Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Garance Franke-Ruta and Ben Smith’s diavlog must be some sort of absurdist performance art. One would think that both of them, having reputations for being bad diavloggers, would try to spice things up, speak louder, not fill up so much of the time with dead air…especially after the lovely and talented GFR acknowledges in the very beginning of the diavlog that they have reputations for doing exactly that in bloggingheads episodes.

But no, literally seconds after GFR’s introduction/warning, Ben slips into his few words monotone and GFR, though not as bad as other times, slips into her “creating awkward silences for journalistic purposes” and it’s all downhill from there. They are also so soft-spoken that the ambient noise drowns them both out like it’s a jackhammer. There are, however, great moments where they both know that the entire endeavor is going off the rails, and a look on confusion comes over them, Garance’s (beautiful) eyes start to dart to right and a sense of panic sets in with the silence. And then they just start mumbling and GFR desperately grasps for something, anything to talk about.

The sad thing is that even if, say, Dan Drezner and Megan McCardle had their list of topics, it would still be boring. There’s a reason bloggingheads has people that are bloggers/pundits first and journalists second (Bob, Mickey, Yglesias etc) its because their job is to think of something intrinsically interesting to say, that they thought up on their own. Additionally, commentators as opposed to journalists are going to talk about more interesting things, like the actual substance of a policy, rather than, say, the extent of the Clinton campaign’s machinations against these two new biographies. Beat reporters like Smith are supposed to just report facts and add minimal commentary or originality. Garance is also more of a journalist than a “blogger” or pundit and those weaknesses show up as well.

Now, my personal anti feminist alarm is blaring right now, but I believe that the blogosphere can allow for extreme personal honesty, so here it is. The saving grace of this diavlog is how god damned attractive GFR is. I mean, maybe this was obvious in all my posts about her, but I will watch any bloggingheads with Garance, no matter how boring. In the forum for this diavlog, the commenters try to do some real post game/making fun of Ben and Garance, but then just decide that GFR is really, really attractive, or in the parlance of my times and place  “fine ass breezy,” but not in an intimidating or “too attractive to take seriously” way (I don’t like that some women are ‘too attractive’ to be taken seriously, but that’s the way it is)   But I must point out how far ahead of the curve I was on this one.  As any of my friends will begrudgingly tell you, I’ve had a crush on her since March 12. Of course, both the geographical and age distance are great, but to quote Natalie Portman in Zoolander “[She's] almost too good-looking…that would be the main deterrent in considering a relationship”