TV Wisdom

Bloggingheads sucks. It sucks immensely. It sucks utterly. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I wish it had never happened, and I wish it would die.

All it's done is to make blogs seem like C-Span 2 only more interminable. It's fucking stupid. In actual blogs, someone can, you know, link to something in the course of discussion -- on bloggingheads, whee, no references. Bloggingheads is less informative than  blogging. It takes what's good about blogs, removes it, and leaves what's worst about MSNBC. This is not progress. This is crap.

More than that, the site ends up reinforcing the ridiculous notion that every issue, like torture, or unprovoked war, or global climate change, has "two sides." The high school debate model of public discourse has been so perverted as to become itself a perversion. I shit on it from a great height. Fucking Erick Erickson telling Jane Hamsher "I don't believe watrerboarding is torture"... Jane did a great job cornering his smarmy Cracker Barrel night manager ass, but what the FUCK! Why is this even the topic of "polite" conversation, online or anywhere else?

Nobody is ever outraged, passionate, venomous -- it all reinforces the asinine and debilitating notion that political debates are some sort of polite parlor game. Or some sort of spectator sport, waiting for someone to totally lose it in a comical fashion (see Althouse, Ann).

Fuck civility, fuck Bloggingheads, fuck this taming of the shrill. Notice how no one on a Bloggingheads ever says "fuck"?

If you can't say "fuck," I'm not coming to your new media revolution.

Comments

[Brendan]

All I can say is that if you're judging BH.tv by the Hamsher/Erickson diavlog, you're making a mistake.

Try listening, instead, to Glenn Loury/John McWhorter. Or "Science Saturday." Or most of Will Wilkinson's interviews. Most of these do not, in fact, treat issues as trivially two-sided.

I'll go along with the need for a few more "fucks," though.

[rageahol]

brendan:
honestly, who gives a rat's ass, you puke-faced gargoyle? the point about NO REFERENCES still stands.until google comes up with a way to search for keywords in people's audio tracks i stand proudly with thers here.

also, fuck.

[john stephen lewis]

Video is just a very inefficient method for spreading information. The more the internet plays like T.V., the quicker I'm going to start getting to the bar in time for happy hour.

If video killed the radio star, how will the blogger fair?

[Lambert Strether, Philadelphia, PA]

Back at ya.

You are so fucking right; say fuck proudly!

[Dan]

Hi Thers. I'm working on a post about the torture debate for tomorrow. Quick tease: It may be worth having one. I'll link in a comment on your latest post when it goes up.

[Toast]

Awesome post. Spot on.

[Draft Goldfarb!]

If you think BhTV is all nicey-nice tea-and-crumpets chit-chat, you haven't been watching the right episodes. The early Joel Achenbach v. Bob Wright is a classic of seething vitriol, as is the legendary Ann Althous v. Garance Franke-Ruta dust-up. Also, if you want heightened blood-pressure and lack of decorum, try watching virtually any of Reza Aslan's ranterific appearances; Dude can throw down.

Another benefit is that when you allow the other side the formality of a platform to make their case, you have them right there in front of you and can expose to fresh air how ridiculous their wingnuttery is. NRO and the Weekly Standard may not allow comments on their websites, but at BhTV, we get a chance to take the chickenhawks out back and learn 'em a thing or two.
See for example, this smack-down of Frum & the whole Concert of Democracies idea: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/410?in=29:29&out=29:40
boo-yah!

[Thers]

Brendan & DG: I'm willing to admit that there is probably stuff in BH that I'd like better, but a LOT of it is just horrible. They show moving pictures of Mickey Kaus speaking. This is indefensible, as is the deliberate decision to solicit the opinion of Jonah Goldberg.

Or Ann Althouse, who nevertheless does give good trainwreck. Though I prefer Altmouse.

Also, Bloggingheads hasn't invited me on, the lousy fuckers.

[oscar]

While Althouse's spazz-out was amusing, Franke-Ruta's utterly insipid ignorance about Althouse (she had no idea why people called her a conservative) was perhaps worse. Crazy people are funny. Rich establishment "opinion makers" who don't know jack shit and get paid to spread said lack of shit even more widely are enough to inspire dadaist culture terror acts.

Bloggingheads is the quintessence of the "cult of the serious and reasoned" that leaves our intellectual sphere utterly and despicably prostate to the status quo.

Fuck that shit.

[oscar]

Ok...if Thers was invited on, and proceed to call people "bloodthirsty rat-fucks"... then maybe bloggingheads would be something worthwhile.

'Till then....

[AemJeff]

Also, Bloggingheads hasn't invited me on, the lousy fuckers.

Fucking-A, I think we might begin to understand.

[low-tech cyclist]

If you can't say "fuck," I'm not coming to your new media revolution.

Works for me.

If Emma Goldman were alive today, I'm sure she'd concur.

[Me]

utterly and despicably prostate

That's a keeper of a typo, right there.

[norbizness]

If you've ever watching more than 3 minutes of one of those things (the political ones, at least), you are never getting into heaven. Participants are placed further down in the inferno, near the fornicators and traitors.

[HumboldtBlue]

More than that, the site ends up reinforcing the ridiculous notion that every issue, like torture, or unprovoked war, or global climate change, has "two sides."

Fuckin'-A, that's exactly what I thought while watching Jane. The other side was wrong, disastrously so, and no amount of kindness from Hamsher is going to change the fact that the modern right is a collection of war-mongering, motherfucking dipwads.

[Brendan]

I agree with rageahol's point about the frustration of not being able to search. Maybe someday there will be transcripts. Or Google will master voice recognition so that it can index audio and video files.

I also agree with john stephen lewis: video is often woefully inefficient at conveying information. In fact, I got into a long debate arguing against video comments right on that site, and I generally bemoan the over-reliance by the bloggers on video clips in place of text.

And to thers: What can I say? I feel your pain. They haven't asked me, either, and I get even less traffic than you. Okay, that made no sense.

To your pet hatreds, let me say: I usually don't find much good to say about Kaus lately, I abhor Althouse and usually skip her appearances, and as much of a dope as Doughy is, it was worth having him on to watch him get pantsed by Rosa Brooks. He hasn't been back since, unsurprisingly.

However, you're trying to make a case against BH.tv by talking about the worst examples only. There are plenty of other, more intelligent guests on, and many conversations that are anything but point/counterpoint in nature.

To all: yes, video can be tedious. I myself don't even have a television, so it's not like I don't hear that. But there are some times when it's nice to listen to an intelligent conversation, whether when you're doing something else, don't feel like reading, or whatever. You might try the audio version instead of just sitting there watching the video.

Or, you know, just sit here and write "fuck" over and over. Or "puke-faced gargoyle." We all have our little indulgences. I won't presume to judge the worth of your preferences. That'd be elitist.

[Sir Francis Bacon]

Bloggingheads needs work but it isn't blogging and never could be. I don't know if a trained and experienced impartial moderator would be the thing, or just a third head to change the dynamic from the the dialectic to something more, (hopefully).

The skill of the person doing the matchups would be key. I think Thers would be good at that. They might pay you in bacon.

[Thers]

Brendan, OK, well said and fair enough. I can't say I didn't mean to be judgmental because of course I did. But you're right that if here I'm offering a product that is not calculated to appeal to everyone, to say the least, I can't complain too much about other people's tastes (though I will, of course, as nothing spoils a good rant more than worrying too much over trivial details like "being completely fair").

I guess my biggest issue with BH is that the worst examples are really, really bad and really do have bad effects of the sort I mentioned. I'm not sure that the good stuff that's there balances out the trainwrecks. Of course that's just me, though.

[Brendan]

Thers:

I did enjoy the rant, and I only wish I could have rebutted more humorously.

You're right about when it's bad, it's bad. But when it's good, it appeals to me. Glenn Loury and John McWhorter just had another diavlog. You might give that a shot. I've learned a lot about black perspectives on race relations from those two guys. And tomorrow is "Science Saturday," which can at times be outstanding. But I'll stop trying to pitch the site.

At least until they give me a free T-shirt or something.

SF Bacon:

No, it isn't blogging. The conceit of the show is that it's bloggers, playing talking heads.

The idea of a moderator has been raised before, and I think it could help in the occasional case. But, as a long-time and regular viewer, I find that most of the duos sort things out themselves pretty well.

[lowellfield]

Oh I don't know. BH.tv puts out a fair amount of really good content. Sure, Bob has Ann Althouse on which is a horrible mistake, Jim Pinkerton, and of course Mickey, but I don't think there's something terribly wrong with the format. There are links in a sidebar on the right.

The thing is there ARE two sides. There is very much a pro-torture, pro-carbon emission, pro-Althouse faction in this country and pretending otherwise doesn't make them go away or be any less horrific.

[F]

I've noticed the increasing use of video across the blog spectrum, and I think it actually subtracts from the whole experience. Video is lazy *and* inefficient, which is a combination calculated to drive me insane. Especially when it's video of people talking. I'd rather watch paint dry.

[Batocchio]

More than that, the site ends up reinforcing the ridiculous notion that every issue, like torture, or unprovoked war, or global climate change, has "two sides."

I could not agree more on this point, a discourse that creates false equivalencies. I haven't watched BH enough to evaluate it fully. I've seen some really excruiating sessions, but can buy the other comments that there have been good sessions as well.