TV Preview - US Blog Wars on the BBC

Because Blairwatch is so influential and powerful (no laughing at the back) we've been sent a DVD of a programme called Blog Wars, going out later tonight (10:30 on 17th January 2007) on BBC4, the BBC's TV station for people who are listening to Radio 4 instead. It's sort of a hybrid - partly following the Ned Lamont campaign in Connecticut, where he briefly unseated the decidedly unpleasant neocon Democrat Joe Lieberman (who's proof, if the Henry Jackson Society and New Labour weren't enough, that the neo-cons are a post-political grouping who see parties solely as a route to power). Bloggers took a large part of the blame/credit for puffing Lamont, a nonentity at the start, up into a credible candidate. Seemed a nice chap, if a bit two-dimensional. Lieberman always comes across as an extremely nasty piece of work.

It's quite good, on the whole, although I'd love to know what was going on inside the Lieberman camp during all this - it seems from their public reaction (smears, mainly) that they were the equivalent of a dinosaur wondering what the little hot-blooded rodent running around was up to, and trying ineffectually to squash it. What did interest me was seeing the men and women behind the keyboard - anyone watching this from Mars would conclude two things - the US is full of people whose clothes don't fit and Apple Inc. have 95% of the laptop market (seriously, they nearly all, left or right, have some species of Power/Mac/iBook. Mind you, guess what I was watching the DVD on?). What was also interesting was that the only way to differentiate the respective left and right bloggers was by what they're saying - they seem to dress the same, talk the same, come from more or less the same social level (able to afford a relatively expensive computer and enough leisure time to go campaigning and blogging). Blogging is in a sense ideal for them, since it only displays the differences, but I do wonder at the long-term social effects of seeing people with a lot in common with yourself as The Enemy because of what they write.

What else? There's the intense ex-Marine Tim Tagaris (the one who does stand out as different). There's my favourite loony lovely, Michelle Malkin, who's worth the entrance price* on her own for her classic demonstration of psychological projection. There's a funny section where some right-wing radio jocks take the piss out of the New York Times for getting the name of the Purple Heart wrong - see the comment on Blairwatch the other day where the News of the World got the wrong picture for Tony's Gong - perhaps we ought to tell the US right-wingers of this insult to their country so they can have a good laugh at the librul media? There's a deeply worrying section where Markos Moulitsas is being coached in speech-making - surely if you want to stand out as different, be different, if you're capable of being original, be original.

There's Christopher Hitchens trying to explain how bloggers have no mechanism for dealing with criticism. Here Chris responding to George Galloway's 'popinjay' aside, to remind us how well he takes criticism - presumably he'll be quite happy if we indulge ourselves at his expense in the same way at some point:

However, what comes through mainly is the anger - the anger from the neocons is explicable by reason of classifying them as what they are - ideologues, but the anger from the left is less explicable. It's impossible to write down what they're fighting for, but it's clear what they're fighting against from the segments showing Lieberman's campaigning - it's staged, wooden, false, and I think that's what gets the reaction - the degradation of politics into cheap, insincerity rather than selfless representation. What blogging did well in 2006 was show life outside the fence, outside the security cordon and, in the end, the Emperor outside his clothes. That's why it matters.

Oh and don't believe Andrew Sullivan when he says that bloggers admit their bias - most aren't even aware of it. We're not angels, just humans.

* of 'free'