Putting the "Jerk" In Circle Jerk
By I swear that this post is currently the lead story at Train Wreck Media (TM) (Prof. Glenn Reynolds, co-founder):
Someone else (and I regret forgetting who) has mentioned the humorous fact that Glenn Reynold’s [has he dropped the “s” from his name as being unfashionable, like Keith Richards in the early 70s?–ed.] newly released book, An Army of Davids, is far outselling co-author Markos Moulitsas Zuniga’s (the Daily Kos himself) Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. The Daily Kos website receives four times more visitors than the Instapundit’s. And yet, Reynold’s work currently ranks #466 and Zuniga’s comes in at #1,823. What are we to think of these figures? Does this indicate that Reynold’s audience is better read? Are they the type of people who actually study an issue before shooting off their mouth? Is it possible that many of the Daily Kos kids might even be marginally illiterate?
Or could it be that Kos’ readers aren’t as likely to be pathetic drooling fanboys who would buy their blog hero’s laundry lists if exhorted to frequently enough? Could it be that progressive readers are more likely to seek books that tell them something they don’t already know if they read the author’s blog regularly? Could it be that a book’s sales are improved when the said tome’s author is a pathetic enough shill to put a semi-literate advertisement for the book as the top story of his laughing-stock news aggregation site? Or that on the most abject moron would consider one’s tendency to buy long-form writing from Glenn Reynolds as a synecdoche for one’s literary and political knowledge? Such difficult questions.
…needless to say, speaking of Reynolds he endorses the “stab-in-the-back” narrative. I’ll say this for Jeff Goldstein: he at least is willing to engage in his ludicrously tautological blame-shifting openly, while InstaHack relies on his inevitable passive-aggressive technique, adding another layer of defusing responsibility to the mix. Of course, as Matt Yglesias pointed out Reynolds has been peddling this horseshit in this manner for years.
…I see Reynolds has now resorted to the always-lame “Chimpy McHitlerburton” strawman. You can smell the stench of desparation from here.