if this posts thank c.i. and the uk computer gurus who are members of the common ills community.
it's interesting what happened and all the patches that i had to download and install. i won't bore you with it but since i only posted on ohio (and that was sunday) i'm curious as to what it was that drew 'pranksters' (as c.i. calls them) to my site.
if it were my potty mouth, i would've been 'pranked' long ago.
since the last entry i did was on sunday and it was on ohio i can't help but wonder if there's a desire to keep that story out of view.
and before some jerk for the new york times (little tommy zeller?) screams 'tin foil hats!' - i don't own a tin foil hat. the only time tin foil comes near my head is when i'm getting my hair streaked. (5 days ago to touch up the roots.)
so if you wondered where rebecca was, i was trying to log in repeatedly. and couldn't get in.
if i'd e-mailed c.i. hours ago, i probably could've posted sooner. (thank you again to c.i. and the common ills community members known as the uk computer gurus.)
c.i. had a post this morning that disappeared for a while and then reappeared (under a different day). kara had e-mailed me that post early this morning. when i clicked on the link i couldn't get the post. but kara wrote in her message, 'rebecca, please comment on this.'
while i was talking with c.i. i asked about it.
the post is back up, in it's correct place, and i'll quote from it here.
Kara urges us to all take note of Sara Ivry's "Bush's Re-election Lifts Circulation at Liberal Magazines." From the article:
"We had a huge spike in orders beginning the day after the election," said Art Stupar, vice president for circulation at The Nation, which comes out weekly. "In fact, our Web site, in the week following the election, generated 2,600 subscriptions." Typically, The Nation gets no more than 500 subscriptions a week through its Web site, he said.Overall subscriptions to The Nation reached 184,000 at the end of December, up 24,000 from the previous year; they have doubled since 2000, with a spurt in 2003, when the war in Iraq got under way. "You could say that all the way through, for four years, we've benefited from the follies of the Bush administration," Mr. Stupar said. Similarly, at The Progressive, a monthly, paid subscriptions grew 12 percent, to 64,000, over 2004, and have risen 72 percent since President Bush first took office. The American Prospect, another monthly, experienced a 27 percent increase in paid subscriptions last year, from 45,568 to 60,189.
Kara: Note that The Weekly Standard which too many love to note in 'blog reports' has a circulation of 73,710 by contrast. And apparently, so thrilled were National Review readers with Willian F. Buckley Jr.'s leaving, that monthly rag had a 20% bump and is now up to 173,815subscriptions. That The Nation trumps the right-wing makes me very happy. But I especially loved the last paragraph. Please quote it and I hope Rebecca [Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude] sees it and writes about this news:
One exception to the overall trend is The New Republic, a weekly whose liberal reputation has been tempered in the past by its muscular approach to foreign policy, where subscriptions held at 60,000 last year. "We tend to look at issues from more than one side," said the president and publisher of the magazine, Stephanie Sandberg. "We aren't the kind of place that everybody ran to out of anger."
My comment (opinion, I could be wrong), The New Republic does not "tend to look at issues from more than one side." Marty wouldn't allow it. And when the so-called liberal rag wants to get honest about Marty's involvement with PNAC, we'll know he's not calling the shots on what's in print. Rebecca, as Kara notes, has long been dealing with the fact that The New Republic is not a liberal magazine and it is not a left magazine. She has shared her opinion, she has cited others as well (including FAIR and Makethemaccountable.com). [Note, those links go to Rebecca's citations of those sources. Within her posts, she has links to Fair and Makethemaccountable.com.] Pretending that this rag is left (it's not, even Marty refrains from making that claim publicly) serves to narrow the discussion as you bring on a right winger from The Weekly Standard and then a mouth piece from The New Republic which you present as "left." It's not left and it's not owned up to the reasons why they supported the war on Iraq.
well let me say thank you to kara and c.i. for the kind words.
yes, i will talk about it and kara thanks for bringing it to everyone's attention.
the new republic has no audience to grow. they've got the diehards who pray the rag will get better. those people e-mail me here at this site. with statements about how the rag is trying to change. well has it gone left since marty bought it in the mid-70s? uh, no. it's continued to push right and more right.
when the owner of the new republic signs on with pnac, the rag's given up the right to be called left. (check the makethemaccountable post mentioned above.)
it's not going to change unless and until it changes owners.
look, stephanie's got a great voice in the air america commercials. she sounds sweet. but she doesn't control the magazine regardless of her title. this is the magazine that gave us andrew sullivan, people! it gave us fred barnes!
buy a clue already because vanna white and i are both getting tired.
most of the left knows about fair and makethemaccountable (wonderful sites, both of them). and the word got out long ago that the new republic was not left, would not ever be left.
that's why they can do all the commercials they want but no 1's rushing to subscribe.
that's why the nation, which is also a weekly, boasts a circulation of 184,000 and the new republic continues to dwindle at 60,000. people let me put you wise? no. many others have put people wise long before i came along to the blog world.
but i've stayed on this because the people who come here, a lot of them, hadn't heard about the realities of the new republic.
the mag is a dog with tick and fleas. it can't increase circulation because the right has their own rags that admit to being right. and the left knows better than to trust the new republic. (don't even get me started on their middle east coverage!)
i told you what got me attracted to the new republic to begin with, full page ads (often in color) of antonio sabato junior in his CK bvds. those were hot photos! really hot! (he may have been the first guy i ever saw and thought about doing anything besides holding hands. i'm not sure i thought about having sex with him but i know i thought about touching that fine body all over.)
so i was interested in the rag. and when i'd read the stories, i would think, 'this is a left mag?'
i'm talking years later about reading the rag. i kept my copies in various places while i entertained myself with the antonio photos (use your imagination on 'entertained myself!').
i could leave it out in the open because it was a political mag and i doubted my parents would notice the ck ads. but i usually would slip them into a drawer near the bed to be pulled out quickly, or under my bed (ditto) or even under the mattress.
i have no idea why i finally started reading. i'm pretty sure it's around the time marky mark replaced antonio as the ck underwear model. (and if you wanted hot photos of marky in his y-fronts, interview magazine and vanity fair gave them to you. the new republic didn't give shit to those of us lusting after the male form after antonio was no longer the ck underwear
model.)
but i was probably bored and i started reading and it was such a shock because it wasn't a left mag.
i'm glad their subscriptions are flat and stay flat. i don't think that will change because of the hard work by people like fair and makethemaccountable and the daily howler.
but i know i'm reaching the kids now and i want to be sure that you guys know what's what.
and that you don't waste your money.
i also know that i reach people who don't go to other sites. (they don't discuss cocks and dicks at those other sites!)
so i make it a point to repeatedly inform you that the new republic is pro-war and has been under marty. it won't change while marty's there and may not change after he's gone. yes, stephanie has a lovely voice. maybe she's even a centerist. (she might be a liberal but i doubt it.) but rat poison comes in a pretty package too and i wouldn't open it with the intent of putting it in my hands.
a lot of people e-mailed about the ohio issue and i'm going to repeat what i told the people who e-mailed, i didn't make it happen. 3rd estate sunday review didn't make it happen. even the common ills didn't make it happen. you made it happen. you got out there and talked about it and e-mailed it to your friends and woke people up to something that the mainstream media was not discussing. you made it happen. so pat yourselves on the back because it was all thanks to you.
i'm wiped out from the 'pranking' earlier and what it took to fix it time wise. so i'll call it a night and promise to try for a longer entry tomorrow. buzzflash and iddybud and why are we back in iraq have been noted at the common ills for getting the word out so i will note them here. (and isn't jude a groovy blogger? she's a woman and we're supposedly wondering where the female bloggers are so why doesn't she get more attention for all her hard work? or is that all 'so last week' already?) ron is a great guy as well and i like his don't take any shit attitude.
i'm too lazy to do anymore links tonight, so i'll just pull from the common ills entry that has links in it to all three already:
Jude of Iddybud has written an incredible entry on what's going on in Ohio today. It's entitled"Your Vote: Worthless in the Eyes of MediaJudging from the lack of news media coverage, you probably haven't heard about today's House Committee hearing." This puts the entire thing into perspective (no relying on implications or allusions I did). Again, please read the entire thing. (Though judging by the e-mails a lot of members already have Maria gets credit for being the first one to e-mail on it.)
there's your iddybud link.
Jude took on the issue, BuzzFlash is noting it and Ron of Why Are We Back In Iraq? is also addressing it providing background on why Kenneth Blackwell was 'too busy' to testify last time. (No, Ron's not justifying Blackwell's thumbing his nose at the Congress and the people.) From his entry entitled "Did Anyone Hear About The Hearing In Ohio?"
there's your links for buzzflash and why are we back in iraq.
