I have read this story twice now, and it appears to me that the rocket scientists at the Politico are shocked because like-minded people share a listserv. I hope no one rattles the drama queens over there by talking about usenet news groups and IRC channels, because then the shit will really hit the fan.
Are they really that damned stupid? Is it that slow of a news day?
*** Update ***
Via the comments, I see this has already been covered at Ezra’s. I also note I am not the only one to have this reaction:
Wait. Wait a minute.
So you’re saying that a bunch of like-minded people who share the same profession talk to each other? About stuff related to their jobs?
OVER E-MAIL?
How long did you plan on betraying our trust like this, Ezra… if that IS YOUR REAL NAME!
Posted by: August J. Pollak | March 17, 2009 11:47 AM
Heh.
DougJ
I had the same reaction exactly.
mcc
Organization on the left is viewed as inherently nefarious.
TenguPhule
Yes. SATSQ.
JL
I’m shocked that Politico wasted space about this. Unfortunately, Talk Radio will somehow make a big deal bloviating about this.
David Hunt
Fortunately, the journalists at Politico all have their own servers and don’t use any shared resources at all…
Krista
I hope none of these journalists are ever seen in the same room — even more proof of the vast liberal media conspiracy!
liberal
Holy f*ck. Can you imagine how MSM journalists would react to a USENET thread? Jeesus Christ, USENET makes blog comment sections seem tame.
anonevent
Wait until they figure out the vast conspiracy that is called Balloon Juice.
flavortext
Did you miss O’Reilly’s memo on the vast left wing conspiracy organized by hard left zealots? Politico, perhaps the best political website in the world, did some excellent reporting in the same vein just a week earlier. I smell a Pulitzer!
liberal
@mcc:
Fixt.
Trinity
Sweet Jeebus I hate Politico.
TenguPhule
Yes, we’d be cleaning exploded heads from the ceilings for weeks.
Job Creation, bitches!
Cyrus
You may have already seen it, but this topic has already been discussed at Ezra’s blog.
@David Hunt: Actually, the article admits that the listserv includes some Politico writers.
Comrade Stuck
Oxymoron of the day. Liberals do well to agree on the relative blueness of the sky.
Every one knows two liberals talking is a Marxist conspiracy for world domination and Frenchification of Amerika.
The more hysterical these people get, the better I feel. Funny how that works.
Notorious P.A.T.
For Christ’s sake.
Jen R
Is there one for the hacks called JournamaList?
cleek
libs journos still using technology from 1988 to plot their nefarious deeds ? HAHA STUPIDS LIBJOORNOS!
Martin
I.R.S. Plans a Deduction for Madoff Victims
Now, if this bill doesn’t include a provision to tax the living shit out of bail-out executive bonuses, then the Dems deserve all the shit that Glenn Beck sends at them. This is a no-brainer. Why am I so confident they’ll fuck it up?
Paul L.
Do remember the words "vast right-wing conspiracy" ?
Next time I read about it here. I am going to link to this thread.
Just imagine the progressive outrage if Karl Rove had a SITHLORD listserv.
You could see a sample of the outrage promoting the smear that the Tea Party phenomenon was all a Koch-funded astroturf operation.
Cyrus
Actually, I can’t speak for all progressives, but if Rove had a listserv called "SITHLORD" I think it would improve my opinion of him. Geekiness, a sense of humor, a playful and harmless jab at the opposition rather than his typical gutter politics – those are all good qualities!
Krista
No, not really. And if it was used at all, it certainly doesn’t seem to have been used anywhere near as often as "vast left-wing conspiracy". And if Karl Rove had a listserv, well, it’s a free world and he can chitchat with whoever he likes now, can’t he?
Silly rabbit, projecting again.
John Cole
@Paul L.: Paul L. is such a moron he fails to realize that we debunked the tea party nonsense before his Randian love goddess McCardle.
Also, there is a difference between a network of shadow organizations secretly meeting to finance and plot the impeachment of a President and A FUCKING LISTSERV THAT INCLUDES MEMBERS OF THE FUCKING MEDIA.
John S.
No, it’s called the right-wing echo chamber, i.e. Fox News and the media-at-large peddling Republican talking points that come DIRECTLY from RNC press releases (typos and all). Karl Rove didn’t NEED a listserv. He had every major media outlet to do his bidding.
That’s only slightly different than the topic at hand. Not that such glaring differences ever stopped you from drawing a false comparison and looking like a buffoon.
Cyrus
@Krista:
I don’t think either of those phrases has ever been too widespread, but the only one I can remember specific instances of is the "vast right-wing conspiracy." However, I think that phrase was popularized by Hillary Clinton – hardly a lionized figure around here.
Halteclere
I was so surprised too when I learned that milblogs discussed military matters and not, like woodworking, ghost hunting or scrap booking. OMG! Politico is on to something BIG!
And speaking of which, I have yet to see anyone discuss cooking, quilting, auto racing, etc. at my favorite woodworking professional forum – only forestry, sawing, cabinetry and finishing topics!
Politico, you’ve GOT to report on that evil unmercan cabal, too!
Comrade Stuck
OH, you mean like when Bush met with right wing bloggers in the WH to get their expert opinions on how to fight the war on terror.
Hey now whats wrong with asking the question. Were Tea Parties Funded by Right Wing Whack-a-Doodle Bircher Fred Koch?
Just a harmless question. We covered this yesterday.
Church Lady
Just out of curiosity, are John, DougJ or TimF participants on the JournoList listserv? If you are, are you allowed to say so? If so, do you guys prepare your daily posts based on what is being discussed on the listserv? I’m just curious as to how far reaching this thing is. Is is just more of less mainstream journalists and very well known bloggers, or does it reach out a little further into the random blogosphere?
jibeaux
I thought the new thing was twittering?!? WHY must I always be behind the Laffer curve?
I remember August J. Pollak from McSweeney’s. Talk about your left wing conspiracies, that guy’s posting in multiple places on the interwebs!
scruncher
Ooooooooooh, scary stuff.
I think Politico reporters are under a lot of pressure to produce, produce, produce. Not that that excuses this ridiculousness in any way …
And as a fellow journalist, (no, I’m not on the list so please don’t bombard me with requests for an invite to our secret meetings) I see nothing wrong with Toobin getting a story idea off the list conversation. Reporters get story ideas every where and anywhere, and the better ones never stop looking for ideas.
AhabTRuler
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.
ImJohnGalt
Paul L:
Well, it would be easy to check. We just need to look at the White House e-mails, and maybe the archived e-mails from the 3rd party mail servers that Republican operatives used.
Let’s just go look at them, shall we?
Oh right, we can’t.
jibeaux
I’m on knitting, babysitting, elementary school, day care, lawyer, and church listservs. My old neighborhood had one, too, but my new one doesn’t. I sure hope the media doesn’t descend on us. The volunteer schedule for the carnival is a closely, closely guarded secret.
ImJohnGalt
Where is Floyd Alvis Cooper when you need him?
Zifnab
@Paul L.:
Thank you, Paul.
Shawn in ShowMe
Check out the headlines from other recent articles by Mr. Calderone:
Media critics pile on Cramer, CNBC
Coulter, Maher spar at Radio City
How Media Sucks up to the White House
Shorter Calderone: "Hey you raging lib’ruls, I got my eye on you."
Darkrose
The idea that listproc, an application whose last major code update was in 1998, is going to bring down political debate on teh interwebs, makes me laugh. I’ll be thinking about this all day as I send mail to users explaining that their subscribe request was rejected because listproc chokes on HTML.
MikeJ
When I was in J school we still had bang path addresses, but I don’t remember ever being told I wasn’t allowed to talk to people and not write about it.
Ereshkigal
Just wait until I tell the editorial board at the Washington Times about this. They’ll let me into their meetings, won’t they?
Martin
Dow closes up 180 points. All hail George Bush.
SpotWeld
…
Seriously, WTF?!
How can anyone even remotely familar with the internet not get the concept of an email group?!
jibeaux
Also from Ezra’s comments…
It’s funny cuz it’s true.
Shawn in ShowMe
This is a staff writer at Politico we’re talking about. You assume too much.
Martin
Come on, it’s Politico. They get the concept, they’re just ‘enhancing’ the concept to deliver the narrative the public craves. It’s value-add, customer-centric, innovative! Why do you hate innovation?
Are you a social-ist?
jrg
"Do remember the words "vast right-wing conspiracy" ?"
The journalists on the list are clearly trying to hide from the fair and balanced truth by not allowing creationists, holocaust deniers, and right-wing nut cases to post on their mailing list.
"Well, it would be easy to check. We just need to look at the White House e-mails, and maybe the archived e-mails from the 3rd party mail servers that Republican operatives used. Let’s just go look at them, shall we? Oh right, we can’t."
I wonder what’s in those emails, anyway? It’s astounding to see the trolls get their knickers in a twist over a legal, private email list, yet completely ignore the White house emails (dated from around the start of the Iraq war) that were illegally deleted.
qwerty42
So when they say "listserv" do they mean any generic discussion list or are they referring specifically to Lsoft’s Listserv? I gotta warn you, there is some really hard-core stuff out there. Not for the faint-hearted. Could Politico handle this?
(The USENET groups would be so far out of their league, altho … maybe they need to visit the usenet groups and review the rich history of "vi vs emacs". And the alt.* groups)
SpotWeld
I am a meat popsicle..
Martin
I love that movie. I don’t know why. It’s not very good, but I like it all the same.
rea
Not only do I remember the words, I remember the conspiracy!
Cyrus
The off-the-record nature of it is supposedly because it includes back-and-forth communication with subject matter experts like economists who don’t want their name attached to an off-the-cuff comment to a non-expert without being given a chance to explain themselves first. Wow, that’s a lot of hyphenation.
I mean, there are good questions about whether anonymous sources and off-the-record conversations go too far, but the way Politico makes this sound like some kind of secretive club is bizarre.
(I was a reporter, but never went to J school. What’s a bang path address?)
TenguPhule
And thanks to the wonders of time zones, we can’t even agree on blue. It’s black, damnit!
AhabTRuler
@Martin: On the contrary, I think its excellent. Its exactly the sort of movie that suspension of disbelief is made for, not some crap Bond movie. Just kick back and enjoy the totally over-the-top, action-movie-with-style experience.
And Milla’s boobies. Yay!
Shorter: Michael Bay sweats Luc Besson’s jock.
Comrade Kevin
@Cyrus:
UUCP. It would look something like this: blahvax1 ! aibox2 ! system3 ! yoursystem ! cyrus
the message started out at blahvax1, and went through aibox2, and system3 before getting to the place were you would read it.
Chuck Butcher
Hmmm, I belong to a nova list which requires the interest to subscribe to be a member and another which is by invitation. The nova list buries me in e-mail the other not so much. I have found over the years of using a list that the abilitiy to write back and forth with some alactrity is huge for discussion and particularly when others of the same interest are free to chip in where ever it seems to them they have something relevant. That such a thing as the J-list exists isn’t a surprise and strikes me as a good thing. But I don’t have a lot of regard for Politico.
MikeJ
Computer geekery, not journo geekery. Ever look at the headers on email? If you took all of the various received headers and separated each machine with a bang (!) , it would be similar. Back in the day you not only had to know what machine someone was on, you had to know the proper route through the network to get there.
Anastasius
Wait, wait. I thought the left wing conspiracy was George Soros giving the marching orders to Media Matters who then tell bloggers what to write. Or was it John Podesta having conference calls intimidating journalists to only produce stories about Obama and unicorns? Now this, so confusing.
Someone draw me a picture please.
Cris
I don’t really understand where The Fifth Element came from. Luc Besson has done some good films and some bad films, both before and since, but none even hint at the creative quirkiness (or quirky creativity) of TFE. And I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it so unique — is it the costumes? the sets? the dialogue? Anyway, I can’t say I love it, but I sure do find it re-watchable.
Plus, it has one of the few on-screen appearances of former University of New Mexico power forward Vladimir McCrary.
qwerty42
@MikeJ: I think that is disallowed at (almost) all sites as it proved to be a way to send spam. It should still be in the RFC (RFC821?) though.
Bill Arnold
Google says:
"vast left-wing conspiracy" – 154000 approximately
"vast right-wing conspiracy" – 170000 approximately
Deborah
Is it amusing or mildly worrying that I–someone no one would ask for computer help, someone who will never twitter–am apparently more technologically literate than the entire Republican party, save the Ron Paul supporters?