If you don't got it, flaunt it anyway

The new Huffington blog -- how shall I put this delicately? -- stinks on ice. That's entirely what I expected, but I also expected to get a good laugh out of it, and there I have been deeply disappointed. Sure, I laughed at first to see Jim Lampley hysterically decrying the 2004 election results as a sham (earth to Jimmy -- you might want to, you know, check out your story a little more thoroughly), and I laughed at similar inanities by Larry Gelbart and Cheryl Saban and a host of others, but after a very short while the sheer sanctimonious weight (or, I should say, lightness) of it edges the reader past mild amusement at celebrity-sodden self-importance into unrelieved, unmitigated tedium. Apparently they've attached an addendum to the old rule about flaunting it that reads, "If you don't got it, flaunt it, anyway; remember, you're a star." It's like they decided to jump the shark on the inaugural day of the venture by providing us with "a very special episode" of the Huffington blog.

This effort (and I use the term oh-so-loosely) by Meathead is typical of the blog as a whole. Meathead's "point" is simultaneously very vague and utterly self-satisfied, and it is almost completely devoid of links that might offer some shape to the amorphous mass of noxious fumes that emanates from the post (many of the bloggers seem to be link-challenged, as Ann Althouse has noted). Because it says so little of anything, it's not really amenable to fisking, but I'll make an attempt, because . . . because . . . well, I'm not sure why, but if I were Meathead I wouldn't have to provide reasons or even much of an argument, would I?

Just yesterday, I was in the midst of a rant about the abysmal state of education funding in this country when a friend rejoined, “We get the government we deserve.”

-- You've got to wince at any blog that begins, "Just yesterday I was in the midst of a rant about the abysmal state of education funding in this country," don't you? Does Meathead get together for a ranting section with his sycophantic friends every day, I wonder? Does he begin every session by ranting about [insert statist lack-of-funding lament here], and do his fawning interlocutors then cup their chins in their hands and offer up some hackneyed phrase for Meathead's socratic mind to parse? By the way, while it may or may not be true that we get the government we deserve (it's possible that we get better than we deserve), it's inarguable that we get the celebrity blogs that we deserve.

While he's on the funding topic, Reiner might want to address this little "lack of funding" issue:

"Should [Reiner] run [for Governor], he'll have to explain the shortcomings of Proposition 10, which Reiner spearheaded in November 1998 and added a 50-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes to pay for early childhood development programs. Proposition 10 has been slow in handing out money (of the $3.4 billion that tax has generated, only $1.3 billion has been spent on providing health care to children). Even by California standards, the program is too image-conscious (the county commissions created by Prop. 10 have spent more than $164 million on PR and advertising over the past six years--by contrast, the state's Department of Social Services has spent only $2 million on its Safely Surrendered Baby campaign)."

Or Meathead's interest in The Truth (of which more later) might lead him here:

"[Reiner] crows about Prop 10's success like the Meathead watching Archie get a kiss from Sammy Davis Jr. In fact, far from being an older version of Mike Stivic, the aging Reiner may actually be worse. At least the Meathead was on the side of the angels when it came to racism, chauvinism, and the war in Vietnam. But who will give the raspberry to this preening Beverly Hills honcho who twists taxation policy for discredited therapeutic ends and squanders funds on feel-good programs whose failure will carry consequences only for the nameless?"

Back to Meathead:

I have been fighting this toxic mixture of superiority and cynicism since I became involved in the child advocacy movement almost 11 years ago.

-- The child advocacy movement? Is that opposed to the "let-the-children-rot" movement?

The truth is, when Americans are treated with respect and receive accurate information, they make wonderfully wise decisions. The system breaks down, however, when the press fails to provide such information, as they do today. The so-called fourth estate is now little more than the public relations arm of a government propaganda machine in which all three branches are controlled by the same political party. Who is watching the store?

-- The truth? The truth? In the immortal words of a character from a Rob Reiner movie, you can't handle the truth! The accurate information Meathead deplores the lack of is, apparently, the information that will lead Americans to the "wonderfully wise" decision to agree with Meathead's ponderous pronouncements. I haven't much else to go on with this passage. By the way, who is watching Meathead's prose for hackneyed catch phrases?

In some ways, the mass media are all of our surrogates for the truth – they are our eyes and ears. In days gone by, they were just that. To take but one example, the Washington Post famously risked their entire existence when they pursued a story about a suspicious break-in long after everyone else believed the story was dead. Would they make the same tough decisions today? Would any media outlet? Certainly not if there was a government-issued Video News Release handy.

-- All of our? Our eyes and ears? Days gone by? Get me a rewrite! What do you mean that the media are our surrogates for the truth? We cannot be "the truth" so the media is "the truth" for us? Now who's advocating a theocracy, bub?

Americans now face a choice between a news channel and cabal of radio hosts that are an arm of the Republican Party, or a lethargic sheep-like mainstream press that would rather discuss a woman who had cold feet the night before her wedding then the continuing chaos in Iraq, where the number of car bombs detonated was up 50% in April from March.

-- Fox News is evil. Talk radio is evil. Two legs bad, four legs good. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

I could go on, but there is no better proof than the fact that about 3 in every 4 [pdf] people who supported President Bush believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and that we actually found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

-- I'd like to know how many people who supported Kerry have ever heard of Halabja. What percentage of Kerry supporters can identify the years of the Civil War? Or name the U.S. presidents who served in office during WW2? Or tell me whether the Tet offensive was a defeat or a victory for the U.S. military? It's a misinformation campaign! I hold the "press" responsible.

Massive misinformation is not limited to the Iraq war, of course. Take, for example, the Tom Delay ethics scandal. Over and over we hear that nothing can be done because Republicans control Congress, and the Democrats have no investigative power. The way I remember it, investigation was also the press’ job.

-- Press'? Note, by the way, Meathead's mystical belief in the former Authority of the Media, before they got lazy and that "cabal" of upstarts began spoon-feeding the hapless public lies instead of the nutritious Truth that the Media used to feed them. If only we could change the public's diet, put the Truth back on that spoon, and shovel it down their throats again. Note to Meathead: blogging is partly about challenging that passivity you take for granted and apparently wish to perpetuate.

Whether in life or politics, it is impossible to make informed decisions when you are not properly informed.

-- And, in other breaking news, if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its arse a-hoppin'.

Update: Stephen Green has more on the Huffington venture. He concludes with a great line: "Politics is easy, Ari. Blogging is hard." And Nikki Finke chimes in (rather devastatingly) here. And the inimitable James Lileks reacts here.