A friend has tipped me to a controversy in the baseball blogosphere — it goes strong even in the offseason — between long-lasting (or maybe just lasting-long) Philadelphia Daily News sports columnist Bill Conlin and the blogger at Phillies-focused Crashburn Alley. Philadelphia magazine’s Daily Examiner blog explains:
What started out as an innocent you suck/you’re old!-type e-mail pissing contest about Jimmy Rollins’s MVP award suddenly turned ugly when Conlin made the unfortunate decision to write this in one of his e-mail responses: “The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth — I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers.”
In context, it’s kind of funny, actually, but once Conlin — already an easy target for the online attack dogs due to his propensity to wear his Old Media badge with pride — started name-dropping Hitler coupled with the word “eliminate” to a blogger who’s already pissed off at him, well, he was asking for a pillorying. Headlines talking about how touchy he was instantly morphed into “Sportswriter Praises Hitler in Attack on Bloggers.” Yikes.
We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Conlin’s actions are not the same as those of widely-loathed TNR contributor Lee Siegel — the unlucky will remember that Siegel posed as a fan of his own work in the comments of a TNR blog post last September — but it sounds to me like Conlin is guilty of the same kind of contempt for debate on the web that tripped up Siegel.
We might even call this self-destructive contempt Lee Siegelism. Conlin and Siegel, as others before and after, wrongly think that “anything goes” when it comes to the blogosphere, so they procede to do just about anything they see fit and don’t expect to be called on it. Big mistake. Siegel and Colin certainly are far from being newcomers to journalism, but well into their careers, the media has changed. When it comes to this flatter, meritocratic media age, they’re the newbies. And it turns out they’re the ones who need to learn some respect.
P.S. I’m a Nats fan and reader of Ball-Wonk — so the team from Philadelphia will always be the Phaillies to me.
There is no joy in Washington, D.C. today. As virtually everyone with a television set or Drudge Report bookmark knows by now, Washington Redskins star safety Sean Taylor died early this morning from gunshot wounds incurred while confronting a home invasion in his Miami home.
As a District resident and fan of the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons, it’s a gloomy day. But as a subsciber to the Washington Post, it’s even worse. Here is an e-mail alert I received barely two hours ago (at 8:48 a.m. to be specific):
I realize that this e-mail alert generally aims to highlight news and opinion from the print edition, but this is obviously one of those times when they should have updated it with information from the web edition. Obviously. Methinks the Post will be getting some angry e-mails about this one.
P.S. My fantasy football season is over, realistically if not mathematically. So what the hell. Here’s my act of solidarity:
If you find this less a sign of respect than either creepy or funny, well, you’re probably right.
In politics we like to speak of “name ID,” meaning what percentage of voters are familiar with a particular candidate. Often this comes up in reference to incumbents and unusually strong candidates who are said to have “100% name ID.” But the latest survey out of Pew Research should give us pause before we bandy about the phrase again:
If the unimonikered Arnold and Hillary can’t muster any more than 93% name identification upon the prompting
Now I would like to ask you about some people who have been in the news recently. Not everyone will have heard of them. If you don’t know who someone is, just tell me and I’ll move on. Can you tell me who [INSERT ITEM; RANDOMIZE] is?
then who possibly can? Maybe the president?
Maybe not: An Angus Reid survey from last September suggests that 1% of Americans haven’t the foggiest idea who George W. Bush might be. Of course, that poll also showed just 1% of respondents didn’t know who Hillary Clinton was either.
Of course, the numbers don’t mean that much. If they did, dispirited Republican strategists would be reading this survey and wishing it was already 2011, when Peyton Manning will be thirty-five years old.
For the better part of a week now, Matt Drudge has been promoting Sports Illustrated’s not-very-rigorous contemplation of global warming/climate change:
If nothing else, this should count as an example of the fact that while Drudge himself is a conservatarian of some stripe, his instinct to overhype is not limited by ideology. But when you start talking gloom and doom and Sports Illustrated, there’s really only one way to turn:
And there’s more to it than that. In fact, the global warming story and the definitive meditation on the “SI Jinx” were both written by frequent SI contributor Alexander Wolff. Just one question remains: What does this mean? Does the SI Jinx apply to global warming, thus signifying happy days ahead? Or to planet Earth, signifying a cloudier future than Ron Artest’s?
One thing we know for sure is that when the subject is sports*, never trust Matt Drudge — a lesson SI itself could learn.
*Not unlike other subjects.
The greatest thing about the Internet is that the previous limitations of time and space have been thrown out the window. No more column inches to measure, or 2:30 segments to produce. Everyone can publish just about as much as they want.
But, the absolutely maddening part about this new found freedom is that some limitations were good!
I’ve been doing some fundraising work as of late and, naturally, I talk to lawyers. I got an email yesterday with 215 words in it only 58 of which were a message from the partner communicating with me.
This is the most ridiculous signature I’ve ever seen:
Notice from [LAWFIRM]:
To comply with U.S. Treasury regulations, we advise you that any discussion of Federal tax issues in this communication was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, by any person (i) for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by the Internal Revenue Service, or (ii) to promote, market or recommend to another party any matter addressed herein.
This Internet message may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure. It is intended for use only by the person to whom it is addressed. If you have received this in error, please (1) do not forward or use this information in any way; and (2) contact me immediately.
Neither this information block, the typed name of the sender, nor anything else in this message is intended to constitute an electronic signature unless a specific statement to the contrary is included in this message.
My favorite part is the, “if you received this in error… do not forward.”
Can I suggest a rewrite?
Despite the fact that I am too stupid to actually read who I’m sending emails to, no law in this country prevents you from forwarding this information, but I’m going to try and scare you with some legal mumbo jumbo.
If the lack of space limitations mean I’m going to get emails like this, at least make them funny.
Super Sunday Note: NPB will go with the experts out there: capitalism. Colts 27 - Bears 17.
Update: Just so nobody is confused by the Tradesports link up there, at the time I posted this, the Colts were trading at $6.80 out of $10, or a 68% chance of winning. To see how Tradesports works, click here.
Looks like the market was right, although if you check the history, the market thought the Bears were going to win after Devin Hester’s opening kickoff return for a touchdown.
Silly market.
Tomorrow, Blog P.I. will return to serious analyses of what’s going on around the political interwebs. But for the moment, let’s take a closer look at what I found this morning after setting the rosters for my fantasy football teams at Yahoo! Sports:
Yes, that’s Onterrio “Original Whizzinator” Smith listed, in a preview of the premium Buzz Index feature, as the week’s most-added player. In case you haven’t been following professional football lately, Onterrio Smith is not just no longer a running back for Minnesota Vikings of the NFL, he’s no longer even a running back for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL.
Smith, the former Oregon Duck, was a surprise breakout for the Vikings during his rookie season — hence all the fantasy GMs rushing to add this previously unknown rusher (taken 104th overall) to their their rosters. So that would make the above image about three years old. Three years!
One suspects Yahoo! is too busy trying to figure out how it will ever make money off Flickr to bother updating the graphics on their original website.
