(And where it all ends knows God, to once again riff on poor old Wolcott Gibbs.)
Congratulations to James Lileks, who appears most weeks on Pajamas Media’s PJM Political show on Sirius-XM, for being named to Time magazine’s list of the “25 Best Blogs of 2009.”
James’ nomination is certainly appropriate, as he’s one of the best writers on the ‘Net. He’s also the only center-right blogger listed (and for his almost always apolitical “Bleat”), which indicates how much more parochial Time’s blogroll has become after nominating Power Line as 2004′s “Blog of the Year” for their role in debunking RatherGate.
However, the same speed of the Web that effectively ended Dan Rather’s network career also renders news magazine as dinosaurs. And because their editors wish to finally flaunt their biases rather than hide behind the screen of “objectivity”, Time and Newsweek have since mutated into “better funded and ‘newsier’ versions of The New Republic“, as NRO noted earlier this month, a decision that Time tacitly announced with this cover in 2007.
Speaking of James, here he is from the late 1980s being interviewed by Minneapolis show-biz legend Rich Kornfeld, as Kornfeld channels a strange brew of Crispin Glover, David Lynch, and Ted Koppel. Kornfeld was last seen here in 2002, the Jurassic era of our blog, as a Capt. Pike-obsessed ringer in the quasi-documentary Trekkies.
(Part two of interview here for those waiting for James’ shocking confession regarding authorship of his book.)
The Time list of blogs is ridiculous. Once upon a time Andrew Sullivan was worth reading. Today, his hysterical rants agains Gov. Palin alone should make him a laughing stock.
You would think the folks at Time/Newsweek would consider the impact of actually steering their content right just a nudge. Every magazine, down to GQ and Men’s Health, veers left. Why not go for the untapped market?
I subscribed to Time for decades, but now it is virtually unreadable. In a recent copy I saw at work, they listed the 25 people most responsible for the current economic problems. Neither Barney Frank or Chris Dodd made the cut, of course, but they blame some cable executive for her shows about house buying.