I'm a law professor....
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11 comments:
Haters on the internet? You don't say...
You know, for all it's benefits, that is one thing about the 'net that frustrates the heck outta me: The fact that it's enabled too many haters too easy an access to too many others to pitch too superficial a rant. Used to be that the cranks, the disgruntled, and the I-don't-like-so-and-so's only bothered those in close proximity and no one else. But the 'net's put everyone online in close proximity.
There's just something pithy and small about so many haters. It's like they're taking a powerful emotion (however negative it is) and putting it to such trivial use.
I was only worried cause the message I got said something like I wasn't authorized to view the requested web page. Thought I'd finally said something so bad that Althouse revoked my clearance to visit her blog.
I believe you're a law professor cause I've seen you profess law with my own eyes in one of your classes at the U of W. In case it hasn't been attested to before on this blog, Althouse is an excellent professor, and has a reputation as an excellent professor among the students there. Too bad I wasn't an excellent student, or I might know a lot more about Federal Jurisdiction (or was it Conflict of Laws?) than I do today.
I dang near called 911.
Your father and I were very worried, young lady.
What kind of hour do you call this, to be coming back home?
P.S.: When I saw that Blogger was down long after its 7:30 AM PST outtage, I went out and did stuff. I had almost forgotten there was STUFF out there to do. God, I've been glued to the monitor these last two days, just waiting on my replies to be approved. There has to be a better way. My sex life is suffering!
Cheers,
Victoria
I'll have to check out the bloggingheads thing. But Matthew Yglesias (or, to be fair, his blog persona) is such a twerp. The unfortunate thing about your job as a law professor is that it's hard to lower the boom on really smart twerps. The good thing about being a partner in a law firm is that it isn't.
I don't think Matt is a "twerp." He has a way of speaking that sounds disarmingly casual, but if you go back and re-listen, you'll see that everything he says makes a clear point. It can sound as though he's just stumbling along, but he really isn't. It's rather weird. I think I have a similar effect on some people. I don't affect a mainstream media "expert" voice, and it can make some people -- maybe people who are insecure about their own intelligence -- think I'm a lightweight. I just don't think they really get Bloggingheads.
-and here I thought Poopus Girl had cornered you in the library
While arguing, a friend of mine, Dr Fred, used to call people Stupid, like a name, just for shock value. He was always so amusing, because for a pedant, that was really kind of dumb. Now, I hear it all the time, and from people a lot dumber than Fred, and they're not trying to be funny either. Whenever I hear or read somebody say that, and now that's so often I've changed out friends, I think privately, "Poor thing, you're stupid." It's bankrupt to call someone stupid, mal or uninformed, plain ignorant, poser, and so forth, without offering something brilliant. I made it through only a portion of the comments on bloggingheads before being repelled by the swamp, I've come to recognize them early, and wrote off the whole rest. Ann, calling you stupid is just so [garbled] stupid!
The other thing that was kind of dumb is the recording kept stalling. That in spite of having the super duperest connection possible. The recording was faulting somehow because I kept hearing, Matt is it?, quietly repeat, "Well, I don't want to die," as if that was the premise for his resolution to quit smoking and a nerdish mastery of understatement -- which was then overstated by repetition. I gave up trying to listen to Matt? in his not wanting to die echo chamber while reading the equally echoey and not at all useful and less than brilliant hateful comments.
I really enjoy the diavlogs with Matt. One of the beauties of BH.tv is that it gives people a chance to hash out political differences more comprehensively than other formats and it is usually amiable.
Meanwhile the short segments on cable produce more heat than light with producers that seem primarily focused on providing conflict instead of really examining opposing arguments.
When Matt is on he fits the bill perfectly. Lots of great points in a reasonable tone. What more could you want? I wish cable shows used the same approach but that could only happen if television watchers were actually interested in hearing reasoned debate.
Just to be clear, I didn't mean that Matthew Yglesias came across as a twerp on bloggingheads. Per my previous comment, I haven't seen the Althouse/Yglesias bloggingheads episode. (I started to look at it last night at home, but my wife pointed out that I was violating the "no weekday TV" rule.) I only said that Matthew Yglesias came across as a twerp on his blog.
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