Berman on Penn

Ach! Now that I'm being paid to blog, I'm so busy writing blog posts that I don't have time to read Ari Berman's article on Mark Penn in The Nation and blog about it in a timely manner. Ari's a friend and I know we both don't like Mark Penn, though, so it's almost certainly good.

(More substantive remarks TK)

Comments

Anyone know what ever happened to Matt Bivens? We miss The Daily Outrage.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | May 7, 2007 4:36 PM

I want to see Berman, Plumer, and Yglesias in a blog cage match. If ever there was an event for vlogging....

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 7, 2007 4:50 PM

Is it really so busy having to maintain a blog? Isn't an integral part of writing a blog reading countless stuff?

Please Matt, enlighten us, how do you manage your working day?

PS. I do admire your working ethos though. I imagine is very hard to update the blog in weekends too. Don't you get mentally drained?

Posted by Nick Kaufman | May 7, 2007 5:45 PM

Bonus points for beginning a post with "Ach!"

Posted by Clark | May 7, 2007 5:52 PM

Matt, I hope the Atlantic doesn't have some ridiculous standard for how many posts you should put up a day. Even as an independent blogger, you were more prolific than most and maintained high quality. What's more, a little delay allows the comment threads to ripen, and that's part of what's great about your blog!

I've noticed that one thing I don't like about some blogs attached to traditional media sites is that they can start to feel compulsory rather than organic. Like there's a mandatory minimum for the day, because people need "content."

I think that sort of managing is dangerous because it pushes bloggers towards the model of the 24-hour new networks: constantly blathering to fill up time with little regard as to whether anything is worth blathering about.

So, consider this one loyal reader telling the Atlantic to back off and trust a good blogger to set his own pace.

Posted by Philly | May 7, 2007 6:25 PM

Hillary seems absolutely intent on making sure that half the people who end up voting for her hate her. She's unwilling to make any concessions at all, not even the small symbolic kind. People talk as though there were a hard core of ultra-left Hillary-haters in the Democratic Party, but it's really that she keeps trying to figure out ways to piss people off.

Posted by John Emerson | May 7, 2007 6:36 PM

I'm happy to see him note that 57% of Burson Marsteller's campaign contributions in the 2006 cycle went to Republicans. I blogged about that a while ago, and I think people should be asking Hillary why her top advisor is CEO of a firm that gives most of its contributions to the other team.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | May 7, 2007 7:48 PM

Wonderful article. Really lays open the problems of Penn and his ideas and the Clinton republican lite stands. Excellent.
I fear the democrats will fall for whatever crap Clinton throws their way in her pandering attempt to the nomination. Plus, we always tend to change our minds and not vote for who we want but, who we think is the most practical. Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry....bodies by the road of practical. One thing the repukes do better than us is they vote for who they like. We need to do this. Our instincts are so much better than our brain.
And, with Hillary we will lose again.
With Penn right behind her.
And we can have a rerun of the Bush and Rove show in democratic form. Is this what we really want???

Posted by vwcat | May 7, 2007 10:45 PM