For all of you conservatives who love to praise the “free market”, let me call bullshit on this enduring lie that the President frequently cites to sell his immigration plan. From yesterday’s speech :

As we enforce our immigration laws, comprehensive immigration reform also requires us to improve those laws by creating a new temporary worker program. This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do. Workers would be able to register for legal status for a fixed period of time, and then be required to go home. This program would help meet the demands of a growing economy, and it would allow honest workers to provide for their families while respecting the law.

The “jobs Americans won’t do” lie was also recently advanced in the Washington Post by a spokesman for the Labor Department and a “panicking” farmer (via Kevin Drum) :

“There are just some jobs people don’t want to do,” Nassif said. “It’s the most developed nation in the world using a foreign workforce, and people need to recognize that. We need to make them legal.”

Jack Vessey said he listed openings for 300 laborers at the state office of employment last week to prepare the lettuce fields for harvest. “We got one person,” he said. “He showed up and said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’”

The key to unraveling this bullshit is that the anonymous laborer quoted above likely ended his gripe with “unless you pay me more”. The President wants you to think this is because American workers are shiftless elitists, but it’s the employers and their shills who are the assholes here.

What people like the George W. Bush don’t understand is that capitalism is not a one-way street. When the demand for workers is high and the supply of laborers is low, the rational solution would be for employers to raise wages, increase benefits, or both to ensure that supply catches up to demand. But that would mean actually spending more money, and we can’t have that.

Instead, employers have found a way to get around their obligations by employing “undocumented” workers (and thus creating a demand for illegal labor). Why are these men and women willing to do the same job that Americans are unwilling to do for less money? Well, they’re here illegally, for one. They probably don’t speak English well and have little familiarity with existing labor laws. They’re doing a job that’s unskilled while under the constant threat of deportation. Sounds like the new face of indentured servitude to me, but the President and his allies are trying to figure out ways to make it acceptable.

But here’s the key to all of these proposals : These illegal workers aren’t being offered citizenship, but membership in a “guest worker program”. Bush and co. don’t give a damn about the working class in this country, they just want to make sure that the crooks aren’t penalized for breaking our labor laws. The solutions bandied about would create a pseudo-citizenship which will protect employers but do little to lift immigrant workers from the bottom rung on the economic ladder. When residence is closely tied to employment, the threat of deportation doesn’t go away, it just gets hidden a little better.

Which makes this whole debate even more galling. Immigrants are being exploited, American workers are getting screwed, and the whole debate is happenening as if these two groups of victims are on opposite sides. If you want to stop illegal immigration, you don’t need to build a fence. The supply of illegal labor will go away once the demand for it ceases. We don’t need new plans, we need to rigorously enforce the laws already on the books. If that means that employers are going to have to pay more to the people doing the jobs that “Americans won’t do” and pass those costs on to the consumer, then it’s hardly our place to question the wisdom of the invisible hand, right?

Also, it should be stressed again that George Bush and his allies should be ashamed of themselves for slandering us with their anti-worker rhetoric. Aren’t you paying attention, America? The President of the United States just called you an indolent snob. He thinks you’re too lazy to do an honest day’s work and too effete to do work that will get your hands dirty. Doesn’t that piss you off? It should.

I hope you’re sitting down. This isn’t that shocking to people who have been following this stuff closely, but it’s absolutely terrifying to think it thorough to its logical conclusion :

HERSH: Suffice to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David with his friends, the people that I’m sure call him George, is very serene about the war. He’s upbeat. He thinks that he’s going to be judged, maybe not in five years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He’s committed to the course. He believes in democracy.

He believes that he’s doing the right thing, and he’s not going to stop until he gets — either until he’s out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins.

BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him?

HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he’s absolutely committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He’s been sold on this notion.

He’s a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn’t have all the facts and all the information he needs and isn’t able to change.

I’ll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they’re not sure how you get to this guy.
. . .
BLITZER: Here’s what you write. You write, “Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.”

Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn’t want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I’ve been talking to — I’ve been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.

They’re beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

I don’t want to sound like I’m off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able — is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.

I think all of my neuroses are bubbling to the surface.

We’re screwed.

I love the way Thomas Ayres describes the “discovery” of America :

On October 12, 1492, the natives on a small island in the central Bahamas discovered Christopher Columbus. They found him lost on their beach, along with several equally pallid companions who could not speak well enough to be understood and all of whom had an atrocious sense of fashion. If the natives had been able to understand the gibberish spoken by these strangers, they would have been surprised to learn that, although he did know where he was, Columbus was claiming their island for Spain – whatever that was.

That seems like a more reasonable way to describe the “discovery” of land that’s already inhabited.

The newest Harpers Index references one of the best articles on the Ten Commandments I’ve read anywhere. Unfortunately, The Decatur Daily’s Thou Shalt Debate by M.J. Ellington is now only available in Google’s cache. To ensure that you all get to read it, I’m going to mirror the entire article.

MONTGOMERY — When 25 state senators signed a bill to put protections for Ten Commandment displays in the state constitution, they said they were doing what voters want.

Yet a survey of 10 of those senators who backed the measure in the special legislative session that ended Monday found only one, the bill sponsor, who could name all 10 of the commandments. Three of the lawmakers surveyed represent Morgan, Limestone and Cullman counties.

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This is fun. Once of the things that comes along with writing about politics, as you can probably guess, is the occasional hate mail. I usually either ignore them or respond with something clever like “screw you”, but yesterday I got the urge to respond to one of these missives with an earnest attempt to have a discussion about the issue that enraged him. What I found so amusing about the exchange is how much the person I was arguing with would try to put words in my mouth. It was as if he wanted to have an argument with a liberal strawman, but couldn’t find one so he ranted against me instead.

The full email thread is in the extended entry, slightly edited for clarity, but with typos intact.
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Out of curiosity, is it common for a media company to completely rebrand themselves less than a week after launching? Even if they’re just going back to their old name, it still seems like a pretty dumb idea for a brand new company to do something this drastic (especially after vigorously defending their right to steal someone else’s name). Now that they’ve settled on what to call themselves, perhaps the dozens of bloggers all over the world can concentrate on putting more than 6 posts per day on the site. Destroying the MSM™ is going to take a little extra work, guys.

“Okay, Greg,” you’re saying, “enough of the overly-verbose posts about patriotism, history, and pajamas media. When are you going to post a photograph of President Bush shaking hands with a robot with the head of Albert Einstein?”

Well, here you go (via BoingBoing) :

It’s a good thing that’s the only embarrasing photo from his Asia trip (via Atrios) :



But there’s nothing more embarrasing than going on vacation and running into an ex-girlfriend from the Skull & Bones days :



I wonder where the President’s “Run Away From Bad Poll Numbers” tour will take him next?

Like Chuck Klosterman, I think Billy Joel is an underrated artist who’s completely devoid of “cool”, but that’s not what I’m interested in writing about. Instead, I’d like to highlight this introduction to the Billy Joel essay in his last book :

Several months before nineteen unsmiling people from the Middle East woke up early on a Tuesday in order to commit suicide by flying planes into tall New York office buildings, I sent out a mass e-mail to several acquaintances that focused on the concept of patriotism. At the time, “patriotism” seemed like a quaint, baffling concept; it was almost like asking people to express their feelings on the art of blacksmithing. But sometimes I like to ask people what they think about blacksmithing, too.

So ANYWAY, here was the content of my e-mail: I gave everyone two potential options for a hypothetical blind date and asked them to pick who they’d prefer. The only things they knew about the first candidate was that he or she was attractive and successful. The only things they knew about the second candidate was that he or she was attractive, successful, and “extremely patriotic.” No other details were provided or could be ascertained.

Just about everyone immediately responded by selecting the first individual. They viewed patriotism as a downside. I wasn’t too surprised; in fact, I was mostly just amused by how everyone seemed to think extremely patriotic people weren’t just undatable, but totally [freaking] insane. One of them wrote that the quality of patriotism was on par with “regularly listening to Cat Stevens” and “loves Robin Williams movies.” Comparisons were made to Ted Nugent and Patrick Henry. And one especially snide fellow sent back a mass message to the entire e-mail group, essentially claiming that any woman who loved America didn’t deserve to date him, not because he hated his country but because patriotic people weren’t smart.

That last response outraged one of my friends, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer who had been the only individual in the entire group who claimed to prefer the extremely patriotic candidate to the alternative. He sent me one of the most sincerely aggravated epistles I’ve ever received, and I still recall a segment of his electronic diatribe that was painfully accurate: “You know how historians call people who came of age during World War II ‘the greatest generation’? No one will ever say that about us,” he wrote. “We’ll be ‘the cool generation.’ That’s all we’re good at, and that’s all you and your friends seem to aspire to.”

Now I’ll admit that I’d choose the candidate that doesn’t consider themselves “extremely patriotic”, but it has nothing to do with wanting to be “cool” and I definitely don’t see patriotism as a downside. The way this question is worded, “extremely patriotic” is a loaded term. More than that, however, is that the term when applied that way, is a divisive one.

Let’s take a step back and imagine this question in a different way. If you had to choose a friend between two people who are for all practical purposes alike, except for that fact that one “really loves Jesus”, who would you pick? I would choose the first, not because I see loving Jesus as a negative, but because “really loves Jesus” implies a certain level of religious devotion that I’m not comfortable with. Considering the religious makeup of our country, I see it as almost a given that anyone I meet would self-identify as a Christian. That being the case, saying that someone “really loves Jesus” isn’t done to emphasize their normality but to but to differentiate them from an already Christian majority. For that reason, my interpretation of “really loves Jesus” isn’t that the person in question is merely religious, but a zealot.

The same holds true with the original question. I consider myself “extremely patriotic”, but I’d never think to describe myself as such. To do so wouldn’t send the message that I love my country, but that I think other people don’t love the country as much as I do. If someone else was described to me as “extremely patriotic”, I would jump to the conclusion that the person in question is not necessarily a patriot, but a self-righteous nationalist. Even before 9/11, the overzealous patriot archetype was a breed of American that was used to divide people ideologically, not celebrate their common heritage. I won’t bother delving into the specifics of this stereotype, but you probably know what I’m talking about.

Of course, this all opens up a further line of questioning. Why do these hypothetical Christians and patriots bring to mind a particular right-wing variety of Christianity and patriotism? I’ve explored the religious question plenty of times on this site (most recently in “Take Back Jesus”), but the patriotism question is a little more elusive. There’s a long history of politicians of all stripes beating back opposition by questioning their opponents patriotism, but this is something that’s really intesnified in recent years and something that conservatives excell at.

Which is really just a long way of saying that, with the exception of the “exceptionally snide fellow”, I don’t think Chuck Klosterman’s friends are America-hating jerks. They’re just exhibiting a predictable reaction to a social climate that’s sought to make “patriotism” seen as a conservative value. It’s not, of course, but making that point relies upon making to careful distinction between patriotism, nationalism, and jingoism. Considering the results of last year’s election, I don’t know if the American people have a tolerance for subtlety.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but I’m posting over at Crooks & Liars for a few days while John is attending a funeral. You’ve only missed two posts so far, but here they are anyways :

Open Sores Media

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the orgy of self-congratulation that is OSM™, let me quickly highlight this section from their press release yesterday :

Open Source Media currently features content from more than 70 bloggers worldwide, primarily focused on political and current events. However, the goal is to expand its scope to eventually include all forms of coverage, from local news to pop culture to sports, fashion, food, hobbies and more.

Along with this bit from the National Review’s puff piece earlier this week :

Bloggers don’t work nine-to-five; they post around-the-clock. They don’t file one story a day; they might update dozens of times throughout a 24-hour period. And they are everywhere. The New York Times has 53 bureaus worldwide (16 of them in the New York area). Pajamas Media plans to easily top that number, and at a fraction of the cost.

Wow. With $3.5 million in funding, more than 70 contributors, and a 24/7 posting schedule, I’m sure the guys in pajamas are blogging up a storm, right? Well, only if you consider five posts a storm. By comparison, The Huffington Post had 65 posts in its first day.

I guess it must be hard to pat yourself on the back and type at the same time.

What She Said

Since it’s already a few posts down, let me highlight and endorse what Avedon said below :

I actually meant to include this in my previous post, and judging from comments it’s just what some of you want – a media contact list. So let me encourage you to tell the media how outrageous you find it that they give so much coverage to ludicrous right-wing talking points and then don’t cover the response from the Democratic leadership – or from the majority of Americans.

Even better than FAIR’s media contact list is this section of the Democratic party’s site :

All you have to do is enter a zip code and it will bring up a form for you to contact multiple local and national media outlets at the same time. This is an especially useful resource if you wanted to, let’s say, contact the Arizona Daily Star and tell them that John McCain is a fraud whose “toughness” only comes out when it’s politically safe to do so or The Greenville News to tell the people of South Carolina that their Senator wants to destroy some of our most basic rights as Americans. With the public finally starting to wake up to the moral cowardice of the Republican majority, I can think of quite a few places that could use a friendly reminder that their representatives are part of the problem.

So take advantage of the Democratic media contact page, folks. It’s a damn good resource that people don’t use nearly as often as they should. Then again, it might be more popular if the site’s webmaster hadn’t (a) hidden the form under the site’s non-descriptive “Action” tab and (b) failed to include a redirect from the forms old URL (democrats.org/media) to its new one democrats.org/page/speakout/letterstoeditors). Just in case it gets shuffled around again, you might want to bookmark this one.

Yes, I’m still posting over at This Mordern World as well, though I haven’t posted there in a few days.

The big three news channels are all glued to a live shot of a small airplane in Atlanta that’s having landing gear problems. Right now, the view is just a white spot against a blue sky. Exciting television to be sure, but what’s going to happen if the people behind the scenes get the fiery crash that they’re hoping for? Elation? Dread? Regret?

A few years ago, local stations in Los Angeles interrupted after-school childrens programming to go with a live shot of a car chase and its eventual standoff with police. As the cameras zoomed in on the man who was in frantic negotiations with the police, children throughout the city who just wanted to watch Saved By The Bell were instead subjected to the site of a stranger picking up a shotgun and blowing his head off. The media quickly apologized, but what the hell were they expecting to see?

If this airplane turns into the fireball that producers secretly hope it will be, I’m sure we’ll see similar backpedaling as newsmen try to justify their low-brow voyeurism with canned responses about the “public interest”. If the plane lands safely, however, the media’s comeuppance will be delayed. I just hope it won’t take the death of a few strangers to make the media realize that they’re wasting everyone’s time with their prurient desire to show a disaster on live TV.

Mere words cannot prepare you for the horror that you will experience upon hearing “Bush Was Right” by The Right Brothers. “Bush Was Right” plays like a mix between “We Didn’t Start The Fire” and a third-rate imitation of the faux arena rock that’s played during beer commercials, with a lyrical subtlety that makes Sir Mix-A-Lot look like Bob Dylan. And notice that twang in the vocals? It shouldn’t come as any surprise that these guys are really a country band. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this pathetic attempt to cross over makes Garth Brooks’ “Chris Gaines” experiment look like a success in comparison.

No, it’s not a parody. The group Right March is campaigning to get this crap played on MTV :

“The Right Brothers,” a conservative music duo out of Nashville, has released a new song that does what needed to be done: it tells the TRUTH. Titled “Bush Was Right,” the song hits the listener with fact after fact after fact – but the tune is so catchy, and the music is so driving, you can’t help but sing along (especially on the chorus)!

Now here’s the first problem. How do you “sing along” to a chorus that isn’t sung at all? The chorus of this song is just the words “Bush Was Right” yelled over and over again, punctuated by a guitar lick that resembles a childish taunt “neener neener neener”.Yes, you can drunkenly shout along with the song, but it would be a stretch to call that singing.

This is what the youth in America need. They’re already bombarded with songs on the radio and videos on MTV that trash our President, conservative beliefs, and traditional American values. From “Mosh” by Eminem, to “Idiot Son of an A**hole” by NOFX… all of these songs serve to fill young people’s minds with LIES.

I don’t know if Right March realized this or not, but Eminem is one of the popular musical acts on Earth. He could read the phone book and make it a hit. NOFX, though lacking the mainstream success of Eminem, have been touring and recording for twenty years and are one of the most influential punk bands of all time. Who the hell are The Right Brothers?

We think it’s time they hear the TRUTH – so we’re launching a full-out nationwide campaign to get this new song full of TRUTH onto MTV and radio stations across America!

WILL YOU HELP US? We’re putting together a “kickin’” music video right now, and we’re preparing a HUGE grassroots campaign to get hundreds of thousands of people to request “Bush Was Right!” on MTV’s “Total Request Live” show… leading to our demands for it to be played in regular rotation!

If they DON’T – then we’ll hit the media in a BIG way, showing how MTV plays left-wing videos while CENSORING conservative videos

Now this is my favorite part. If MTV doesn’t play “Bush Was Right” during the 15 minutes or so per day that they still show videos, it’s because they’re censoring conservative views! This is hilarious on so many levels. Are these guys really stupid enough to think that there’s some sort of musical fairness doctrine or something? There are a ton of talented, hard-working groups out there that deserve the mainstream exposure these goobers think they’re entitled to.

But I will give The Right Brothers credit for one thing…they’re hilarious. “Bush Was Right” has nothing on songs like “Trickle Down”…

If the rich man didn’t spend his cash on cars and boats and planes
There’d be a lot of average Joe’s out of work today
His dollar helps America’s economy to thrive
The rich man keeps the working man working and alive

Chorus
Trickle down, trickle down let the money trickle down
It won’t do anybody good buried in the ground
Trickle down, trickle down let the money spread around
And one day it’ll be my turn and mine will trickle down

…and “This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Party” :

This ain’t your daddy’s party
They’ve gone and left you behind
It’s time you learned the real story
Time you made up your own mind
You’re generation number three on a liberal family tree
But do you really even know why
This ain’t your daddy’s party
So won’t you come and join mine

Well, you say they make a stand for the average common man
That’s a real nice philosophy
They’ve been claiming that for years while the money disappears
From working folks like you and me
And don’t even get me started on Defense and Education
separation of church and state
And how their liberal hearts bleed if you try to kill a tree
But not a baby on the way

I’m sure they have a song about the death of small government conservatism on the way any moment now. Then again, if they were able to see the contraictions in their own worldview, they probably wouldn’t have followed the anti-immigrant rant “The Illegals” with the immigrant-friendly “What Happened To The Pot”.

Pajamas Media has launched under a new moniker, Open Source Media, or in their officially-sanctioned shorthand OSM™. Yes, the trademark symbol is part of the abbreviation to remind people that they’re not that “open source”. And in case you get any funny ideas about freely distributing and modifying any of OSM™’s intellectual property, every page is accompanied by a copyright notice and a link to the privacy policy :

Our Site and all its contents, which includes, but is not limited to, text, graphics, photographs, logos, video and audio content, is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. All individual components of Our Site, including, without limitation, articles, content and other elements comprising Our Site are also copyrighted works. Additionally all of the weblogs linked to by us are likewise protected. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained on this site and our linked weblogs.

You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, publish, enter into any database, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this site. The only exceptions to this are that you may download material from Our Site for your own personal use, provided such download is limited to making one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. No other use of the content of Our Site is permitted. Please contact our Sales Department if you wish to have rights other than those stated above.

As a comparison, here’s the notice at the bottom of DailyKos (who’s notably absent from OSM™’s blogroll) :

Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified.

The jury may still be out on whether or not OSM™ is a thinly-disguised conservative blog circlejerk, one thing is already clear. They’re not open source. I’ve always considered the intentional misuse of buzzwords to be a MSM™ phenomenon, but the guys in pajamas sure are quick learners.

In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Ex Parte Milligan that the suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional, even if done during wartime. Since we now find ourselves in the remarkable situation of having to defend this most basic right, the court’s opinion in Ex Parte Milligan is worth revisiting. The most stunning part, to me, is this quote near the end which seems to be looking into the past and future at the same time :

Time has proven the discernment of our ancestors; for even these provisions, expressed in such plain English words, that it would seem the ingenuity of man could not evade them, are now, after the lapse of more than seventy years, sought to be avoided. Those great and good men foresaw that troublous times would arise, when rulers and people would become restive under restraint, and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accomplish ends deemed just and proper; and that the principles of constitutional liberty would be in peril, unless established by irrepealable law. The history of the world had taught them that what was done in the past might be attempted in the future. The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, [71 U.S. 2, 121] and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority.

In the extended entry, I’m including a longer quote that reiterates the rights afforded to us by the constitution, the origins of those rights, and why those that would take those rights away from us are un-American. Rights as basic as habeas corpus should be beyond debate at this point. That this is even on the table shows the depths to which these men would sink.
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Pajamas Media, the protean venture which is supposed to use bloggers to destroy the mainstream media or something like that, is almost here. To be honest, I’m embarrassed to be sharing the same writing medium with these self-aggrandizing jackasses. Sane bloggers look at these delusional hacks the way normal Star Wars fans look at those douchebag fanatics who think “Jedi” is a religion. Get over yourselves, guys.

One of the bloggers who led the charge against Rather is Charles Johnson, proprietor of the curiously named Little Green Footballs. Shortly after this triumph, Johnson joined forces with another popular blogger, Roger L. Simon, to form (thumbing their noses at Klein and all other doubters) Pajamas Media.
. . .
“Our intention is to create an aggregation of good blogs, quality-wise, to provide an alternative to the mainstream media,” Simon tells NRO.

In the beginning, however, they will be somewhat dependent on that same mainstream media. The site will have links to the top news headlines of the day, as reported by the AP and other establishment news sources.

How is this different than the Huffington Post or the Daou Report? Oh yeah, those guys aren’t dumb enough to think they’re going to replace the medium they’re criticizing.

Bloggers don’t work nine-to-five; they post around-the-clock. They don’t file one story a day; they might update dozens of times throughout a 24-hour period. And they are everywhere. The New York Times has 53 bureaus worldwide (16 of them in the New York area). Pajamas Media plans to easily top that number, and at a fraction of the cost.

Out of curiosity, how often does your RSS reader show an updated feed between midnight and 5AM? And this bizarre comparison between the number of New York Times bureaus is hilarious.

Screw it, I’m gonna start a new venture called 555-Media that combines the power of the telephone with the news-gathering abilities of traditional media. Whereas outlets like the New York Slimes have blights on their record like Jayson Blair, our “telejournalists” will ensure that everything we do is ethically and intellectually unassailable. The NYT only has 53 bureaus, but there are millions of telephones. Take that, MSM™, now where’s my $3.5 million?

Pajamas Media will also distinguish itself from the mainstream folks, according to Simon, with “a new method of fact-checking.”

An internal instant-messaging system will link their correspondents all over the world. If there are any doubts about a report’s veracity, they can call on the expertise of their editors instantly.
. . .
“If we’re not certain a story is real,” Simon said, “we immediately ping our eight wise men and check it out.”

Editors?! Wow, why hasn’t the mainstream media come up with that idea? And what’s this “instant-messaging” thing they’re talking about? Is that like the telegraph?

More than that, however, Johnson and Simon consider the entire blogosphere their fact-checkers. This is a sacred tenet among many bloggers. If a blogger makes a mistake, readers will call him on it right away, either via comment or email. And the blogger is honor-bound to correct it immediately and clearly.

That’s right, for PJ’s Media, it’s all about honor. That’s why each member of the editorial board will carry a medium-length Japanese sword called a wakizashi with which they will carry out their sacred duty and sacrifice themselves to defend the honor of their media venture. Shortly after issuing a front-page correction, any disgraced editor will plunge the wakizashi into his abdomen, make a swift left-right slash, followed by an upward stroke to ensure a quick, honorable death.

Instead of relying on a few overworked editors to fact-check every story, bloggers count on thousands of other bloggers to, as they like to say, “fact-check their a**.” Bloggers, in other words, lean on the collective knowledge of the entire Internet rather than a handful of elites.

Huh? Weren’t they just boasting about ability to send and instant telegram to their “eight wise men”, or is their editorial board the “handful of elites” they’re referring to here?

Credit where it’s due, however, I applaud the PJM™ for their use of the word “ass”. I’ve been mildly cursing for years now to show the world that I’m edgy and unpredictable, but still safe enough to bring home to meet your family. It’s nice to see a media outlet that’s finally hip to my generation, dammit. The dudes at PJ’s media aren’t afraid to get in your face and, pardon my French, raise hell.

Johnson and Simon claim that, like most bloggers, they will not hesitate to own up to errors. In their view, more established media are too arrogant and hidebound to admit many of their mistakes. And when they do, it’s often published separately from the original story. For instance, newspapers usually print corrections buried deep in subsequent editions. Someone who’s read the original error but doesn’t read the paper closely every day will never know of it.

You really can’t prevent every kind of error,” Simon elaborated. “The difference is, corrections will immediately come up on the front page [of Pajamas Media], as opposed to the mainstream media, where you need three Talmudic scholars to find the correction.

I’m glad somebody is finally addressing this issue. I’ve been complaining for years about newspapers printing their corrections in in either Hebrew or Aramaic. Lately it’s gotten so hard to find one or two Talmudic scholars, much less the three it takes to flip through a newspaper skimming for the word “corrections”. Those arrogant MSM elites (as opposed to arrogant blogger elites) should admit mistakes on the front page above-the-fold, recall any copies of the paper that contain errors, and come up with a way to travel back in time to make sure mistakes never happened in the first place. Since that’s unlikely to happen until PJM takes over the world, I’d suggest the following compromise : If the newspaper makes any mistakes, those mistakes should be acknowledged in a special section of the newspaper (let’s call it “corrections”) and that section should be placed as close to the editorials as possible.

But I’d be a fool to mock ambition this modest :

If all proceeds according to plan, the eventual goal is to replace the established media sources with a network of what Johnson and Simon call “citizen-journalists.”

The only question that remains is when Johnson and Simon will find the time to cure cancer, end poverty, and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.