Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Looking For Sources

I’m looking for good websites to read about current events and politics, both left and right. The ones I’ve been using keep going to the dogs, presumably because writing is hard work, and/or because extremism feeds on itself and leads to insanity.

I ditched Hullabaloo because digby and David pretty much no longer do anything but post lengthy excerpts from other sources with a brief note of their own along the lines of “Sam Snerdly makes a good point here.” Well, I read pretty much the same things they do, so I don’t need to read it again on their site.

Balloon Juice used to be awesome, but they too are mostly excerpts from other sources, and the dozen or so writers there seem to compete to see who can use the most “charged” and insulting language. “The blood sucking Neanderthals of the Repulsive Party yesterday…” Boring.

Salon.com has Glenn Greenwald but is mostly trivial and tends toward Obamabottery, but I used to visit them until, Oh my God look at that website!” I will try to continue to read Greenwald, but I may not even be able to do that. Despite my dislike for lengthy blockquotes, I simply have
to cite their rationale behind that design,

We asked designer Kelly Frankeny to create a news tabloid as imagined by Coco Chanel. Frankeny — a globetrotting designer who is often dropping into beleaguered democracies in Africa and Latin America to work her wonders for embattled newspapers – responded to our challenge with a sophisticated and dynamic design. A brilliant and sassy blond Texan, she has created a new Salon as big as her personality. And yes, while invoking the brassy urgency of a news tabloid, the new design also conveys the elegance of the House of Chanel. Both Frankeny and the new Salon know how to use red lipstick and a simple black dress for maximum effect.

Seriously? This is what our media has turned into? A “sassy blonde globetrotting designer” who used “red lipstick and a simple black dress” to design a journalism website. Yikes. Readers are complaining at a 200:1 ratio, and their response is that “we hope you will come to love it.” Not if I quit reading it.

The Agonist has some really interesting points of view, but it requires registration in order to comment, and registration is closed to new members. It gets a little tiresome to read discussions held by an elite membership that one is not permitted to join.

So I’m exploring “blogrolls” to find new sources, and having a little bit of success, but suggestions are welcome. What are you reading, and why?

3 comments:

  1. dzlsubs7:28 AM

    American Thinker, Lucianne, Hot Air are generally right.

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  2. bruce9:29 AM

    Hot Air? this is "On my Mind", not out of your mind...

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  3. "Legal Insurrection" is pretty interesting

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