According to Gizoogle, the comparison is more apt than even Levin describes!

http://sites.gizoogle.com/?url=http://www.danieldrezner.com/

That reminds me, isnt a one man circle jerk a contradiction in terms?

A cirle jerk in an echo chamber

But seriously, I think maybe the whole blog thing is becoming a bit too intertwined in the prof's identity. I mean, he defends blogging's honor like Southerners used to defend their women's. Is Dr. Drezner 'calling out' this Levin character? Remember what happened to Tupac. I say -- old media, new media, one peace.

The usefulness of Today's Papers has been greatly diminished ever since I stopped receiving the full article via email.

Yes it would be more appropriate to complain in their Fray, but I can't remember my username or password.

Mark,

Not if he's got multiple personality disorder.

Blogger -- A person in pajamas who engages in circle jerking.

Commenter -- A person who may or may not be in pajamas who can't get it together to circle-jerk

Paging Reihan Salaam. This is right up his alley.

I can get down with "Judge Dre, the Man" a little more better.

Bloggers and rappers!! Of course!! Now it be all clear!! (Ooops)

How could we have missed the obvious similarity?

On the other hand, P. Diddy and Atrios - he may have a point.

(PS: blogs get a nice mention in Podhoretz' latest in "Commentary" ("The War Against WW IV"). Norman finds a little more of substance there than Josh.

"Dr. Dre" is taken. What about Dr. Drez?

Here I was thinking that blogging was more like Arena football, where athletes who don't fit the physical profile of NFL players can still make a living playing football or something like it.

Or maybe blogging is like cable television shows. NBC would never put a show about poker players or battles against aliens who take the names of ancient gods on Must-See Thursday, so cable creates a new paradigm.

Blogging could be like the California wine industry, which challenged the French belief in terroir and tradition with the idea that wine consumers are entitled to an affordable product of consistent quality: wine for the public instead of for the producers and the elite.

Or, blogging could be like Starbucks, hybrid cars, independent films, Jet Blue, the X Games and organic farming.

But rap music is just annoying at all times and in all forms. I mean, seriously. There are kids who like it because they're too young and undereducated to know any better, and blacks who endorse it as an expression of authentic culture, like giving children names such as Tawanisha, Dwaynetrelle, Pomodoro and Shiitake. Also there are some completely normal people who smile and cheer at rap stars while rolling their inner eyeballs, because they don't want to be thought racist. But most of us edge away from someone playing rap music the way we edge away from someone who hasn't bathed recently -- there's enough ugliness in the world without having to put up with that. This is the complete opposite of blogging. Mainstream media types read blogs but don't want their collagues to know.

Mencken is a funky ass antidote . Listen to how a motherfucker flow shit. Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stizzern standards. In a cheery way, he dislikes mizzy minorizzles n if he ever had a good word ta say `bout tha majority of his countrymen, I have yet ta come across it , ya feel me?. Recently, whiznen his baller were published, it was discovered that He Did Not Like tha Jews, n tizzle he had said unpleasant th'n `bout tizzle not only as individuals but In General, plainly tha sign of a Hustla enthusiast. So shocked was everyone that even tha New York Review of Books ' unofficial de-anti-Semitisa, Garry Wills (he salvaged Dickens, barely), has yet ta come ta his aid wit An Explanation. But in Mencken's private correspondizzles he also snarls at bliznack Americans, Orientals, Britons, bitchez, n WASPs, particularly tha clay-eat'n Appalachians, wizzy he regarded as subhuman. But private irritability is of no consequence W-H-to-tha-izzen compared ta whiznat really shot calla public action.

Uhhh-aahh! Temper temper!
Mr. Dre? Mr. N.W.A.?
Mr. AK comin' straight outta Compton y'all better make way?

...as I was saying...

OK, blogging is a "circle jerk" that largely passes along ohter people's ideas. What about the op-ed pages of major newspapers? They've been doing it forever. And what about academics? How many of them have produced something new that isn't so esoteric nobody but other specialists care?

What bothers the establishment about blogging is that it weakens their role as gatekeepers.

Blogging = Rapping

OK. Let's complete the analogy. Mainstream media = Muzak

“Here I was thinking that blogging was more like Arena football, where athletes who don't fit the physical profile of NFL players can still make a living playing football or something like it.”

The blogging stars are usually far more talented than the second raters associated with the old media. The latter are merely whores of the liberal establishment. They are often nothing more than well paid sluts. The old media, by and large, deserve our unhesitating contempt.