How Carlsonism Was Averted, or The Making of TheOtherMcCain.com

After Thanksgiving, in response to constant nagging -- from Jimmie Bise, Paleo Pat and Cynthia Yockey, among others -- I finally resolved to switch the blog to a custom WordPress platform, and promised to do so by Jan. 1, 2010.

However, the technical wizardry involved was beyond the power of a primitive unfrozen caveman blogger. This project would require Smitty getting his geek on. Our first stab at the project rolled out in rough Beta mode on Christmas Eve using the free version of WordPress but we were informed, sadly, that this would not do -- no advertising permitted for freebie moochers.

Further complications developed and, as Smitty said a couple days before New Year's Eve, he was afraid that we were on the verge of Carlsonism -- replicating the repeatedly delayed debut of a certain site, now due to appear in all its glorious majesty 10 days hence, and it had better not suck.

Despite all hindrances and obstacles, Smitty remained determined and undaunted. Carol at No Sheeples Here worked on the new logo and, with the aid of Silver Logic and Forward Focus Media, success was achieved.

By 5 p.m. on New Year's Day, TheOtherMcCain.com was minimally copacetic. Smitty has told his tale, and now we have produced a stunning video documentary, Behind of The Making of TheOtherMcCain.com.

Happy New Year! Roll Tide! Hit the Tip Jar!

New Site for a New Year: We're Now LIVE at TheOtherMcCain.com

Yes that's right, as of Jan. 1, 2010, Smitty and I have relocated our glorious blogospheric action to TheOtherMcCain.com.

Same wonderful content, new groovalicious WordPress format.

Feeble dawn of the WordPress changeover (Please excuse the temporary suckiness)

As promised, we are beginning the changeover to a WordPress format:

The reason I stuck with Blogger as long as I did -- despite the constant pleading of fellow bloggers who are all about the superior coolness of WordPress -- is that Blogger is extremely user-friendly, has lots of built-in widgets, and is easily customized. While I've been a contributor at several blogs run with WordPress software . . . I've never been an admin on a WordPress site, and the learning curve is rather steep. . . .

You can read the whole thing, and please be sure to follow the instructions, IYKWIMAITYD.

Emphasis on 'slightly'

"Stacy McCain is Hunter S. Thompson with better political sensibilities and a slightly healthier lifestyle. Ace of Spades is the smartest and funniest guy you’ve ever met in your life. You should read their blogs several times a day, and you should send them money. Thus endeth the sermon portion of this blog post."
-- Joe B., NoVaTownhall

And let all God's children say, "Amen." Also, the reason I call him "Joe B." is not because he's anonymous, but because his last name is one of those buy-a-vowel deals -- like Wlady P. at the American Spectator -- and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Joe and I go way back to 2006, when I was blogging for Donkey Cons. That blog nearly got me fired from The Washington Times -- an interesting lesson in Journalism Ethics.

Long story short: The editors sent me down to Georgia to report on the 2006 GOP primary for lieutenant-governor, which pitted Ralph Reed against Casey Cagle. Meanwhile, at the Donkey Cons blog, I was reporting the exclusive scoop: Ralph Reed is a two-faced crapweasel.

Just a neutral, objective fact, but my editor (Ken Hanner, who is now managing editor of Human Events) didn't see it that way, so I was (a) ordered to stop blogging, and (b) placed on a rigorous 90-day probation that kept getting extended -- to about six months -- because I wasn't scrupulous about complying with the absurd jumping-through-hoops requirements of the probation.

Weirdest thing about it? My editors had given me permission to blog independently to promote the book, but ignored what I was doing until my Election Night analysis of the Reed-Cagle race got quoted in Hotline, Congressional Quarterly's daily summary of major political news. My editors always considered it a coup when anything from The Washington Times got quoted in Hotline, but the Hotline citation of my analysis nearly got me fired.

Over beers at a Reason magazine happy hour this summer, Ken Hanner admitted that I was never employed to my fullest capacity at the Times. I kept telling my bosses that, but they never believed it until after I quit, went freelance and turned a Blogspot site into a phenomenon whose "controversial" status is both lucrative and (mostly) accidental.

"Controversy" is just another word for "publicity" and there's no such thing as bad publicity. To repeat: Just because you don't know what I'm doing, don't assume that I don't know what I'm doing.

Journalism Ethics lesson? Ethics, schmethics. Just get the facts right and to hell with everything else.

Neutral, objective fact: Joe B. of NoVaTownhall is a gentleman and a scholar, even if I can't spell his name. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Joe.

Booze-blogging?

Stephen Green of VodkaPundit is widely hailed as the inventor of drunk-blogging -- i.e., live-blogging an event while under the influence. I had the opportunity during the 2008 Democratic National Convention to actually watch the master at work, and attest that the man can, as the late poet Ronnie Van Zant once said, "drink enough whiskey to float a battleship around."

I've never tried drunk-blogging myself, at least not on purpose, although there may have been occasions -- including Election Night at the Hotel Saranac -- when the deadline pressure required me to self-medicate to counteract the effects of my massive coffee intake.

All of that, however, is prelude to a discussion of booze-blogging, which is blogging about booze. Given that this site is the originator of Rule 5 Sunday -- the weekly babe-blogging roundup -- you might suppose that the natural booze-and-broads pairing would replicate itself on the 'sphere. Yet until this morning, I didn't even know there was such a thing as booze-blogging.

Then I got an e-mail from Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog, who informed me that he found "How to Get a Million Hits" inspirational. Doug wanted to pass along the news that, just as political bloggers are encroaching on the Old Media's turf, so it is that booze-bloggers are exposing booze bias among the snobs:

Unless you spend a lot of time in wine chat rooms, you may have missed the recent controversies involving critic Robert Parker. The short version: Parker's publication, the Wine Advocate, was found to be violating its own strictures against freebies and fraternizing with wine importers, and a contributor he hired gave a high rating to a wine based on a sample that seemed to bear little resemblance to what was available on retail shelves. The back-to-back scandals . . . came to light via several wine Web sites, including Parker's own online discussion board. The Internet angle is actually the most significant aspect of this story, for it underscores how profoundly technology is changing the relationship between wine critics and consumers -- the relationship between you and me.

Personally, I avoid wine just like I avoid whiskey (ever since Jack Daniel and I had a bad night at Ralph and Millie's Christmas party a few years ago). Above all, however, I avoid snobbery.

Beer snobs get on my nerves. It pains me to see these poseurs pestering a bartender in quest of some obscure imported premium ale -- dark as sin, with the flavor and texture of a peat bog -- just so their friends won't see them drinking a Bud.

The Internet revolutionizes everything it touches, from poker to politics to porn. The 'Net has also apparently revolutionized snobbery, enabling status-seekers to go online and find highfalutin stuff with which to impress their peers -- including pricey call girls. But a whore is a whore is a whore, and a beer is a beer is a beer, and all these Veblenian status-displays don't change the basic facts.

Fortunately, Doug Winship appears to strive against such bibulous pretensiousness, although he hasn't gotten down in the gutter with Valu-Rite vodka, the favorite swill of hobo-killers.

You've got to admire the populism of a guy who writes about drinking at Disney World. No cork-sniffing epicurean would admit such a thing, lest he be shunned by sommeliers.

At last, the great mystery is resolved

John Galt of the blogosphere: "Who is Larwyn?"

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookkeeper.
Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening-wear.
I don’t perspire. . . . Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal force demonstration.
I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. . . .

Read the whole thing. Larwynmania to ensue . . .

THREE MILLION VISITORS!

We are approaching the 3-million hit mark at The Other McCain. We crossed the threshold of 1 million visitors on Feb. 13 -- slightly less than a year after the March 2008 start of full-time blogging here -- and hit 2 million on July 19, about five months later.

The third million was notched in just a bit less than four months. If the current rate of traffic growth continues and Carrie Prejean keeps making headlines, we may be closing in on the 4-million mark by the time CPAC 2010 arrives in February.

Appropriate festivities are being planned to commemorate our three millionth visitor. However, first I've got to check out of this posh hotel in Orlando -- where I covered Thursday's Tea Party (photos here and here) -- and then we're driving back home, to arrive Sunday evening.

Don't want to make her angry, but . . .

Comment moderation is not an exact science, and approval of a comment does not imply my agreement or approval, especially as the comments I approve are sometimes of a personally abusive variety. So if I approve a comment that calls me a "flaming closet case Rethuglican transvestite," this cannot be considered an admission.

Which brings me to the subject of CourtneyME109, a/k/a "Great Satan's Girlfiend." What's she all about? Where's she coming from? Beats me. Without any attempt at complex political analysis, I'd recommend she cut down on her Red Bull intake.

In the midst of a long campaign to defend myself against the sadistic vengeance of LGF's Mad King Charles, I'm trying to be a bit cautious about which comments I do or do not approve. Who knows if the next "anonymous" commenter might be another one of Johnson's sock-puppet trolls? So I recently left this comment at GSGF's site:

Courtney, I'm at a loss to understand the meaning or purpose of the comments you keep trying to leave at my blog, which is why they are not being approved.
Nothing personal, you understand, but when I see terms like "Totenkopf" and "Confauxderate" in your comments, with wild assertions about connections between unrelated historical events, the choice between "publish" and "reject" isn't really difficult.

Like I said, nothing personal.

'I Did Not Have Blogospheric Relations With That Corndog . . .'

On Sunday, Smitty did some Rule 5 linkage to frequent commenter Red's cleverly-named "Caught Him With a Corndog" blog. Red was so thrilled by this that she put up a post with this unfortunately suggestive headline:

Rockstar Blogger
Throws Me a Bone!

Given Red's blog name -- combined with the fact that a few of our commenters have of late indulged in risque slang -- I just want to make one thing clear: In the immortal words of Mr. Potato Head from that cinematic classic Toy Story 2, "I'm a married spud! I'm a married spud!"

Despite Red's insinuation of bone-throwing, Smitty is also a married spud. And considering that Red is herself wed in holy potatomony, I'd hate for Mr. Red to get any wrong ideas. Now, let's all enjoy some wholesome family entertainment:

Blogger Rosemary Port has saggy breasts

And I dare her to sue me for that!

Speaking out for the first time since a court order forced Google to reveal her identity, blogger Rosemary Port tells the Daily News that model Liskula Cohen should blame herself for the uproar.
"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing," said Port, whose "Skanks in NYC" site branded the 37-year-old Cohen an "old hag."
"By going to the press, she defamed herself," Port said.
"Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it," Port said. "That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."
The pretty 29-year-old Fashion Institute of Technology student added that she's furious at Google for revealing her identity, so much so that she plans to file a $15 million federal lawsuit against the Web giant.
"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," Port said.

Aw, shut your ignorant yap, you saggy-breasted blog skank. You're just a slightly less creepy Jesse Griffin, supposing that you can hide forever behind an online pseudonym while hurling invective at others whom you deny the very "right to privacy" that you so ludicrously assert.

And why? Because you're bitter, Rosemary. Bitter because your breasts are so saggy, they're pointing due south. You want to sue me for that? Fine. But then the laughably pathetic condition of your saggy, shriveled breasts will become a matter of public record.

So unless you're willing to show us otherwise, you'll forever be known as Saggy-Breasted Rosemary Port.

Your new hero: Barbara Espinosa

Every revolution begins with one courageous individual, relentlessly dedicated to a cause -- and perhaps written up in my American Spectator column:

Tom's Tavern in Phoenix was "packed to the rafters" Monday morning, Barbara Espinosa told me. "You could hardly move."
The tavern was the scene of a "Health Care Town Hall" event hosted by J.D. Hayworth, the former Arizona Republican congressman who is now a popular talk radio host on KFYI in Phoenix.
President Obama was in town to address the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Ms. Espinosa was a member of the crowd who marched from Tom's Tavern to the Phoenix Convention Center to welcome the president, carrying signs with slogans like, "Pull the Plug on ObamaCare" and "Marx Was Not a Founding Father."
Had Ms. Espinosa not been in the crowd, I wouldn't have known about the protest. She posted a notice of the Tom's Tavern rally on her blog and, using her cell phone, sent me photos of the protest that I posted on my blog.
Welcome to the Information Age, where somebody's grandma is changing the world one Facebook update at a time. . . .

Read the whole thing. Ms. Espinosa is planning to attend the 9/12 Taxpayer March on DC, so we might have to organize a "Smittypalooza" in her honor. You should add her as your Facebook friend.

Humor-Impaired Commenter Syndrome

This rare condition can strike without warning:

If you want to know why Erik Erikson was invited to speak and not you, go to Alexa and compare your stats to Redstate. Orders of magnitude, buddy.
Why the difference? Redstate is about issues. This blog is about three things: 1) Who does and doesn't link to you, 2) Your resentment over real and imagined insults, 3) Begging for money in every post.
You want to be a player in conservative circles? Write about something that matters to a national conservative audience. And no, that would not be a two-part, line-by-line dissection of a column written two weeks ago by an unknown kid in a newspaper read only by people who eat whale blubber. Nor would it be a book-length rehashing of your personal disappointments at the Washington Times.
Seriously, this is the fourth time you've posted profoundly juvenile fantasies about hurting Telford because you're not on the program. If you ever do make it, your blurb will say, "We invited Stacy so he would stop whining."
-- "plarson," 7:55 a.m.

Research indicates that anonymity is closely associated with Humor-Impaired Commenter Syndrome, perhaps because people are afraid to advertise -- under their own names -- the fact that they are too stupid or ignorant to get the freaking jokes.

Or that they are too stupid or ignorant to tell the difference between (a) a Republican discussion board about "issues" and (b) the personal blog of a journalist who has been called (by L.J. Miller of Red State, ironically enough) "the conservative Hunter S. Thompson for today."

And speaking of "issues," let's have an informal poll. Please read the following statment aloud:

A major problem of the Republican Party today is that in recent years the GOP has attracted too many humorless self-important blowholes who take everything literally and who only want to talk about "issues."

Do you (a) strongly agree, (b) agree somewhat, (c) disasagree somewhat, (d) disagree strongly, or (e) froth with rage because you're the humorless self-important blowhole "plarson" who is belatedly realizing what a complete fool you have made of of yourself?

Of course, a poll measures what is merely a matter of opinion. As a professional journalist, I am trained to deal strictly with neutral, objective facts.

Important fact: I arrived late to the blogosphere. In 2003, one of my interns at The Washington Times, a promising young feature writer named Amy Doolittle, came to me with the suggestion of writing a story about something called "blogs," a term she had to explain was short for "weblogs."

Miss Doolittle began to explain the concept of these do-it-yourself personal online journals, and my reaction was, "Oh, you mean, like MichelleMalkin.com or The Corner at NRO?"

Yes, kind of like The Corner, answered Miss Doolittle, but she then told me that, although some of these "blog" things were about politics, they could also be about . . . anything, including the personal hobbies and daily activities of the individual bloggers. Some of these sick freaks even blogged about their cats.

This seemed rather an obscure sort of topic for a feature article in America's Newspaper, but young Miss Doolittle had her heart set on it. So we presented the idea to assistant managing editor Maria Stainer who, while perhaps even more mystified than I -- "OK, now, explain to me one more time: Why do we need to do a story about this?" -- nevertheless approved the proposal, rather than to break poor Miss Doolittle's heart.

Fast forward to December 2006: Having survived the final deadline required to complete the manuscript of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party, I'm on the phone with my co-author Lynn Vincent, discussing the promotion and marketing of the book.

"We must have a Donkey Cons blog."
"Well, a Web site, maybe, but why a blog?"
"Because we must. Everybody does blogs to promote their books nowadays."
"Stacy, a blog will eat your life."

Lynn had been assigned blog duties at World magazine, where she was features editor, and thus knew whereof she spoke. Did I heed her warning? Oh, no, no, no.

So at 10:55 a.m. on Friday, January 13, 2006, the Donkey Cons blog made its inauspicious debut. Immediately, I was confronted with a problem: If an author writes in the blogosphere and nobody reads it, why bother blogging at all?

What followed was a crash course in what are known as Traffic Enhancement Strategies, a subject subsequently explained as "How To Get A Million Hits On Your Blog In Less Than A Year."

There are people who make money writing books and teaching seminars about this topic -- including the kind of important people who get invited to RightOnline -- but I am notoriously averse to expert advice and, indeed, have been known to share Hayekian critiques of the entire concept of expertise.

Having never been a big fan of self-help books ("Dr. Phil's Guide to Sexually Abusing Interns"), the last place you'll ever find me is sitting in a hotel conference room listening to some neurasthenic geek drone on about SEOs and Web 2.0 social networking technology.

Sorry, geek-face, I don't roll that way. What I know, I learned by the bootstrap trial-and-error method and, proud though I may be, I am not too proud to occasionally display the scars that are the inevitable result of the "error" part of that process. Mr. "plarson" is invited to read the motto atop this blog:

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."
-- Arthur Koestler

It would be a disservice to my readers if I were less than honest about my own motives. "I Write For Money," as I once explained to that notoriously self-important blowhole Rod Dreher. Tthere is nothing I hate worse than a professional writer who, in a sort of bait-and-switch marketing scheme, endeavors to attract a gullible readership prone to believing that he, the writer, is a disinterested philosophe who has no interest in grubbing for filthy lucre.

This is not a blog for chumps and suckers. If you're too stupid to recognize that "crunchy" conservatism is a crooked game of three-card monte, if you don't get the ongoing schtick when I indulge in self-deprecating mock-Gonzo humor, you are obviously reading the wrong blog.

The correct reader for this blog is a certain mischievous resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, who just hit the tip jar for a full Benjamin, and included this double-dog-dare-ya message: "Roadtrip to PA. GO! Tell MM, Hi from Sharon. She does not know me."

So while I would like to stick around here and expend another 1,500 words explaining exactly what I meant to say when I started this post, there is now no time to waste. Sharon in Cincinnati must have a personally autographed copy of the Best. Book. Evah! and there is only one man in the blogosphere who can get it for her.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro . . . and hit the freaking tip jar. Erik Telford's going to be buying the beer in Pittsburgh tonight, but man does not blog for beer alone.

Whenever important bloggers gather . . .

. . . I'm not invited. Two weeks ago, I was not invited to the Red State Gathering in Atlanta. This week's big blog shindig to which I am not invited is Right Online in Pittsburgh.

Ed Morrissey is a featured speaker at Right Online and Twitters who he's hanging out with in Pittsburgh:

Having dinner with ... um .... everone. @ewerickson, @saorendayton, @boteleprompter, @E_lizabethCrum, @oetaxpayer, @johnhawkinsrwn

Also at dinner: @seanhackbarth, not eating.

Hey, @katiefavazza just showed up, kind of like my AIP columns ... just a wee bit late. ;-)

Right Online is organized by Americans For Prosperity, which assigned Eric Telford not to invite me.

Telford, who's every bit of 26 years old, probably thinks I was only joking about driving to Pittsburgh and whupping his impudent young ass. And probably I was.

On the other hand, I just did a Mapquest (184 mi – about 3 hours 11 mins) to the Pittsburgh Sheraton Station Square Hotel, and I've been known to do far crazier things than drive two hours -- hey, I drive fast -- for the pleasure of laying a long-overdue ass-whupping on an arrogant sumbitch who did me wrong.

If only I had enough gas money . . . but nobody loves me, because my blog sucks.

It's New! It's Improved! It's . . .

. . . Jimmie Bise's Sundries Shack!

A few weeks ago, Jimmie and I were talking about page design. He asked me what I thought, and so I made a couple of suggestions -- larger font, etc., etc. -- and then last week, he said, "I've decided it's time to just do it!"

And so he did. I like it. Let Jimmie know what you think.

Jimmie's also now writing regularly for the American Issues Project, so check him out there, too.

TWO MILLION VISITORS!

About 3 p.m. today, The Other McCain recorded its 2 millionth visitor. It took slightly more than 11 months to hit the 1-million mark on Feb. 13, and barely five months to knock down the next million.

We must therefore begin by thanking Carrie Prejean nude. Any other famous people who want to take on hot political issues that offend the Left, please do us a favor and e-mail Smitty as soon as you find out TMZ has posted those topless photos taken when you were 20. We need the traffic. (C'mon, don't be so coy, Hillary . . .)

In addition to thanking Googlers of topless celebrity photos and our regular readers -- to the extent that these are not coterminous categories -- Smitty and I are grateful to the numerous bloggers who have linked us. Here are the folks who've thrown us the most traffic, according to E-Referrer.com:

• Instapundit
• Michelle Malkin
• Hot Air
• Conservative Grapevine
• Memeorandum
• Ann Coulter
• Andrew Sullivan
• Protein Wisdom
• Five Feet of Fury
• Ace of Spades HQ
• The American Spectator
• Right Wing News
• RealClearPolitics (Best of the Blogs)
• TigerHawk
• Conservatives for Palin
• Taki's Magazine
• American Power
• Riehl World View
• Jule Crittenden
• Cynthia Yockey, Conservative Lesbian
• The Jawa Report
• The Sundries Shack
• Legal Insurrection
• Clever S. Logan
• Monique Stuart
• Red State
• Twitter
• Cold Fury
• Balloon Juice
• Gateway Pundit
• Iowahawk
• Outside the Beltway
• Patriot Room
• Glenn Greenwald
• VDare.com
• Jammie Wearing Fool
• Ann Althouse
• Mahablog
• IMAO
• Pundit & Pundette
• Paco Enterprises
• Little Miss Attila

Loyal readers, please congratulate yourselves in the comments. You bloggers . . . OK, story time.

It was the last night of CPAC, back in February. As I was circulating around trying to squeeze every last schmooze opportunity out of the event, I came out of the hotel bar and there in the lobby stood Professor Glenn Reynolds and the magnificent Dr. Helen. I'd never met either of them before.

Walked right up, reached out to shake the professor's hand, handed him a business card and, by way of introduction, said, "Hi, I'm Stacy McCain. You haven't been linking me enough lately."

Our slogan: All Your Links Are Belong To Us!

UPDATE: You like me! You really like me! Linked at Memeorandum, and by Jimmie at Sundries Shack, Doug at Daley Gator, Fisherville Mike and Professor Douglas at American Power, who is pounding "controversy" into a coma. (Megaphone voice)

PROFESSOR DOUGLAS, WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!
STEP AWAY FROM THAT PEEPHOLE AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!

(Voice from inside bullet-riddled hideout.)

YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, COPPER!

Sigh. Remind me to amend No. 5 in The Rules v2.0: "Unless images of the aforesaid hottie shall constitute evidence in a criminal investigation . . ."

UPDATE II: On the other hand, if the Professor is trying to make a point about the sheer insanity of celebrity culture and how it intersects with the voyeuristic impulses rampant in the TMZ/Perez Hilton Epoch, he might have the makings of a Los Angeles Times op-ed essay there.

Look, over the last month, a typical day for American Power -- that is, a day without any especially "hot" new post that spiked up the traffic -- was in the 1,400-1,800 hit range. He's currently knocking down about 500 hits an hour, which should easily put him at 5,000 hits by the end of the day, and that extra 3,000 is almost entirely due to people Googling for the notorious video of a cable-sports reporter almost nobody ever heard of before.

When you get a hot meme, you gotta ride it, like Professor Jacobsen rode DijonGate to SiteMeter glory. The demand calls supply into existence. There is something important in this thing, and if Donald Douglas can distill it into 700 thoughtful words, he might find real value here.

But I still wish more people would follow the upstanding example set by John Hawkins at Conservative Grapevine, and only link classy, tasteful Rule 5 stuff like Miranda Kerr in a Victoria's Secret photoshoot.

Do I have any inkling who Miranda Kerr is? No. But until about a month ago, I'd never heard of Gerald Walpin, Fred Wiedersdorf or Judith Gwynne, either.

How to Blog?

I'd love to be asked that question, but instead they asked Felix Salmon of Reuters:

Blogs are a conversation. Remember that. They’re not a sermon, they’re not a news article, they’re much closer to a discussion in the pub, or sometimes a graduate seminar. They can be funny, or serious, or angry; they can be two words or 20,000 words long; they can be pretty much whatever you want them to be, including heavily reported. But they’re distinguished by having voice, which is one necessary part of a conversation.

Hmmm. I'm tempted to react to that, but then there's this:

Of course, having a good blog can get you hired, too: there are two sides to that coin, and right now the market in good bloggers is pretty hot, and the number of bloggers making six-figure incomes has never been higher.

Donald Douglas goes apeshit on that one:

I can't imagine anyone making $100,000 a year blogging . . . I want some names! Let's hear 'em: Who's making 100k?

What intrigues me more than the $100K number is Salmon's bland assertion that "having a good blog can get you hired" and that "the market in good bloggers is pretty hot," which I'm tempted to translate as: "Your blog sucks, otherwise somebody would be hiring you to do it."

Salmon, however, wrote his notes on blogging for the South Asian Journalists Association, and they are probably not perfectly applicable to the conservative blogosphere. I know conservatives who are getting paid to do political blogging of one form or another. But they aren't being paid for "voice." They're doing fee-for-service work, delivering an online product rather than personality.

'New Ideas' and Old Mistakes
Adding a personal perspective without becoming entirely personal, conservatives face a demand-side problem in the current blog market. The people who might have the wherewithal to provide $100K incomes for bloggers don't seem particularly interested in regular conservatism -- that is, conservatism of the sort that the average Republican voter wants.

Instead, the money people want "new ideas" from kids like The New Establismentarians or perhaps even, as Professor Douglas notes, Scott Payne's "Twenty-First Century Conservatism," which looks very much like a formula for re-making the GOP in the image of Susan Collins -- a conservatism that NARAL, AFSCME and the Sierra Club could love.

We see here a disconnect, a manifestation of the same problem that the Culture 11 disaster exemplified. Steve Forbes (and other investors whose identity we do not know) correctly believed that conservatism needed "something new," but they didn't have the slightest clue what that something should be. So they hired David Kuo and got Conor Friedersdorf and "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage."

Mercifully, the investors had the good sense to pull the plug before Culture 11 could give us "The Conservative Case for Cap-and-Trade," "The Conservative Case for Keynesianism," "The Conservative Case for Infanticide" . . .

Steve Forbes has been a free-marketeer his entire life, and yet where was the free-market voice at Culture 11? Where was there anything remotely like the cheerful Reaganesque sensibility -- "Hope, Growth and Opportunity," to borrow Forbes' 1996 presidential campaign slogan?

Why is it that whenever someone like Steve Forbes gets the urge to give somebody a wad of money to generate "new conservative ideas," the money never ends up in the hands of actual conservatives? It's like watching a cable channel whose programming consists entirely of reruns of the David Brooks biopic: The Republicans Who Really Matter.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat
Immediately after the election, I warned against exactly the problems that are now affecting the conservative movement. Defeat inevitably induces doubt, and when the GOP gets its ass kicked, the experience characteristically induces in some Republicans a desire to emulate the liberal victors -- ergo, "new ideas."

In "You Did Not Lose," I argued against the tendency to see election results as an ideological referendum, a rejection not only of conservatism as an idea, but of conservatives as people. In "Don't Overthink It," I argued against the tendency to make an electoral debacle an occasion for the sort of intellectual navel-gazing which predictably leads some to conclude that Republicans could win if only they were more like Democrats.

The reason I warned against these tendencies was because I'd seen them displayed after the Bob Dole debacle in 1996, when both David Brooks in The Weekly Standard and Christopher Caldwell in The Atlantic Monthly launched vicious attacks on the red-state conservative grassroots.

My warnings evidently went unnoticed by anyone important, for once again we see the same gormless quest for "new ideas" we saw 12 years ago, a quest that produced George W. Bush and "compassionate conservatism" and -- eventually -- brought us full circle, right back to Square One. Except that this Square One is not 1997 (when at least the GOP still held its congressional majority) but more like 1965, 1977 or 1993, when the liberal Colossus bestrode the world triumphant, scornful of any restraint.

What the Official Conservative Movement really needs now, as in the wake of those previous electoral catastrophes, is not "new ideas," but rather courage and confidence in some very old ideas -- cf., "How to Think About Liberalism (If You Must)."

However, because my blog sucks, nobody's offering to pay me $100K to promote those ideas, so please hit the tip jar.

'Hate-F***Gate': Fire Them All

Over at NTCNews, we have a daily editorial called "300 Words Or Less," the idea being to address a timely topic in the specified length. Today's entry addresses the media scandal known as "HateF***Gate":

Obscene insults and raw hatred are not new in the online world. What made Guy Cimbalo's article about "hate-f***" fantasies so shocking was that it was published by Playboy.
Did no one in the editorial process at Playboy.com think twice before hitting the "publish" button on an article that said of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, "Chemical castration has begun to look appealing"?
Cimbalo's article required someone to build multiple Web pages, someone to find, crop and embed photos, someone to write headlines and captions -- hours of paid labor during which various editors had the chance to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Maybe this isn't a good idea." . . .

Please read the whole thing. We hope that our blogger friends will find NTCNews a useful resource, It's a work in progress, so have patience if you haven't been blogrolled yet.

Frequent Commenter Smitty (who has been known to wear bowties, alas) and Jimmie Bise Jr. of Sundries Shack are my partners in this latest insane project. Of the site's inspiration, Jimmie says:

Tucker made a big mistake in calling out the HuffPo before his site was anywhere close to being live. Three weeks is an eternity in the blogosphere and, by the time his site finally does make it to the masses, all the buzz will be gone.

I won't tell you which one of my partners described the Underpants Gnome business plan of NTCNews:

1. Post a metric ass-load of brief news pointers.
2. ? ? ? ?
3. Profit!

Don't try this at home kids. These men are professional bloggers. We're already showing up occasionally in the Memeorandum feed and being linked by Fisherville Mike, So It Goes In Shreveport and No Sheeples Here, among others.

If you want to be a guest contributor to the "300 Words or Less" series, please e-mail Smitty or e-mail Jimmie. Remember (a) the subject must be timely, (b) it must include linkage to articles and blogs about the topic, (c) your entry will be competing for publication against other offerings, and (d) it must be 300 words or less, including the title and you signature. (Try composing it as a Word document, which automatically counts the words.)

As payment for your contribution, you'll have your choice of three lucrative options:

• 100% of the cash value of the traffic generated by your entry, not to exceed $1 (one U.S. dollar);
• Reciprocral linkage to your blog at The Other McCain and NTCNews.com; or
• One cold beverage, if you are ever able to catch me, Smitty or Jimmie in a bar with cash in our pockets. (Good luck.)

What a deal, huh? At any rate, even if you don't decide to take us up on this offer, we invite you to visit NTCNews, where we strive to prove daily that you have to be a rich preppy to aggregate the news.

And please hit the tip jar, so I can afford to buy one of those spiffy bowties like all the smart pundits wear.

UPDATE: Smart pundits? Dan Collins:

Stacy McCain is quite right . . .

And speaking of inspiration, I owe a lot to Protein Wisdom for their slogan: "Because not just anybody can summarize the news." Ironic implications, you see.

Tucker Carlson seems to believe that you have to be a rich famous TV pundit to summarize the news. I hate that kind of stuck-up attitude. A little story:

At CPAC 2006, I was engaged in my usual CPAC activity -- schmoozing like a mofo -- when I decided to take a smoke break. So I go outside, light up, and start talking to this guy with a beard who was puffing Marlboro Reds.

He looked familiar. Kind of like . . . an Ewok.

At that point in time, I had very little idea of just how big Ace of Spades was in the blogsophere, and didn't know the guy from Adam's housecat.

Which is the point. You can be huge in the blogosphere and yet be an obscure nobody compared to the famous TV pundits. And that's OK, but the problem is when the famous TV pundits get the idea that you actually are nobody.

In Tucker Carlson's mind, Ace of Spades and Jeff Goldstein are zilch compared to the 26-year-old assistant producer at Fox News, because the 26-year-old can schedule him on TV -- so we all can admire Tucker's wisdom and good looks -- and Ace and Jeff can't do that.

Yeah, well, Ace and Jeff are all right with me. You know who else is all right with me? Carol at No Sheeples Here. Because she lets me steal her cool Photoshops:

UPDATE II: Speaking of obscure people I met at CPAC 2006, Little Miss Attila says, "Fire them all? Works for me."

OK, let's talk obscurity and fame. All acolytes of The Rules (or, as Jimmie calls them, "The Million Hit Squad") know Little Miss Attila as She Who Must Be Linked, the Kharma Queen of the Blogosphere. She's like the blog-fu temple goddess. If your traffic is sucking, just ask yourself, "When was the last time I linked Little Miss Attila?"

Two days after I met Attila at CPAC 2006, Ann Coulter gave the speech destined to be known to history as The Raghead Heard 'Round the World. And somebody on Bloggers Row decided to circulate a petition denouncing Ann. (Which even Ace signed, having succumbed to the fever of civic-virtue Joiny McJoinerism that was apparently pandemic on Bloggers Row that year.)

Well, I'm sort of Coulter Fanboy No. 1. Don't judge me.

Having done a stint as a humor columnist for The Rome News-Tribune -- after Lewis Grizzard died, my Menshevik editor, Pierre Rene-Noth, decided I should try my hand at the Bubba McGrits schtick -- I know how hard it is to be consistently funny.

If a columnist can give three good laughs in 700 words, that's success. Four good laughs per column, that's national syndication. Five laughs in a column and you are a newsprint Vishnu: I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.

Coulter is funny, and if you've never tried to be funny in print, you've got no idea how hard that is. It's like stand-up comedy. Next time you're watching some brick-wall third-stringer doing a routine on cable TV and thinking to yourself, "Ah, he's not so funny. Anybody could do that," how's about you take a stroll down to the next open-mike night and try it yourself, asshole.

So I leapt to Coulter's defense after the "raghead" comment, and one of the people I leapt on -- figuratively, no matter what any gossip tries to tell you -- was Little Miss Attila. She had put up a post slamming Ann and so, with all the vitriolic ad hominem I could muster, I told Attila to get herself a nice hot cup of STFU. Hulk Hogan never slammed Andre the Giant so hard. Meghan McCain never slammed tequila shots so hard. Matt Sanchez never . . .

I regret slamming Attila like that. But it's out there somewhere on the Internet, and you can't retrieve those pixels once you hit the "publish post" button. But Attila has forgiven me, and this is one of the reasons (certainly not the only reason) she's the Kharma Queen of the 'Sphere.

One of these days, Attila will write a post called "Ann Coulter Is Da Bomb," admitting that her 2006 anti-Ann posts were wrong. At which point, she'll begin knocking down Instalanches like she knocks down vodka martinis. And then we'll all be grateful we're on her blogroll.

Er . . . not that we weren't already grateful.

NTCNews on Sotomayor

Dig the groovy aggregation, people. I love working to keep up with a breaking meme like this one.

Some people talk about "aggregation." Some of us just jump in and start aggregatin' like a mofo.

Dibs on the slogan, "Aggregatin' like a mofo." Don't try to ace me out of that one, Trog.

Basic HTML code for bloggers

I'm currently helping someone learn to blog, and this is a post to explain that learning a few simple HTML commands is very useful in blogging.

Why? Because the "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) interface doesn't always give an exact rendition of what the page will look like. Sometimes the coding gets screwed up, and if you don't know how to fix the code, the page will look like crap. Every blog software has an "edit HTML" that lets you go in and alter the code yourself. Eventually, every blogger has to learn to use HTML.

Don't be intimidated by thinking, "Oh, that's high-tech geek stuff. I don't know what I'm doing. What if I screw up?" The answer is, if you screw up, you'll go back and fix it. It ain't rocket science, and your computer is not going to blow up because you used the wrong code on your blog. Besides, nobody's reading your blog yet. So relax.

The Bare Bones Guide to HTML is a good place to start. Most of those codes you don't need to know. Basically you need bold, italic, "link to something," blockquote, paragraph and line break. But go ahead and print the whole thing out, staple the pages together, and keep it handy.

A linky-love recession?

How hard did I work to own the Carrie Prejean breast implant meme? Like a mofo.

So I'm checking SiteMeter and notice traffic off an Ace of Spades thread, check it out and it's Ace blogging about Carrie's fake tits. But it's not Ace that's linking me, it's a commenter.

Instead, Ace links Jammie Wearing Fool, whom I beat to this meme by at least a week. And then I go to Jammie's place and see that he got a freaking Instalanche.

So then, I notice I'm getting traffic from a Hot Air thread, but when I go there, it's not Allah linking me, it's also a commenter. Allah won't link me even though I was blogging about this at the Green Room this morning!

WTF? Is my blog-fu fading? Is it my breath? If I wanted to be treated like crap, I would have stayed in the newspaper business.

UPDATE: Welcome to the Linky-Love Deficit Syndrome Encounter Group, where we sit around and talk about our feelings about our anemic traffic. And hug and cry a lot.

UPDATE II: When it rains, it pours, and your protege gets linked by The New York Daily News. It makes a guy feel . . . inadequate.

UPDATE III: Brother Jimmie offers comforting words. We covet the linkage.

UPDATE IV: Carol at No Sheeples Here gives me a hug. And you know something? I think maybe Allahpundit is jealous because my wife of 20 years is still so freaking hot. And I'm going to rub his face in it by posting another hot photo of her from back in the day:

Yeah. They're real. And they're spectacular.