It's Not Me, It's You
The Pandagon blog is one of the leading lefty political sites on the national scene. Along with Daily Kos and Atrios, its proprietors have been the deans of the school of poltical analysis via hyper profane, seething one-liner derision. (Examples here and here.)
Simplistic, juvenille, obscene, to be sure. But, as Messrs. Kos and Atrios have also proven, that's enough to become extraordinariliy popular in liberal media circles. The Pandagon crew gets tens of thousands of readers, big time advertisers, national publicity and fame, and, believe it or not, women. From a New York Times Magazine profile of the Pandagon tandem:
Jesse and Ezra, whose blog is called Pandagon, were lying with two cute women in
tank tops -- Ezra's girlfriend Kate and Zoe of Gadflyer -- on futon beds that had been placed on the tiny stage of the performance space. Their computers and wireless mice and some carrots and radishes and paper plates with Chinese dumplings were scattered between them. A month ago, at the Democratic convention, Zoe had accidentally spilled a big cup of 7-Up on Jesse's computer, killing it. She and Jesse now looked as if they might be dating.
Jesse Taylor gets paid and got laid (probably) from blogging, meaning he's earned more tangible benefit out of the medium than 99% of its adherents. But it turns out all the bogus gold in the world isn't enough to buy the silence of a man's conscience. Jesse Taylor is getting out of the blogging business, with a message for his fans.
The major reason is that I decided I wanted to stop opining and start doing. It's easy enough for me to write about the issues of the day and tell other people what they should be doing to win, it's another thing to help someone win. I'm tired of being angry - I want to start being productive.
You have to respect a man with the integrity to review his life's work and soberly assess it as a waste. ButI feel sorry for the fan base of Pandagon. After years of eagerly lapping up this guy's writing, lauding him and hilarious and brilliant, and propelling him to the heights of liberal blogging success, they're all told by the man himself that it was nothing more than easy, unproductive, angry ranting. And now he's moving on to bigger and better things.
I've enjoyed the past three-plus years here, but it's time for a new challenge, and it's also time for me to take on a more serious challenge than daily ranting.
This all reminds me of that scene from Stripes, where Bill Murray's girlfriend is dumping him for being a lazy, no-good bum:
Anette: But I need something more. I need somebody who is going to develop with me and somebody who is going to grow with me. Good bye.
John: Grow? Who could grow more than me? Talk about massive potential for growth. I am the little acorn that becomes the oak. You can't go. All the plants are gonna die.
But loyal Pandagon readers need not fear. In the blogosphere of the left there is always someone else ready to water the plants. Pandagon is now run by a coule of folks every bit as angry, foul-mouthed, and unproductive as we've come to expect.
Speaking of blogger exits, a much more graceful and lamentable one has also occured closer to home. John Bonnes, the Twins Geek, is ending his innovative baseball commentary site.
There will be regrets. There is so much left undone. TwinsGeek.com started because:
1. Baseball is a beautiful game and
2. The more you know about it, the more beautiful it is and
3. Dammit, coverage of the local team should maybe do that. Analysis, research
education - doing that for baseball should be the greatest job in the world.
To some extent, I think that's happening a little more, but I still feel that most of the local coverage is more interested in cranking out something superficially digestible or (even worse) inflammatory than telling us about the depth, beauty and intricacies of the game.
That is true. The is a desperate need in the marketplace for better baseball coverage than the local papers provide. Twins Geek gave it a valiant effort over the past few years, but his tale proves there's only so much a guy can do at night, in his basement, working in his pajamas. I believe this fate awaits all bloggers, eventually:
I'm burned out by a thousand little flames. The time. The ISP costs. The programming. The relentless task of posting every day. The lack of revenue. The system problems. The frustration of trying to grow a different kind of publishing
model. The editing. The emails. The comments. The links, the other sites, the research, the syndication, the ads. Most surprising (and disappointing) is that I'm tired of the writing. And I'm tired of doing all of them, but not doing any of them well.
We thank John for a job well done and wish him the best in the future. His insights into the local nine will be missed. But the thing about blogs is that they're like dogs. When they die, no matter how much you loved them, it's very easy to find another one to replace it and move on. The best place to go to fill the Twins Geek void is Aaron Gleeman who's doing the best local sports commentary and linking in town.
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