@Gawker can go urinate up a rope.

This is a two-way street, bub.

Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton Thursday told an editor (and careful Gawker readers) that he knows the company’s audience leans left and wants its journalism to reach more conservatives…

…Amazingly, I find that not being reached by Gawker is not even remotely a hardship.  It’s a media empire full of spite and bad decisions, with a side order of casual bigotry.  I have better things to do with my time, and so do you. Continue reading @Gawker can go urinate up a rope.

Gawker-trained New Republic editor gives up on printing latest issue.

In a way, you have to almost admire Gabriel Snyder’s and Guy Vidra’s efficiency.  Most people in their position – promoted far beyond their competence, while blissfully unaware of the fact – would take two, three print issues to demonstrate that they really have no business running a print magazine.  It takes a special kind of almost holy imbecility to demonstrate it before the first issue can even come out. But they managed!

The New Republic will not publish the issue that had been slated to hit shelves on December 15, following Friday’s mass resignation by top editors and contributors.

“As you know, an issue that was in production by recently departed editors and writers, scheduled to appear on newsstands on December 15th, was left unfinished,” Guy Vidra, the New Republic’s chief executive, wrote in a memo to staff on Saturday. “Despite the incredible work you all are doing, going forward with the issue would run the risk of falling short of this institution’s renowned high standards.”

Continue reading Gawker-trained New Republic editor gives up on printing latest issue.

So, I’m either getting spammed *by* Gawker…

…or they were clumsy enough to have a spammer identity theft them. Either way, this infested my comments section this morning:

But, for the record (and on the off chance that Gawker’s spamming me): I am not interested in doing an interview about my “The Queen of Argyll” post. It’s a YouTube video and a couple of Amazon links. What more can I say about it?

#rsrh I would love to call this “Lane’s Law…”

…but that’s probably hubris.

Nonetheless: any post on the Internet that mocks a person’s or group’s individual and/or collective intelligence will have at least one obvious spelling or grammatical error present in the first published draft.  I think that this is because people who see other people (whom they don’t like) make howlers will often fall all over themselves in the rush to post their sarcastic mockery.

Latest example: “New Hamshire.”

Via Instapundit.

#rsrh QotD, Shoot-the-messenger edition.

While going through Ben Smith’s law blogger roundup of THAT WOMAN vs. Gawker (short version: Gawker is kind of hosed*) I came across this bit of misdirected exasperation on William McGeveran’s part:

…if you are sick of hearing Sarah Palin decry the arrogance of the media that covers her, then you’d rather deny her the satisfaction of being right.

I think that it’s just the tiniest bit uncouth to be blaming the victim for this, Mr. McGeveran?  Blame Gawker, blame the abusers of fair use, heck, blame the media/liberal/Democratic crusade if you like.   But I don’t see exactly what THAT WOMAN did wrong here.

Besides exist, of course.

Moe Lane

*They probably didn’t help matters much by taunting THAT WOMAN with links to… sites that proved her point, actually.

False alarm on the Applebaum exploding car thing.

Gawker is not exactly on my Christmas card list, but I’ll happily admit that this is a good lead sentence:

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum is A) married to a high-ranking Polish politician, and B) critical of Russia’s shady government, which makes it—in the most general way—kind of alarming that her car blew up yesterday.

Turns out to just be a false alarm (“The Russian Mafia Did Not Bomb My Car“).  This time.

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, Ms. Appelbaum: criticizing the Russian government is apparently not low-risk journalism.  The latest one was last month: regional television journalist Olga Kotovskayasupposedly committed suicide via jumping from a building – the day after she won a court case regarding her illegally-seized news station. Stuff like this keeps happening to critics of the Russian government: I think that you may be discounting the subtle protection that an American passport gives you…

Hollywood had ideas?

When did that happen?

The Facebook Status Update That Could End Up a Movie

Agents from Beverly Hills’ United Talent Agency and literary shop Fletcher & Co. are shopping a book and film deal built around a Facebook update…

Said update involves Chinese takeout and a Pomeranian – no, it’s not going to revolve around that particular urban legend; apparently superpowers will be involved – and they’re apparently looking to option it.  As Gawker notes, while this is silly, so was Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  I’ll personally add that dumb-sounding ideas can actually make decent films.  For example, you can take the rather silly concept of “Russians invade the mountains of Colorado on the first day of World War III,” and still end up with Red Dawn

OK, bad example*.  But the principle is sound.

Moe Lane

*It’s a bad movie.  I’ve seen it a million times.  I’ll watch it every time that it comes on.  I love it.  But it’s a bad movie.

Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Gawker.

Oh, stop squirming. Having the chip put in doesn’t hurt *that* much.

I’m sorry to have to tell you folks at The Gawker this, but it’s over.  You’ve been tagged by the guy from the cow college as Outside the Pale, and you’re not coming back from that.

It’s like this: you were fine with this post, for a given value of fine: you took precisely the line that was expected of you with the Mancow narrative.  Right-wing shock-jock gets waterboarded, now thinks it’s torture, yadda yadda and the Online Left cheers while it reaches for the tis… well, I’ll be polite.  If you had left it there, nothing further would have gone on.  But then you made the mistake of actually deciding that the evidence that this was a publicity stunt was actually worth publicizing.  So you got yelled at for it, a little; but you just kept pushing. So now you got yelled at, for real – and it doesn’t matter in the slightest that it’s by a rampaging buffoon who believes that Cheney had secret death squads.  Or that you actually agree with him that waterboarding really is torture.  Or anything else, at this point. Continue reading Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Gawker.

Hey, remember Jeffrey Toobin?

Sure you do!

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Ace of Spades readers.

He’s the guy that said this, back in the day:

You know, Jeff, I understand that you had some… issues… with the Governor of Alaska. That’s fine; nobody’s perfect, of course. But for the items that you packed into your negative assessment of her moral character, I can’t help but notice something: not once were you even able to imply that she was out shtupping the kid of one of her professional colleagues.

What’s that like, by the way*? Continue reading Hey, remember Jeffrey Toobin?