The Establishment Right's Dysfunctional Relationship With the Conservative Blogosphere

Interesting thoughts at the Conservative Commune.

When independent conservative-leaning websites cover this problem we can start to sound petulant, but it’s actually important, so lets state it with a minimum of whining: the left appreciates the sinistrosphere, but the right treats the dextrosphere as if it were a friend-with-privileges one marks time with until one’s “real boyfriend,” the Legacy Media, shows up. But the real boyfriend in this case should be charged with domestic violence.

For Joe Fein, the last straw was the grotesque spectacle of seeing MSNBC, of all networks, handling the Republican debate this past Wednesday night in Simi Valley. Naturally, the questions focused on how ooky-spooky the GOP is, as moderators tried to create negative sound bites that their own team, the Democrats, could use later on to embarrass our nominee. And the economy—unemployment in particular—got very short shrift. Because that hardly plays to the Democrats’ advantage, does it?

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[...]MSNBC is much further to the left than Fox is to the right, and to give it special privileges, such as moderating a debate, is foolish in the extreme. Meanwhile, our foundations are too hung up on credentialism to make full use of bloggers.

The Reagan Library debate should have gone to Pajamas Media, or to Fox.

Meanwhile, major presidential candidates routinely show up to court the left's various online get-togethers.

This is a very weird thing which a lot of us expected to go away at some point but it hasn't. I've heard explanations -- the GOP tends to be older-school, and likes the idea of older-school information vehicles, like a magazine, or a think-tank, and just does't really understand new media, or at least doesn't respect it.

Every cycle we think "Maybe this is the year they get it," and then they don't.

It's difficult to buy the "they just haven't gotten it yet" reasoning, because it's been quite a while, hasn't it?

It has to be that they just don't trust us, and expect us to embarrass them. On that count, the left seems to have no problem risking a little embarrassment by indulging Markos "Screw them, I feel nothing" Kozantiopolous. (Note: that's not really his last name. I haven't bothered to learn it for the past ten years and I'm not starting now.)

Or it could be that the establishment already has its alt-media. The liberals have the regular media, and then the blogosphere as an alternative; the right has the regular media again as its major media, and then the conservative press (Weekly Standard, NR, etc.) as its alt-media, and doesn't feel the need for an alternative to an alternative.

I suppose that might be right, but it really wasn't the respectable right alt-media that, say, drove the Weiner story, and set the stage for what could very well be a remarkable changing of the guard in New York 9, was it?

posted by Ace at 02:59 PM

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