Most bloggers have comments sections. It’s the promise of immediate feedback that makes blogging fun and worthwhile. You always have commenters that think you’re an idiot and tell you so. Some of my favorite commenters call me an idiot all the time. I enjoy the give and take. It’s nice to have someone tell you how much they like or enjoy what you’ve written, but if that’s all I got it would be pretty boring. However, if 95% of your feedback is saying you’re a dipshit [diary deleted, content is in comments section] then you’re probably doing something wrong. If not, you’ve probably inadvertently begun posting on a dittohead site.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
21 Comments
Recent Posts
- Day 45: I Explain Trumpism to Justin Trudeau
- Day 43: The #TrumpRussia Conspiracy Goes Mainstream At Last
- Day 40: Republicans Contemplate Giving Up On Deficit Control Forever
- Progress Pondcast Episode 22 With Bill Hangley Jr, on DOGE and U.S. Alliance With Russia
- Day 37: The Last Bulwarks Protecting the Merit-Based Civil Service
Recent Comments
I voted dittohead site.
He should have titled it with the highly original Delete my f*cking account, kos.
how did you know that I get those emails all the time. I don’t even have the ability to delete an account and I never understood why it mattered.
It’s from the famous errinf dkos gbcw diary of the same title.
It matters because it’s as close to a nasty divorce as a betrayed-feeling reader can get.
He has now deleted the post.
I had a window open, so I cut and pasted it for posterity.
Good work!
Did anyone see the hissyfit he threw over at Openleft last night? Truly hilarious!
yeah, I saw it.
Either your link is bad or that story got scrubbed. What was it?
Naturally, I have no idea what going on, but I did the “participate here” part funny. I haven’t visited DK since ’07, but the one thing people complained about was that Sirota never participated in the comments beyond telling someone asking him to back up a statement that they had no idea what they were talking about.
It really is all about him, isn’t it? He’s guilty of the blogger/journo/pundit sin, I suspect, of doing his own play by play the way we all did shooting hoops in the cul-de-sac:
“Here comes fearless truth-teller Sirota down the right-hand side — cuts baseline — dishes it back out to Jerome at the top of the key…back to Sirota. BANG! Nothin’ but net.”
It’s too bad, I guess, since his heart seems to mostly in the right place. But the martyr complex infects nearly every piece he writes. Strike 2 is that he’s a writer who lacks a sense of what words connote, which I think leads to much of the negative reaction he gets.
I quit reading Open Left because of him. Not that I couldn’t stand his stuff or because his basic views were repulsive, but because I kept seeing these absurdly clumsy arguments and couldn’t refrain from responding to them, leading much of the time to unpleasant exchanges that were not worth anyone’s time.
I have much empathy with anyone who’s trying to make a living writing, especially as a proselytizer for lefty causes. In his case, though, he’s probably right that he’d be more effective and happier in some other line of work.
When you start from the premise that Barack Obama ran for president so he could steal hard-working taxpayers’ dollars and hand them over to bank CEO’s then the rest of your product is going to be garbage. Garbage in/garbage out.
I think that stuff is one manifestation of the martyr complex. He seems to imagine himself as this contrarian lefty hero, bravely correcting the misperceptions of the faithful but credulous Dem/liberal masses. Kind of Old Marxist, when you think about it.
I don’t see him as a Marxist on substance, maybe on style.
There are a lot of people on the left that I respect that just don’t see real progress as possible within the system. But they are careful to point out that it isn’t one politician’s fault (even the president’s) that this is the case.
Sirota is an advocate for change within the system, which is why is rightfully considered a Democratic activist. But then he criticizes politicians for not doing things that they didn’t even have an option of doing.
I think single-payer is the best approach to health-care but I look at the debate in the Senate and I know it isn’t remotely possible and that no amount of lobbying from Obama (now, or on the campaign trail) could change that. We’ll be lucky to get a public option. That’s the playing field that politicians must be judged on, not some fantasyland.
There’s nothing wrong with advocating for single-payer (I do it without apology) but there is something wrong with ascribing bad motives to people that are pursuing realistic options for covering everybody in some way.
This is really the crux of the matter for me when dealing with folks who want to work “outside” the system to push the conversation left.
I think its important for progressives to have both outside push from the left and pragmatists inside who are getting as much done as possible.
It drives me crazy when one side of that coin feels the need to question the motives of the other side.
I agree.
My main problem also was not just that he attributed bad faith to politicians, but that him and the open left guys sometimes egg on the supporters of said politicians too. “Dear leaderism” and all that.
So while I can’t say I’m the bigger man, because 60 percent of what I currently do on Openleft is troll, there is definitely a method to my madness.
and when he is on his game and not being Mr. Cynical, he is good. But when he gets into that “See, all politicians are horribly corrupt” game I just can’t stand it.
And he is really at his worst with the whining and meta stuff, about how his feelings are hurt when folks attack him. I’ve been attacked in diaries, it sucks, but it teaches you to change your tone if you are coming across as an asshole. Last I checked Sirota regularly gets diaries on the Rec list at Dailykos, so what’s he complaining about?
Sirota needs to realize that he has had some low moments — such as when he blasted the Eric Holder nomination because Holder once worked for Chiquita banana, and therefore must be an apologist for Colombian death squads (yes, Sirota really wrote this). But then Sirota was quite silent — as far as I could tell — when it turned out that Holder was one of the folks pushing hardest for the release of the torture memos. He needs a little realpolitik and nuance.