I actually watched St. Elmo’s Fire a month or so ago. I wanted to set the entire cast on fire, they were so annoying. No wonder they called them the Brat Pack. It was a truly self-indulgent godawful movie, and not in a good way. So, I think it’s kind of obnoxious to refer to the DC-based new media elite as the Brat Pack. What’s important is that they’re a lot better at what they do than Dana Milbank and Fred Hiatt are at what they do. They definitely have lost some of their edge as they’ve come to be more influential and respectable, but they’re laying down about the only truth you’re going to find in the Capitol. And Ezra shouldn’t apologize for ripping into Joe Lieberman without mercy. What he said was 100% true. When people get on Ezra’s case for telling it like it is, he should point out that it’s Lieberman, not him, who should be apologizing. Lieberman’s the one who was “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”
You should be allowed to say that in the Washington Post, not just Maxim or Rolling Stone.
I’ll give Ezra credit. He knows he’s gotten softer once he got hired by Kaplan. And you are right. It’s why I read people like Atrios. And FDL(say what you want, but they are unafraid to step on toes).
like Luke Russert.
They definitely have lost some of their edge as they’ve come to be more influential and respectable
I agree with the whole post, but especially with this part. Commenting specifically on Talking Points Memo, I do remember it when it was just Josh in late 2002, when he still tended to favor the Iraq War but would change his mind as the evidence of no WMDs poured in.
At one point a few years ago TPM had a page devoted to DC (maybe it was “TPMDC”?) and there was a little slogan in the title “In it, not of it”. The point was that TPM was located in DC, but not part of the DC culture. I think that was accurate as of the time, but in the past couple years there has been a definite shift towards TPM’s writers becoming part of the Washington club. More and more often they just accept the DC terminology and framing without questioning the premises. Perhaps worse, they are now much more about the horse race than about the issues (no one gives Palin more coverage than TPM — and no one gave the “witch from Delaware” as much coverage as TPM did).
Yes, you still get some really good original reporting, especially when Josh sends staff on site, as they did in Wisconsin. And they do bother to dig into the legal details and try to explain them, which the mainstream press has completely forgotten how to do. But at the same time their attitude seems more bemusement than outrage. More than once you see Josh comment that he’s really hoping some story develops or some politician does run for an office because it makes for interesting stories.
Ironically, Josh moved out of DC some time ago, but half his staff is still there and by his own admission he watches the cable networks all day every weekday. It shows.
I stopped reading TPMDC when they started abusing the Cavuto Mark.
But TPMMuckraker still does some excellent work. And as a bonus, most of their stories have far fewer crazy commenters.
Unfortunately, their new blog software is FUBAR and won’t allow me to post any comments of my own. Maybe that’s for the best.
keep posting…its great..