Howling at Atrios

Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby is bitching about the "groaning downward spiral of the activist liberal web", and of Atrios, in particular (02/09/06).  The specific subject on which he bases his latest round of complaints is Chris "Tweety" Matthews on the Iraq War.

Somerby has a bit of the Nietzsche writing style of making carefully-thought-out in sweeping, provocative declarations.

And, like Nietzsche, he has been something of a lonely, prophetic figure, in Somerby's case by taking a hardheaded look at the performance of the mainstream media, including television.  And he's been doing it since 1998, those pre-blogging days, before "MSM" became a commonly-used term and when Media Matters and Think Progress were not yet visible on the cyber-horizon.

In his 02/09/06 polemic, Somerby criticizes Atrios for not noticing that Tweety has been quite critical of Bush's actions on the Iraq War since 2002, the preparation phase.  It's not that Somerby likes Tweety.  On the contrary, he consistently describes him as one of the worst offenders in the celebrity-ization of television news that has reduced it to such a pitiful state.

He even offers Atrios an alibi, or more precisely, describes the larger reason why the "activist liberal web" is missing things like this.  Because the liberal commentators and magazines have not been willing to challenge the way the Establishment press has been dealing with issues and candidates.  Or, to quote Somerby's own "incomparable" language:

But liberals have a major problem. For years, career liberal writers at the major journals refused to discuss the mainstream press corps. As part of this general failure, they have refused to discuss the astonishing work of Matthews, the loud cable talker. In the case of both Clintons - and in the case of Candidate Gore - Matthews has been an utter disgrace; for example, he was the most significant (and disingenuous) cable player in the two-year War Against Gore. But career liberal writers have disgraced themselves by their endless refusal to deal with this topic. Presumably, it’s an age-old story: They want to go on Hardball too, and reap the massive career advantages. Young career liberal writers look ahead totheir future - and to the riches and fame they will gain.

For whatever reason, career liberal writers have refused to discuss Chris Matthews - which has given rise to the often-laughable work now driving the activist web.

Somerby's basic point is well taken.  People trying to get things right need to place attention to what actually occurs and be careful about falling into too-easy assumptions.  This is easier for some than for others.  As Gene Lyons puts it, in one of my brand new favorite quotes, "The inability to tolerate ambiguity defines the authoritarian mind."

I have to give the Howler credit, too, for improving his framing of what he in this post called the "activist liberal web".  When he first started focusing heavily on liberal Web sites' presentation of issues a year or so ago, he seemed to be applying the same criteria to them (I don't say "us" because he's never commented on anything I've written, darn it) as he was applying to news programs and presentations.  Whereas blogs like Atrios' are partisan sites.

They should strive to be accurate, too.  But partisan or advocacy analysis is just a different animal than news stories.  Somerby seems to be taking that more into account, now.

Somehow, though, as I've mentioned before, the Valerie Plame "TreasonGate" story really threw his off his game, it seems to me.  He failed to recognize the significance of that story.  And since that was one of the biggest stories last year (and continues to be), and one in which liberal bloggers understandably took great interest, his mis-evaluation of that story's significance was a big part of the reason why his criticisms of liberal bloggers so often seemed to be not nearly so well-conceived as his looks at the mainstream media.