Scoobie Davis Online

Sun Myung Moon Blog

Amway Blog

The YouTube Video "The World's Most Powerful Cult"

Talk Radio Transcripts
Rush Limbaugh1
Rush Limbaugh2
Sean Hannity1
Sean Hannity2
Matt Drudge
Andrew Napolitano
NewsMax1
NewsMax2
Tammy Bruce1
Tammy Bruce2
David Brock
Ann Coulter1
Ann Coulter2
Ann Coulter3
Clear Channel
Bill O'Reilly1
Bill O'Reilly2
Bill O'Reilly3
Bill O'Reilly4
Bill O'Reilly5
Bill O'Reilly6

What others are saying about Scoobie Davis:

"Naughty"
-Joe Conason

"Gadfly extraordinaire"
-Tom Tomorrow

Top Party Crasher
-Radar Magazine

"a nut"
-Bill O'Reilly

"media prankster"
-PRWeek

Amazon Honor System Click Here to Pay Learn More
Web Sites That Rock
Salon
Am. Politics
Daily Howler
Buzzflash
Am. Prospect
Media Matters
Slate
538
CAP
ConWebWatch
Air America
Greg Palast
Steal Back Your Vote
CREW
The New Yorker
Mother Jones
The Daily Beast
Trendhunter magazine
The Nation
Raw Story
HiLoBrow
HinesSite
VoteVets.org
TNR
Joe Conason
Ed Schultz
FAIR
Radar
Gawker
The Onion
DU
CLG
Eriposte
Move On
PFAW
Surfer Mag
Unprecedented
American Fundamentalists
Feed
PR Watch
High Times
Theocracy Watch
CSPI
Snopes
419 Eater
Buy Blue
Jack Chick
InTrade
Science of the Time
H+ Magazine
Tom Paine
Ken Wilber
Suicide Girls
Polling Report
Adbusters
Media T.
Alanis
Boing Boing
Rolling Stone
Never Get Busted
Zeta
Infiltration
Bill Berkowitz
John Robbins
Young Turks
Poynter
Global Politician
Fighting Words
Cursor
Online Journal
Anti-Rush1
Anti-Rush2

Blogs
Atrios
SlanderBlog
Amway Blog
Sun Myung Moon Blog
Googlebomb Blog
Josh Marshall
Daily Kos
Pandagon
Orcinus
Hullabaloo
Eric Alterman
Tom Tomorrow
Corrente
Calling All Wingnuts
Think Progress
MoxieGrrrl
America Blog
Wash Monthly
Ruy Teixeira
John Gorenfeld
Newshounds
David Corn
Mark Cripsin Miller
James Wolcott
Talk to Action
Crooks & Liars
Huffington
Firedoglake
ConsortiumBlog
My DD
Cliff Schecter
Brad Blog
Boorman Tribune
Kicking Ass
TalkLeft
Michael Moore
See The Forest
Roger Ailes
Salon Blog Report
Glen Greenwald
B-C
Taegan Goddard
Media Channel
Sideshow
Matthew Yglesias
Mark A.R. Kleiman
Tbogg
Oliver Willis
Skippy
Wonkette
Sadly No
Washington Interns
Political Realm
MF Blog
Move Left Media
Cranky Liberal
LeftField
Most Liberal
WTF
Politicky Bitch
Like Sunday
Autonomist
Funny Farm
Reflections on Playboy
utopia
Straight,Not Narrow
The Dude Minds
Rude Pundit
Margaret Cho
Dr. Limerick
Michael Berube
Elayne Riggs
Liberal Avenger
Crooked Timber
the stoRm
PD Dude
Demo Cali
The Agonist
SLA
Recovering Liberal
Breach
Smythe's World
NMMNB
Throwing Things
A La Gauche
Blah3
Timshel
Archpundit
Killer Empathy
Freeway Blogger
Dr. Forbush
Daily Blatt
Skimble
Pro. Gold
Dem Vet
David Sirota
Cut to the Chase
Est. Profit
Funny Farm
Brad DeLong
Mithras
BuffaloPundit
Bark,etc.
Amygdala
SK Bubba
Speedkill
LA Observed
Tapped

Film
IMDb
Filmmaker
Indie Slate
Moviemaker
Doc.org
IFC
Holy Cowboy
eXposure
Flicker
CinemaWeb
HOPE
filmmaking
Sundance
Film Threat
Unhollywood
AFI
FilmUnderground
Box Office
The Industry
indieWIRE

Reality Hacking/DIY/Crashing
Hacktivist
DIY Convention
CERI
BLF
Lycaeum
Erowoid
Infiltration
MAPS
The Partygoers
Kid Protocol
Robert Anton Wilson
GooglebombBlog
Jamming the Media
Boing Boing

Comix
Dan Clowes
Jack Chick
R Crumb
C B Galaxy
Fantagraphics
Will Eisner
Batton Lash
Tabloia
Comics Journal
Hard Drinkin' Lincoln
BiffSniff
Art Spiegelman
Joe Matt
Johnny Ryan
FreedomToons
Chris Ware
Charles Burns
Frazetta
Chris Ware
Neal Adams
Adrian Tomine
Scott McCloud
Last Gasp
ComicMix
PoopSheet
Harvey Pekar
Kevin Smith
Joe Sacco
D & Q

Reference
Webster's
Wikipedia
World Almanac
Internet Archive
What's It Worth?

Blogging Links
Blogger
Google Blog Search
Technorati
Findory
TailRank
Feedster
Blogdigger

Blogarama - The Blog Directory


Blog search directory
Blogwise - blog directory






Search Engine Optimization and Free Submission

[Powered by Blogger]
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com
Reading List
Feed

Friday, April 04, 2003


Kelly’s Loss Is Journalism’s Gain

I haven’t checked the blogosphere but if anyone gets mushy about the tragic loss to journalism due to Michael Kelly’s death, I have one message: get real. Certainly, it is a personal tragedy for those who were close to him. However, Kelly’s death will improve the quality of American journalism and political discourse significantly (unless, of course, the Washington Post replaces him with someone just as egregious as Kelly was). I can think of few pundits who had so many opportunities to shine but who were as lazy, intellectually dishonest, and derelict in their duties as Kelly. Kelly’s death was a tragedy, but so was his wretched career.

I first became acquainted with Kelly when he was editor of The New Republic back in the 1990’s. I subscribed to TNR because it was supposed to be the voice for progressivism. For those of you not familiar with this web site, the 1990’s were important because of the savage nature of the American right and its media—in the form of talk radio, TV preachers hawking conspiracy tapes, Scaife-funded toadies, and Fox News; President Clinton was mauled by a loosely organized dirty tricks operation that cared nothing about the truth, common decency, or mercy. Let me describe the agenda of the hard right of the 1990’s: It was entirely dishonest, cheap, low. It was utterly hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts--bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in smarmy tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible.

The words in bold are not my words, there were Kelly’s words—not to describe Limbaugh, Joseph Farah, or Chris Ruddy in their heyday. No, they were the words Kelly used to describe Al Gore when he dared to criticize the foreign policy of the man who usurped his position. Those of us who spent our money for TNR and who wanted to read Kelly using these kinds of words to describe Limbaugh or any of the other miscreants of the anti-Clinton right faced weekly disappointment. In fact, during the 1990’s, not only was Kelly silent on these matters, but also he was part of the problem. A case in point, Kelly wrote a jaundiced piece on Clinton, portraying him as a corrupt lackey for Tyson Foods (a good account of some of the errors and distortions in the piece can be found on pp. 151, 152 of The Hunting of the President). Finally, in 1997, Martin Peretz canned Kelly, but it was too little too late. Those who fought a dishonest war against Clinton got away with it because people like Kelly didn’t do their jobs.

Kelly never learned from his mistakes—nor was he held accountable for them. During the 2000 election campaign, he was a hack who repeated GOP talking points even when he knew they were not true. Of course, during the Florida recount, Kelly was an intellectually dishonest hack. Along with Peggy Noonan, Kelly was behind the blue state/red state smear of Paul Begala (Begala received numerous death threats as a consequence). Those of us who read opinion columns deserved better. It’s my hope that the Post will replace Kelly with someone who is at least intellectually honest; I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATE: On Kelly's posthumously published book


|

Home