Who is the greatest blogger of all time?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
SERIOUSLY?
My Current favorite is Charley Pierce over at Esquire.
Charles is the Sarcastic, SANE, writer I wish I was, who uses the Real words required to describe the screwup he
is writing about. Bad deeds deserve Bad words, and Charley is Number one in my opinion!
Could there be a problem that the best writing from political commentators (Pierce, Taibbi, Olbermann, Zirin …) developed their craft in the world in sports?
It’s not a coincidence. At almost any newspaper, the best pure writers work in sports.
The reason is simple. You’re tasked with covering games. It’s the exact same story every day: One team wins, the other loses. For perspective you interview inarticulate 20-year-olds. And then you have to make it interesting. In a different way. Every day.
The people who can do that, successfully, over a period of years, succeed because they are (or become) really, really good writers.
Doubt they are the best writers, but covering playgrounds undoubtedly facilitates the development of writing skills.
However, you sort of missed the point of my question. Professional sports are games — a winner and a loser in all events. Not what a healthy, vibrant, and functioning democracy should emulate. Even if it’s the exclusive MO of one major political party.
Taibbi and sports? I thought his first high-profile stuff was as a Hunter Thompson-ish gonzo in Russia.
Still does. Rolling Stone: Matt Taibbi on Sports.
What did you think he was covering for “Men’s Journal? Fashion shows?
That’s not at all the same as “developing [his] craft” in sports writing.
Unlike political pundits, sportswriters can’t get away with writing bullshit because their audience knows the subject and will call them on it if they do. (Loudly, if they work in Boston or New York.) The good ones maintain their good habits when they write about politics.
I love Charles Pierce. I don’t know how so many well-placed words pour out of one man’s head.
I check him, Booman of course, and Talking Points Memo quite a bit.
billmon.
Next question?
Yes. I miss his work so much.
He tweets. Charlie Peirce gave one a h/t today.
Are you on the Twitter machine?
No. Like tattoos, I leave that to the kids.
Can read here w/o one of those machines.
If not for billmon’s twitter feed, might have missed the royal pardon for Alan Turing. billmon’s comment, “But it’s really Britain that needs pardoning for persecuting and torturing him.”
Marcel Proust.
AG
Is AG your signature or a split decision with Proust? Never having read Proust (savage that I am), I rec’d you for the latter.
Digby.
Reading Digby is like reading stuff by a me who is a thousand times smarter than the real me.
I wish I could say the same. I don’t have nearly her focus and drive.
I thought of her immediately because the blog is so basic and simple (rudimentary layout and design; no comments; barely any images; has never changed) but so vitally important.
What I love about the writing is the relentlessly liberal/progressive point of view. She makes everybody else look like equivocators and apologists by comparison. Without any hyperbole or bluster, she always makes it incredibly clear exactly who is at fault and in what way. It’s just fantastic, and heroic.
Tbogg. Or Billmon.
Or you, dude.
I hear that Jonah Goldberg thinks very highly of Jonah Goldberg.
I hate to quibble, but Jonah Goldberg and thinking never occur in the same place or time frame.
Me.
Duh.
Homer.
The original one.
OK, this won’t be a popular choice, but I’m going to say Drum. He posts on a wide variety of topics, he avoids “outrage” stories, and he rarely makes himself the subject of his posts.
Plus, he has history. He has a following that started reading him at CalPundit and moved with him to Washington Monthly and then to his current perch at MoJo.
It depends how you define blogger and what the subject is. I’ll throw Arthur Silber out there because he speaks too much truth and it hurts.
If you’re talking essayist, then it is no question: James Baldwin.
If you’re talking essayists, it’s Samuel Johnson or Michel de Montaigne.
In that category would also add Chris Floyd.
Looks like a few of us here are on a similar page. Silber is one who should be read more widely than he probably is, and Marie’s suggestion of Chris Floyd is also solid.
Arthur, Tarzie and other small “a” anarchists are my ideological kindred spirits. I just can’t agree with them to ignore electoral politics. Although Tarzie has admitted on his blog (I think in the FAQ) that he thinks who controls the state still matters to some degree. Ironically I saw Charles Davis point out in his recent vice article targeting liberal magazines with unpaid internships that he focused on them because they know better and he knows they can be pressured; not true for the con outlets. Which is why I still vote, and vote Democratic.
Martin, you make my top tier. I check this site every day without fail.
Billmon definitely goes near the top. And I miss The Editors. But I think my favorite blogger of all time was Steve Gilliard.
Gilliard seemed like a nice guy — but became very tiresome during the initial stage of the Iraq invasion with his obsession that the US military was blowing it big time. He may have known a thing or two about military maneuvers, but it seemed silly to me to doubt that the Saddam wouldn’t be toppled. (Big difference between a desert and a jungle.)
He foresaw weeks or even months of hand-to-hand combat for Baghdad – and totally missed the fact that none of Saddam’s troops were interested in dying for his lost cause so left their posts and went home before US troops arrived.
To be fair, Gillard was basing his prediction on previous attempts to capture Baghdad, but in this case the “shock and awe” did what it was intended to do.
On the other hand, he was one of the first to document that the US was screwing up the occupation royally. The US had a honeymoon period of maybe 6 months in which they could have won over a large part of the population if the occupiers delivered proper infrastructure – Gillard predicted that instead of the hand-to-hand combat he thought would happen there would instead be a very difficult insurgency movement, and he was right on that point.
“…totally missed the fact that none of Saddam’s troops were interested in dying for his lost cause so left their posts and went home before US troops arrived.”
Actually, they didn’t go home. They went and grabbed all the materiel out of the storage bunkers and used it against the U.S. military as IEDs and such.
Remember the empty explosives bunkers found just before the 2004 election? The revelation that would have taken down Bush, except that the Osama bin Laden “October Miralce” tape came out two days later, so everybody forgot the fuck up on the part of the U.S. Who knew where those bunkers were? Gee, I wonder. That is who took them. And they have used them to good effect ever since, although their supplies may have run out by now.
Like the American revolutionaries who fought from behind trees, the Iraqi military wasn’t stupid enough to go toe to toe with the U.S. An underground war made all the sense in the world.
Like the French underground, they fought in the most effective ways they could. Toe to toe with the U.S. or Nazis was monumentally stupid, so they chose an underground war. It doesn’t matter whether they won or lost, but they “went to ground” and lived to fight another day. And took out more enemy soldiers than they could have if they were dead in tanks along the Highway of Death like in 1991.
Gilliard was very valuable for his coverage of contemporary eugenicists. To this day, I keep his old blog bookmarked on the off chance that it might be needed.
Begins and ends with TBogg. Atrios deserves consideration but he’s seemed bored with himself for 10 years.
For pure political analysis and perspective it’s you.
hands down
I also read Josh Marshall, this one (obviously), juan cole, sargent, kos is good when he actually writes something, tarheel dem …
I think as it regards the medium itself, Sullivan has done a lot to experiment with blogging. I don’t think that makes him the greatest, but it’s worth a look.
Sullivan wins if you don’t give points for being particularly smart or insightful. (That sounds meaner than intended. I agree that he’s a master of the medium.)
I’d have to say John Cole at Balloon Juice.
I’m going to go with Digby, followed closely by you, Martin, and a tie between John Cole at Balloon Juice and Josh Marshall at TPM.
Every time, and I mean every single time, that I sit in front of my computer, The Mahablog by Barbara O’Brien is the first blog I look at.
digby, billmon, Kevin Drum are all great, but Maha is my fav.
I’m no good at this game. My daughter used to get so pissed with me when she was 5 and constantly asking me what’s your favorite this or that. I can never choose.
Proust can be wicked funny, AG, but he sat on stuff too long to catch trends. He was killing on the Dreyfus Affair 15 years after it was over, which is 27 years after it was viral.
The emerging quinquinnity of Digby, Pierce, Boo, Cole, and TBogg seems really useful as covering just about everything political blogging can do to make the world a better place. My top great figure of the past would not be Billmon (Twitter Billmon blocked me, apparently after I had said something rude about Greenwald, which puts him in a category with John Podhoretz, I’m sorry to say) but Gavin M from Sadly, No. Somebody who still plugs away with wonderful consistency is Dr. Atta J. Turk. And who isn’t dependent on Susie Madrak?
I doubt he’d block you for that; Billmon recently came under fire from GG’s supporters — who are like his the worst Ron Paul, Richard Dawkins, Julian Assange, and Barack Obama supporters molded into one — because he had the gall to question that maybe journalism through billionaires perhaps isn’t a good thing and that maybe GG should have said “No.”
(along with Silber and Tarzie)
Not the first time Billmon has been trashed in blogland — and for exactly the same reason. He’s quite adamant that one cannot be an independent and critical voice if one’s blogging/writing livelihood is dependent on corporate or elite funding. Those who beg to differ don’t have a firm grasp of the power of self-censorship. I don’t know what GG’s new deal is, and while he’s done plenty of good work, it’s best to remain aware of his libertarian leanings.
Like Billmon, I think being accountable to corporate networks like MSNBC and CNN is more accountability than just one — count ’em, ONE — person with a shit-ton of money. At least corporate media have advertisers to worry about.
Also, don’t look now:
Pierre Omidyar’s Words of Wisdom
It’s “billmon” as a wrote in my first comment on this thread. Had to check my memory on that and it’s “billmon” at dKos and on his twitter feed.
GG is a good enough lawyer that he probably has insulated himself well enough from the whims, fancies, piques of that one “person with a shit-ton of money” from financial ramifications. However, being dependent on one person, wealthy or not, has risks. Look at what Nigella Lawson’s wealthy ex-husband has put her through.
Heh, well if we’re getting all bell hooks about it…
I suspect that’s not true. I suspect that when you’re accountable to an amorphous entity, the influence is more subtle and insidious. Because accountability is nowhere.
I’m roughly 100% sure that if I were a member of MSNBC or CNN, I’d find myself part of the corporate culture in no time, and I’d tell myself that I was independent, because I’m just working a job for a company, doing my thing. If I was working directly for Howard Hughes, however, I’d police my biases pretty constantly. And I’d be sure to bite the hand with some regularity, just to prove to myself that I could.
But maybe I’m just telling myself that because neither issue will ever arise.
Doubt that there are any institutions that don’t have some non-group think employees. Not at the top and not high-profile. They float below that and are vital to the organization because they have the skills that few of their seniors, peers, or subordinates possess. They may or may not be liked but professionally are respected. Weren’t enough of them at the big banks, rating agencies, and Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac to stop the financial implosion, but they were there and didn’t keep their mouths shut as it was developing. So, one need not conform in organizations, but it’s not risk-free but integrity is priceless.
Ouch.
See also Steve Bloom’s incites on what journalism could be someday. A taste:
personally i’m quite happy with the idea of “journalists” dying out. people should get paid for journalism, but there’s no reason to have a professional class that makes its money exclusively from it. money and power, and the attendant ass-kissing turn people into scumbags and the glorification of elite opinion-formers feeds this idea that a journalist is somehow automatically qualified to write about anything. (Greenwald managed to make a pig’s arse of the NSA stuff partly because he had no knowledge of the issues or background, and was too arrogant to admit it). its just elitist condescension to say we need some sort of “expert” to mediate the conversations between people, and most of these journos aren’t even particularly good writers. on the left especially, they’re just mediocre careerist parasites leeching off movements and people that are better than they are. everyone should be encouraged to write and discuss their experiences and ideas, not just some specialist class.
Link
Have no idea who Steve Bloom is — and while I basically agree with what you excerpted from his comment, the rest of it is somewhat silly and has an unnecessarily angry tone. I’m guessing he either wasn’t around to observe the development of political blogs from 2001 forward or had some idealized concept that the reality didn’t conform to and couldn’t accept that.
I’d say we need more, not fewer, skilled working journalists and the employed hacks need to go.
Jeez, I hope I didn’t say something that actually offended him.
Another truly great one that should have been mentioned is A.M. Cox as the original Wonkette, before she got all embourgeoisée and Serious. An extraordinarily original voice though it has many imitators and such fearlessness.
If you like your doctor you can keep him. Except in Massachusetts.
Surprised no one is mentioning Steve Benen, who is certainly the most prolific blogger and rarely wrong about anything. Best pure, pragmatic political analysis from the left is some guy named Martin Longman. Pierce is a wonderful writer but can’t win because he is relatively new to the game. Greg Sargent is sharp too.
Digby used to be great, don’t read her any more.
Pierce is not that new – he was subbing for Eric Alterman around the time blogs were invented (that’s where I first found him)
On Benen, it seems to me there is something about the Washington Monthly as institution: anybody who writes that column does the best work of their lives there. (Well, except for Boo, who’s just the same.) I read Kilgore every day and continually forget Drum and Benen since they respectively moved on.
Digby is still really good when you disagree with her, which is hard to say about anyone, challenging you when somebody else would just make you mad. You should also go there for David Atkins, who has a great deal to say.
Yeah, Kevin Drum was very good at WM.
I have it Benen, Booman, and the crew at Balloon Juice in all their multi-faceted glory.
Assuming we’re talking about political bloggers, and, ahem, not those who have silently maintained a blogger blog since round about May of 2005, and continue to do so, I’ll nominate Mr.BooMan. I have come here just about every day since first signing up shortly after this blog’s inception.
All time?
Thomas Paine.
STEVE BENEN! The guy not only writes as intelligently as anyone, but writes like 20 pages of original material every day. The guy puts up a detailed great post, and 20 minutes later there’s another one, except this one will have charts and graphs. I still think he’s actually a machine.
This has been confirmed.
And of course Booman who along with Benen are just the two best common sense liberal bloggers around. Also like Kevin Drum, and used to love Al Giordano who doesn’t blog much anymore.
A taxi-driver I met at the Applebee’s salad bar had nice things to say about David Thomas Brooks-Friedman.
When you say “greatest blogger of all time” – are we limiting it to the field of socio-political commentary?
I’ll put in a pitch for Krugman, if those are the terms of reference.
Richard Seymour (Lenin’s Tomb, Arthur Silber, and Chris Floyd (Empire Burlesque) are each top-tier bloggers. They write well, and from somewhat different perspectives manage to speak truth in the teeth of power. There are some okayish Tumblrs out there as well.
Hilzoy. When she was at Obsidian Wings, it was always my first stop, even before billmon. Her posts were always so clear, honest, and carefully thought through that the trolls slunk away and the arguments turned into discussions. The blogosphere has never been as interesting since Hilzoy and billmon retired.
I agree that the Washington Monthly gig somehow seems to bring out the best in bloggers.
Benen hasn’t changed since he left, but I hate the new NBC website and thus haven’t paid much attention to him since maddowblog joined the NBC dot com borg.
As a student of Economics I must nominate Krugman, DeLong, and Dean Baker’s BeatThePress for the subcategory of best Econ-Bloggers.
Pierce. HoF includes billmon, Digby, Atrios and Booman.
Philly represents.
Jon Swift, may he rest in peace.
http://jonswift.blogspot.com/
I have no idea, but I know it is not me.
It’s hard to argue with the nominations so far, but somebody needs to mention Emptywheel. So, Emptywheel!
Two questions: