Best. Bloggingheads. Ever.

As you all know, I’m a big David Frum fan.  And because I like good, liberal journalism, I’m basically a John Judis fanboy.  So what did I find as a I navigated to bloggingheads’ website?  That’s right, a diavlog between Frum and Judis.  Having watched zero minutes of this episode, I can confidently say that it will be a really good one.  Bravo Robert Wright, bravo.

Oh yeah, and John Judis is such a boss, that he doesn’t introduce himself.

This is probably as good a time as ever to link to and encourage everyone to read Judis’ excellent profile of Obama, American Adam. This more historically grounded look at Obama’s rhetoric and message, which is often derided as utopian dreaming and what not, shows how the message of “hope” is not just empty sloganeering, but is really a central progressive theme that should not be so readily mocked.

Bloggingheads Milestones

Reihan Salam and Kerry Howley — two of my favorite non-leftie bloggers, and also two of the most likable, smart people in the blogosphere — have a great diavlog in which they manage to be amazingly pleasant and likable, while respectfully disagreeing on quite a bit.  But great diavlogs happen about every month; what hasn’t happened, besides the blogging chefs episodes, is a diavlogger standing for the entire time.  And Reihan, because he’s awesome, pulled it off.

But Aren’t Their Hearts Dirty Enough?

As you all know, I’m an avid bloggingheads.tv watcher.  One of the more entertaining aspects of the format is seeing what types of mundane actions the participants engage in and the ignorance of their fellow bloggingheads.  We have had Eric Alterman drink a beer in a diavlog, and infamously, Julian Sanchez sucking down about six cigarettes in 35 minutes.  But there’s something of a trend emerging, jewish, hawkish national security reporters who suck down cancer sticks like it’s their job.  First it was Eli Lake, and now we have Michael Goldfarb slowly killing himself on screen.   I’ll let y’all in the comments speculate why hawks are poisoning themselves.

Bloggingheads Innovation

Spencer Ackerman comes up with a great addition to bloggingheads tv in his diavlog with Megan McArdle.  When McArdle is going on about how crappy tax deductions are, Ackerman clearly doesn’t have an in-depth knowledge of what’s being discussed - he’s a national security journalist - and so holds up a sign saying “Sorry, I can’t judge the merits here.”  He doesn’t it say it aloud, he doesn’t interrupt Megan;instead, he just informs the viewers what’s going on in an unobtrusive manner.  It’s moments like that which you can’t get on Hardball.

Here’s the dingalink 

Why Did Iran Halt the Weaponization Program?

When the NIE came out, some hawks like Norman Podhoretz just called it a lie, but others like Victor Davis Hanson said it was a vindication of Bush’s nonproliferation strategy — namely the invasion of Iraq.  The argument had some superficial plausibility to it: we invaded Iraq in March of 2003, and Iran gave up its program in late 2003.  Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch makes the argument* that not only die the NIE itself point at “international pressure” as the proximate cause of Iran abandoning its weaponization program, but that right before Iran called off the program, the IAEA board of governors found them to be in violation of its rules and promised some sort of unspecified consequences.  International organizations, they can work!

*This is “dingalink” to a diavlog that Goldberg had with Matthew Lee. So don’t freak out when a video player opens.

This Is What It Sounds Like When the Doves Cry

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”