Blog P.I.

Nothing really stands out today, so here’s a brief, likely unrepresentative trip around the political mediasphere:

• If it hasn’t been said before, allow me to be the first: Raw Story’s comment boards are basically the mirror image of LGF’s.


• In the bizarre case of semi-prominent libertarian blogger Jackie Mackie Paisley Passey, who drew much attention and much, much derision for an exceedingly arrogant post declaring just how desirable everyone must agree she is, one of the more eye-rolling aspects was her boast that one of her public photos had rated an 8.6 on Hot or Not. Yes, you read that correctly. Without an ounce of irony, she uploaded a photograph of herself to Hot or Not — and evaluated her self-worth based on the results.

  So… here I may be overstepping the bounds of good sense, if not propriety, but I took another public photo from her page and uploaded it to that very same shallow website. If you’re curious to know how she’s doing, well, have a look and rate it yourself.

  It may well be cruel to pile on at this point, and I don’t wish her ill, but it is still relevant, and my best defense is that I’m just holding her to her own standards.



• The New York Times’ Kurt Eichenwald, who must have drawn the short straw to end up on the pedo beat, had another icky story ready to go today, just as John Mark Karr was en route to Los Angeles in a business class seat on Thai Airlines. This bit jumped out at me:

  In recent months, new concerns have emerged about whether the ubiquitous nature of broadband technology, instant message communications and digital imagery is presenting new and poorly understood risks to children.

  Um, do the last 120 months count as “recent”? Meanwhile at Hullabaloo, Digby asks:

  Considering this new awareness of the use of overly sexualized visual images of children by pedophiles, why has nobody taken the networks to task for repeatedly showing those Jon Benet beauty pageant videos ten years after the fact?

  Good question. I asked a similar question following Jane Hamsher’s deployment of that inflammatory Lieberman-in-blackface picture. If it was wrong for her to post it, what about everyone else who used it afterward? Is context really everything?



• Josh Marshall is taking flak from readers and more than one fellow blogger for not being anti-Lieberman enough. As are others of his readers.

  The WSJ’s James Taranto has an amusing take:

  They said they would be greeted as liberators for toppling the old regime. Instead, they find themselves caught in a quagmire — a vicious, unwinnable civil war with incalculable costs in both resources and prestige. We refer, of course, to the Democrats in Connecticut.

  His proposed solution keeps the analogy going, but doesn’t make any sense:

  It looks as though Lieberman is in the race to stay — but there is an answer to the Democrats’ quandary. For the good of the party, Lamont could throw his support to Lieberman. This would leave the incumbent running essentially unopposed … allowing the Democrats to concentrate on beating Republicans. Lamont could declare that he made his point by winning the primary, but his own ambitions are less important than the party. He could then redeploy, going on the road with Lieberman, campaigning for Democratic House challengers in Connecticut and for Democratic Senate candidates elsewhere. Rather than stay in a race he is likely to lose, Lamont could prove he understands his own dictum: ”Stay the course’ is not a winning strategy.’

  Taranto frequently turns to jokes when he doesn’t actually have anything to add, and though he is undoubtely behind Lieberman in this race, this is probably one of those all-too-frequent circumstances. With the primary decided, the only candidate who has any business thinking about abandoning the race is Joe Lieberman. That said, it probably would work.



• More or less along the same lines: I’m not one to praise recent Firedoglake addition Pachacutec — he’s Jane Hamsher without the Hollywood background — but his call for Stephen Colbert to have Conn. Senate Republican nominee Alan Schlesinger on the show is inspired.


• The connoisseur of schadenfreude in me really hopes Katherine Harris runs for office again soon. What else is left of me declines to comment.


• If Blog P.I. isn’t updated tomorrow, here’s maybe one reason why.