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An Op-Ed We Just Might Blog

Published by William Beutler on July 30, 2007 in 9/11 Attacks, Blog Fights, Charts and Graphs, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Middle East, National Security, Terrorism and Tough Crowd. 2 Comments Tags: , .
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Memeorandum is not my homepage, although it might as well be — if you want to know what’s going on in the political blogosphere right now, it beats the pants off Technorati or Google’s BlogSearch. Normally here I’d say something about its impressive signal-to-noise ratio, but the fact is, there’s no noise. (On sister site Techmeme once, I saw a weeks-old story linked once. Once.)

It’s good enough that I tend to think that just by eyeballing it you can tell how big a particular story is. If that’s the case, then the Michael O’Hanlon/Kenneth Pollack op-ed in today’s New York Times may be the most talked-about newspaper article this year, at least:

Michael O'Hanlon-Kenneth Pollack opinion piece in the NYT, "A War We Just Might Win"

Unlike many, perhaps most, stories listed by Memeorandum this one attracted attention from both the pro-war/conservative/righty bloggers as well as the anti-war/progressive/lefty bloggers. If you’ve read the op-ed, it’s not hard to see why. O’Hanlon and Pollack both supported the Iraq war at the outset — the latter expressly advocating it in an influential book — but changed their minds as the war continued and the rebuilding project went awry. Nowadays the right is grateful for any sign that the war might be winnable, especially if it comes from Democratic-aligned intellectuals, especially if it runs on the New York Times’ left-leaning op-ed page. Meanwhile, the left has at least as much invested in ending the very same war that the right wishes to continue, in discrediting Pollack and O’Hanlon’s work, by pointing out inconsistencies and oversights, not to mention disputing their anti-war credentials.

It is not, however, an even split.

So who wins this battle of wills? Well, if you trust Memeorandum creator Gabe Rivera’s secret sauce, and you trust my count (I’ve included the complete breakdown after the jump, if you’re feeling argumentative), and we focus on this iteration of the page (there were others), several more large blogs of the right hopped on this story than blogs of the left tried to burst it like a bubble: 37 to 18, with 10 online newspaper items and non-aligned bloggers making up the oft-overlooked third leg of the blogospheric debate. Still, take this with a grain of salt — The Huffington Post has more traffic than many of these blogs put together, while righty traffic leader Instapundit linked it approvingly, but as usual offered too little commentary to make the cut. And in the course of writing this, I have seen more than a few perfectly major blogs not linked here — but I still think it’s a pretty good representation.

If there’s nothing else to be said here, it’s a fitting story to capture (political) blogosphere-wide attention — the rightosphere came to be after 9/11 and to support war on terrorism, of which Iraq is consdidered a piece, while the leftosphere was built around opposition to the invasion, and frustration with moderate liberals who supported it — like, say, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon.

OK, so here’s the complete list. Feel free to tell me where I’m wrong:

Anti-war/Progressive/Lefty

News item/Moderate/Non-aligned

Pop quiz — can you guess who switched sides? If you give up, the answer is here.

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2 Responses to “An Op-Ed We Just Might Blog”

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  1. 1 Jimmie
    Jul 30th, 2007 at 11:11 pm

    I’d say you have the list pegged about right. I’d add only a couple comments.

    1) John Cole didn’t switch sides. Pick 50 issues and he’ll be on the side you have him on 49 times.

    2) Where you place Time’s Swampland and The Moderate Voice depends entirely on who’s doing the blogging. Most of the time, you can put Swampland on the left (especially if Joe Klein or Ana Marie Cox write the posts). It’s pretty much the same for TMV, except that I believe they have one expressly right-oriented blogger there. Otherwise, they’re pretty much left-leaning.

    Your analysis pretty much puts the biscuit in the basket. I have noticed today that most, if not all, of the bloggers on the left aren’t spending a lot of time dealing with the substance of the article but are focusing on the authors’ credentials, going so far as to cast them out of any future Democratic administration. I’ve read perhaps 8 comments from the left and they all went that way. Many of the bloggers on the right are doing what you’ve said, but a couple notable posts really dug into some deep analysis of the piece (Belmont Club and TigerHawk come immediately to mind).

    I’ve never seen your blog before. I’m going to have to visit a lot more often. Your analysis is pretty heavy stuff!

  1. 1 All Your Headlines Are Belong to Atrios at Blog P.I.
    Pingback on Dec 29th, 2007 at 4:28 am
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