Tom Watson

Deep Throat Revealed?

The wires are buzzing today with the news that a former FBI honcho, now 91 and living in retirement in California, has confessed to a Vanity Fair scribe that he is Woodward and Bernstein's famed Watergate source, Deep Throat. Mark Felt, was was the No. 2 guy at the FBI during the Watergate years and has always been on the short list of possible Throats over the last three decades, told the magazine that he was the highly-placed Federal source who played wave-off with the Washington Post scribes back in the day. Here's a snippet from the WP site, ironically covering its own history:

"The family believes my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice," a family statement read by grandson Nick Jones said. "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."

Many die-hard Republicans have long argued that Throat was a composite character, created by WoodStein to caste blame on the Nixon White House. If the WP's reporting were faulty, then Nixon wasn't guilty and maybe Watergate was just a vast left-wing conspiracy after all - or so goes the thinking. (You can see some comments to that effect on my last post aboat Throat, back in February).Time will tell whether Felt's confession will put talk like that to rest. Meanwhile, here's Carl Bernstein's statement today:

"We've said all along that when the source, known as Deep Throat, dies, we will reveal his identity. Beyond that, when there have been articles, books, speculations, classes of university journalism students, ... we've always said the same thing. That we're not going to say anything because we have an obligation to all our sources, to whom we gave our word that they will remain confidential, including Deep Throat, until their deaths. When the individual known as Deep Throat dies, we will reveal his identity, and explain at great length all of our dealings with that individual and context of that relationship."

No matter what your politics, if you're of a certain age, this is still such a fascinating American story.

UPDATE: The Washington Post and Bob Woodward have confirmed that Felt was indeed the famed DT - amazing.

The Two Soldiers

This is a hometown Memorial Day story about two soldiers, their sacrifice, and what it means to be a real American. It is not about Republicans and Democrats.

One soldier is from Yonkers, New York, where I grew up. The other is from Mount Vernon, where I live. One died in Afghanistan. The other in Iraq. Both are the sons of non-citizen immigrants, women who came to the United States from elsewhere in search of a better life. Keep that in mind; more about it later.

Bernard Gooden was 22 when he died on April 4, 2003 during a gun battle in central Iraq. Gooden was a corporal in the Marine Corps, assigned to the 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The Associated Press, which has been attempting to profile every American soldier killed overseas (mainstream media doesn't get it, eh?), carried this report on Gooden's death:

The last time Bernard Gooden saw his mother was on Christmas, when she cooked his favourite food from his childhood in Jamaica. They sat on the floor and talked about his dream to become a lawyer. The straight-A student had been excited to go overseas, said his mother, Carmen Palmer of Mount Vernon, New York. But once there, he described the experience as "horrible." She sent him a care package of cheese, crackers and other snacks. A few days before her son was killed, she received a thank-you letter from him that was "the best letter that anybody could ever have."

Gooden split time between his father in Ontario, Canada and his mom here in Mount Vernon. He was, in fact, a Canadian citizen and took college courses in Toronto, earning good grades and planning to become a lawyer. But he dropped out of school for financial reasons and joined the Marines to further his education. Gooden was born in Jamaica, like his mother, and moved north at 16. "He was a kid any mother would love to have," said his mother. "He was very warm."

His girlfriend, Elizabeth Knox, said she and Gooden often stayed up late watching war movies. But he wasn't a warrior type, she said. ''He loved those movies, but he was so soft,'' she said. ''He didn't go in wanting to fight.'' But fight he did, and two years after joining the Marines, he was killed in action.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman was 26 when he was killed on March 18, 2004 during a gun battle while his squad was clearing a village in Dehrawood, Afghanistan. A former Marine who did a stint as a doorman on Fifth Avenue before becoming an Army Ranger in a second military tour, Lagman was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) based at Fort Drum, N.Y. A year later, one of his buddies posted this remembrance to FallenHeroes:

My name is Sgt.Brian Haiku i was in C.co 2-22inf.. i give my condolences to your family and my best wishes to you all...i was in afghanistan with SSG.lagman...he was a great leader and everyone loved him i felt as if i lost a brother.....but we will never forget what he did and how he served his country to protect everyone back home...i have snice moved from ft.drum to texas and still i meet people who knew him..that says alot ..i was proud to have been in the same unit as him.. and we all will never forget...my best wish's to the Lagman family....Deed's Not Words....triple decue...."

Anthony Lagman grew up first in the Phillippines and then on Cedar Street in the Park Hill section Yonkers, just a mile or so to the southwest of the block where I grew up. But his mother, Ligaya Lagman, is Filipino and although a legal resident for more than 20 years, never bothered to apply for U.S. citizenship like her husband Joaquin. When she applied for membership in the Gold Star Mothers Association, a national group united by grief and sacrifice, Ligaya Lagman was turned away. Here's the story from the Journal News (where I worked for a few years back in the day as a sportswriter, incidentally):

"My heart goes out to her, but we have rules we have to go by," said Ann Herd, president of the Washington-based group that was established after World War I to support the mothers of America's war dead, promote patriotism, assist veterans and perpetuate the memory of those who died.

Herd, a Texan whose son was killed in Vietnam, announced the decision in January in a letter to the veterans.

"To remove the word 'American' from the title of the organization, and to change the bylaws, would require demolishing the entire organization and building a new one," she wrote. "I am sure you understand this is not feasible. We are not being discriminate nor do we want to turn away any mothers who have suffered the pain of a loss such as ours, however, the organization was founded as such and the repercussions of changing it at this point are devastatingly many."

This response simply wasn't good enough for veterans in Westchester County.

Local veterans, along with families of other slain soldiers and several members of American Gold Star Mothers, including a past president, expressed outrage over the decision and plan to protest it at a Memorial Day luncheon in Eastchester.

"Her son gave his life to this country, and she gave up her son to this country, so she should be recognized, whether she's from the Philippines, Mexico or any other country," said Yolanda Cuming of North White Plains, a native of Mexico and a naturalized U.S. citizen who joined American Gold Star Mothers after her son, Kevin, was killed in Iraq in August.

The mother of Bernard Gooden of Mount Vernon, a member of an Army tank battalion who was killed in 2003 in Iraq, also planned to support Lagman at the luncheon.

And so the mothers of Bernard Gooden of Mount Vernon (where I live) and Anthony Lagman of Yonkers (where I grew up) are supported by veterans in Eastchester, where my kids go to school, where they play baseball and joined the Scouts - and where they will watch the veterans walk by, down Route 22, on Memorial Day. They'll wave their flags and sip their sodas and shriek when the fire engines blast their sirens. And they'll smile their open, suburban, well-cared for kid smiles at the old guys in the VFW hats - and at the Gold Star mothers rolling by in vintage Cadillacs.

We don't really understand the sacrifice of soldiers in this country, despite the ribbon magnets on our cars, the pins on our lapels, and the flags on our front porches. We don't grasp that being a soldier means not just risking death, but causing death - a terrible thing to live with. We don't understand the things that war makes young people do, makes them absorb, makes them endure. We hide from the truth while we wave the flag, and we allow the wealthy, the privileged, and the dynastic to send the sons and daughters of the working classes to their deaths for a lost cause. And then we tell the mothers of the dead that they're not real Americans, even as they mourn their lost sons and the lives given in the support of American ideals.

UPDATE: The AP reports that Ligaya Lagman has dropped her  bid to join the Gold Star Mothers Association. The New York Daily News has been all over this story the last day or so. Columnist Michael Daly compares the Lagman story to that of a woman who lost three sons in World War II, and was denied Gold Star status because of her nationality. Meanwhile the Journal News, which broke the story, reports that the group may change its rules after all:

Judith Young, who will become president of the Washington-based organization next month, said she would initiate the process of amending the organization's bylaws to allow foreign mothers living in the United States to join, if that is what the organization's members wanted. The announcement came as military veterans, politicians and the mothers of other soldiers continued to denounce the group's decision to deny membership to Ligaya Lagman, a Yonkers mother whose son was killed in combat last year.

The same story notes that Ben Spadaro, the Bronxville resident and vet who first put Mrs. Lagman forward for membership, now favors changing the rules of the American VFW to admit non-citizens to its ranks as well. They may have no choice. There are 28,000 non-citizens serving in our armed forces, many risking their lives in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the blogosphere is getting on this as well - the reaction is pretty well unified, no matter what the politics of the blogger. Here's an excerpt from a letter Navy veteran (and blogger) Mark Jones:

I find myself wondering about this incident and have written on my blog questioning how many mothers of black Americans killed in combat may have been denied Gold Star status as well in times not-so distant. After all, it is but a small step from the xenophobic reaction of yours towards Ms. Lagman and old fashioned racial bigotry.

You can read Mark's full post here - well worth it. Here's a rare post that has some pro and con on the issue. And this one's from a died-in-wool pro-Iraq war conservative:

First off, American Gold Star Mothers is a private organization and as such should be allowed to determine its own policies. If any particular citizen disagrees with them then that citizen is free to not participate. I don’t see where the government needs to step in.

But as for their decision to not grant their award to Ligaya Lagman, it seems fairly stupid to me. The article indicates that, while she is not a citizen, she is in this country legally. And her son did provide honorable service to this country. Were she an illegal immigrant breaking the law by her existence in this country I might feel differently, but as long as no laws are being broken I see no reason why she shouldn’t get this award.

Oh, and thanks to Joe Gandelman for sending so many readers to this post.

The Digital Idea Trail

I just bought JD Lasica's book after reading the endnotes for each chapter. I've never done that before. Like any self-absorbed blogger - and the best bloggers are all self-absorbed types - I've got my name set up in a few search strings linked to the blogosphere. I get a lot of articles about golf, British politics, and the early days of IBM - but the other Toms are a subject for another post; back to me.

Clicked on a link and there in JD's endnotes was a citation to an article that Chervokas and I wrote for Kurt Andersen's late [Inside] magazine back in '01 headlined: "How the Net Could Nuke TV:
Video File-Sharing." Ah yes, ahead of the curve as always. Now, I knew about JD's book already because I read his personal blog all the time, and at some point, I probably would have ordered it. But seeing that citation ... well ... it kindled the urge to click the ol' Amazon one-click.

So it's very smart marketing by JD, who essentially wrote the book in public amongst his peers. And it's proof that, in my view, a more open diital rights policy (JD offers a mini version for free, along with endnotes, software tools, a blog, other source material and discussion) and actually increase sales. That the book itself is about digital rights and the future of media makes the irony all that much sweeter: the author is proving his case with his own digital rights. Call it walking the talk. Oh before I forget, here's the book blurb (see, it's working!) along with JD's Amazon link; feel free to buy it:

Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation is a new book that offers first-person accounts of how the personal media revolution will impact movies, music, computing, television and games.

Frist Fades to Black

I do believe we have been betrayed by those we elected to represent us. We have been handed over to the enemy for the sake of "Senate" tradition. I hereby pledge to withhold monies from ANY republican group however far removed from this act of treachery. I certainly hope that we will not be further insulted by some self serving pile of excrement posing as an elected representative whining that we simply don't understand the intricacies of the "revered senatorial body." Cowards have no place in the role of leadership and we are unfortunate indeed to be led by just such a miserable lot.

Such was the typical reaction of the so-called Americans who post regularly to the fascist blog known, in glorious irony, as FreeRepublic.

Tonite, the freepers lost - big-time. And they know it. To their credit, there's no sugar-coating on FreeRepublic tonight. The pols they despise even more than Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, the moderate Republicans, are the big winners. It galls the freepers to recognize that the likes of John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, John Warner, and Olympia Snowe cleaned their clock.

Here's what else the historic filibuster compromise means:

• Bill Frist's political ambitions are at a stark, lonely, pathetic dead end. His Presidential campaign is now a non-starter. His failure on the nuclear option makes him almost as hated by the religious right as by the loyal left.
• Frist and his squad, led by Dick Cheney, did not have the votes. they came up short. Rejected. Not up to the task.
• John McCain is now the favorite for the Republican nomination for President - or for a fusion third party run for the White House if the religious right refuses to acknowledge the compromise. The only American politician who can beat him? Senator Hillary Clinton.
• The wheels are now in motion for a real Republican split, coupled with a centrist alliance, that could lead the formation of one or possibly two important parties or movements that do not see their homes in the traditional GOP or Democratic strongholds.

Blue and red are becoming purple and brown and pink.

UPDATE: Kos, who's still not sure Harry Reid had the votes, nails it thusly: "On top of everything, Frist looks weak. He's failed his crazies. He's finished." We concur.

UPDATE II: The ever-centrist Bull Moose has a terrific post called "The Patriotic Option" that praises McCain and quotes Dr. Jimmy Dobson's lament: "a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats." Correct, Doc. Joe Gandelman (naturally) provides an epic round-up of last night's news, with link left, right, and center and he too sees this as a definite loss for the religious right. Jason Chervokas says the deal was a message from centrists to President Bush and Senator Frist: "we backed us off the brink this time, call off your dogs or we'll shoot you down the next time." But he also warns that the religious right is unlikely to back down. The vicious Steve Gilliard has a profane message for ol' Doc Dobson, but the best part of his post is the verbatim verbiage on wingnut blogs - sheer right-wing apoplexy. Love it.

UPDATE III: What do the liberals think? Lance Mannion doesn't like the deal because Bush gets his judges and the Dems have to rely on centrist Repubs to hold up their end of the bargain. Matt Yglesias says that "anything that somewhat humiliates Bill Frist can't be all that bad," but also ain't thrilled by the brokering. Josh Marshall calls it "an unpleasant compromise" that's a victory for the center, which defeated a larger force on the field of political battle.

UPDATE IV: Lawrence O'Donnell had this to say about McCain in his Huffington post: If John McCain is not the next Republican presidential nominee, it will be because he outraged the Dobson wing of his party with the cloture compromise. Senator McCain knew that he was risking his political future every minute he was in the room discussing compromise. What Senator McCain did in the end -- pushing both gangs of seven together for the press conference announcing what no one thought they could accomplish -- is easily the bravest political act of this century. Fred Wilson, a longtime centrist Democrat who has given to plenty of campaigns, says he loves McCain and would have voted for him in 2000. Says Fred: I'd love to see McCain in the White House. He'd take the country back to a place it needs to go.

Hugh Hewitt to Retire

To demand a loyalty test of the media, requiring that they cover up our shortcomings and mistakes, is petty, demagogic, and a recipe for disaster.

This sentence is the moral center of a landmark post from the conservative blogosphere (if such a thing can be said to exist) by John Cole, whose Balloon Juice blog is one of the right's best-read gabfests. [Tip for the link to the ever-vigilant Joe Gandelperson]. Cole is an Army veteran, a strong-willed conservative, and verbose and steady blogger who proudy wears a Red State chicklet on his corner of blogland. But he is unwavering in his emnity for apologist propaganda-wallowers like the ever-present Hugh Hewitt, who Cole emasculates in his brilliant screed. To wit:

Reporting on abuses that have been committed by our troops, in our name, is not anti-military. While I am not arrogant enough to attempt to divine the motives of every journalist who reports on such abuses, Hugh appears to be up to the challenge. I find his attack on the reporting of the outrageous abuses detailed at length in the NY Times to be both disturbing and disingenuous.

Apparently in the myopic worldview of Mr. Hewitt, reading and reporting the just-released documents the Army itself created is both 'anti-military' and 're-hashing' an old story. Let's not focus on the fact that few, if any, have been punished for these transgressions. Let's not focus on credible reports that these incidents continue to occur. Instead, if Hewitt is to have his way, we should all focus on the 'anti-military' stance of the media.

What is particularly disturbing is how he and others have artificially conflated the Newsweek error and the NY Times story. This is no accident, but an act of intentional and outright propaganda.

A hero to the MSM-bashers, Hewitt is a master of rehashing the predictable; after this weekend, we're guessing he will retire immediately, never again raise his hand to blog, will change his name, stop answering calls, disconnect his email, move to another state, and attempt to reinvent himself. Cole has destroyed him. And it came from the right: as in righteous. And as in correct.

Revenge of the Stiff

Family entertainment disclaimer: My kids love Star Wars. They dig the myriad space craft, the battles, the light sabers, and all the species and the suits they wear. It's a perfectly fine way to kill a couple of hours on a rainy spring Saturday afternoon. And to some degree, I understand the instinct of millions of Americans to embrace an epic six-part, 27-year space odyssey on film. Any movie that pulls in $50 million on the first day was a business bet well placed, and a media story writ large.

That said, art this is not. A brilliant movie this is not. A good movie this is not. A decent HBO series this is not. Even a passable video game cut scene this is not.

Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith is a formulaic, hackneyed mess of a war movie featuring brilliant digital effects and a cast of actors sleep-walking their way to some big pay checks. This thing is a bomb (no pun intended) on the level of Pearl Harbor - another massive fX epic that placed two incredibly unaffecting lovers at the center of some wild dive-bombing battle action. Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen are the lifeless stiffs who are supposed to provide the emotional life's blood of this tale, the romantic glue to lock down the story of the creation of Darth Vader. Instead, they provide all the erotic punch of a three-panel daily Blondie and Dagwood strip - flat, black and white, old and expected. The other character actors are notably flat, somnabulant Tussaud facsimiles of waxen depth at best. Clearly, Jimmy Smits, Ewan McGregor, and Samuel L. Jackson were banking some serious cash and didn't care about the script. They are totally outdone by two CGI creations: the diminutive moralist Yoda and the robotically agile General Grievous.

Alone at the emotional heart of the film - and the only acting-based reason to see the movie - is the veteran British actor Ian McDiarmid, who portrays devious Palpatine. This character, played by the veteran Shakespearean, holds the screen: he's every double-dealing boss you've ever had, every slimy politician you've felt cheated by. And he provides the best instance, in my view, of what George Lucas gets right in his messy six-part movie plot - the fact that there is no always good and always bad, no inherently moral nation, no unassailable empire or republic. Palpatine/Darth Sidious - in McDiarmid's capable hands - captures that hard lesson of human life. Yeah, we're all Siths, really.

Oh, and did anyone else notice this: even in the midst of revolution and titanic battles in the skies over the host planet of the Republic, the traffic along the skyways of the Star Wars city just keeps purring along, day and night. Where are these vehicles going? What's the daily business life of this city like? Doesn't anyone care that the Jedi Temple is in flames, or that mega-starships are exploding in the heavens?

To quote the little green fella: written by anyone with half an understanding of human motivation and action, this script was not.

Comings and Goings

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.
- Phillip Roth

Plenty of folks are jumping onto this boggling thing - as new boggler Walter Cronkite described his participation in Arianna Huffington's enterprise - but some are also leaving. This is common, more so than some of us early adopters care to admit. Heck, this is my second personal blog and at least the fourth blogging enterprise I've been involved in. (Not mention posting rants and links on the Web since '95). Sometimes the time just isn't there. Sometimes the spirit ain't willing. And sometimes it's just time to move on.

Jerry Colonna moved on this week, taking down his Madeleines blog after a year-long run. He had this to say [no link folks, the site is gonzo]:

When I started this last year I was looking for a way to find my voice. I've written about movies and books, politics and current affairs, and life - lots of stuff about life. All of it has been fun (even those moments when I cursed this fucking thing for creating a sense of obligation in a life that was already overburdened by a sense of obligation).

But most important, the process of opening up - and being so warmly embraced by so many different people - has been incredibly healing. Even as I cast my narcissitic net out of the world and dragged everyone and everything in it into my ego, to serve my ego, I found some wonderful friends.

Thanks to you all.

I have to confess that Jerry's blog wasn't always easy to read; it was very personal and very messy. You know, like our lives. The central observation that Jerry had right, I think, was that blogs are primarily egocentric vehicles - they're about us, our personal visions, our cranky moods, our breakdowns, our hidden (and not-so-hidden) agendas, our blind spots, our prejudice, our anger and our joy. Most of all, they're about our singular experience. It's what makes them essentially different from what is produced by organized media operations.

So long Jerry. Methinks you'll be back somewhere down the line. It's an ego thing, after all!

Meanwhile, we've been adding some new folks to the old Watsonian blogroll. First among equals is an old Silicon Alley buddy who's landed at one of the coolest companies in these United States. That would be Deb Schultz, who has moved to San Francisco to be with Six Apart and is blogging the whole journey. Here's hoping she posts daily (no pressure, Deb).

We've also added Ben Smith's excellent Politicker blog at the NY Observer, a catty and tart chopfest on the city's political wannabes and its billionaire mayor. Don't cut back on the comments, Ben, they're worth the price of admission. Also in the politics and war section to the left is the Bull Moose, a terrific centrist blog "in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party of 1912." Don't always agree, but always read.

Speaking of which, I almost never visit these blogs directly - except to post comments, or grab links and trackbacks. My blog-reading these days is done alnmost exclusively through the terrific Bloglines utility, via selected RSS feeds. Several times a day, the little Bloglines applet lights up with news of new posts - and away I go. I'd be interested to know how many regular readers here use RSS readers almost exclusively for reading blog content.

Burn the Reichstag

There are approximately 17 million people on the payroll of the Federal Government, more than four times the total population of the United States in 1790, when the first census under our Constitution was conducted. Today, two of them engaged in this exchange:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn't it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

SEN. FRIST: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we'll come back and discuss this further. Actually I'd like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

To provide translation for these often obtuse uses of arcane Federalspeak, so tough for civilians to comprehend:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn't it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

SEN. FRIST: Yes.

Thus began the debate over the so-called nuclear option, the ending of the traditional Senate filibuster, a legislative tool used by segregationists, liberals, Christians, non-Christians, Al D'Amato, and Jimmy Stewart, grandstanders all. At this hour, it doesn't appear that enough moderate Republicans are bold enough to stand up against the rules change proposed by Frist, who reports to the Bush White House, which reports - on judicial matters, anyway - to a bullying and rising religious party. Which reminds me of what James Madison said a couple of years before that first Federal census:

"What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not."

Moving Comments Up II

I was going to post these thoughts in various comments sections on various blogs, including this one. But that defeats the purpose of the post: to try and bring the conversation higher in the organization tree. Fred started this with a quick aside in an unrelated post, wishing aloud for a system that would elevate the discussion to post level and reward the great comment-mavens. I agreed: many times, the conversation is the thing, comments are what matters, and a post is just the start of something more interesting, more important, more incisive. Fred picked it up, and said this about his friend Tony Alva, who often comments on this blog:

His comments are often better than the posts themselves.  Tom has never met Tony.  I never even mentioned Tony to Tom.  I just pointed to Tom's blog one day, Tony clicked thru, and their blog relationship was born.

Now Tom is talking about the quality of Tony's comments and he's right.

So back to my original point which Tom makes in even better terms.  The comments are the reason we keep coming back and we read them.  We wish there was an easy way to highlight the best ones for our readers in the posts, not on the sidebars.

The problem with Typepad's recent comments feature on the sidebar is that my blog is so full of comment spam that my current recent comments list would be full of ads for horny goat weed (whatever that is), internet strip poker games, and pheromone (whatever that is).

I don't need a list of recent comments, I want to be able to elevate the really good ones with links back to the original posts.  That's how to stimulate conversation.

I agree. The list of recent comments is okay, for a starter. But I'd like to excerpt the regular characters on this blog, give them a wider platform, which they deserve. I've said it a bunch of times: I'd have probably dropped this little experiment after a month or two without the arguments and conversation. Jackson - in comments on Fred's post - took it a step further:

Tony is a serial commenter. He has actually posted two blogs to date, but he doesn't see himself as a topic generator, but as a commentator on topics posted by others. At first I bugged hoim to post more of his own, but I came to the conclusion that the blogging world needs its Tony Alvas as much as it needs its Tom Watsons.

So that stings just a little (after all, Tony's a conservative and I'm a liberal - there are more Tony's than Tom's already) but I'm forced to agree. I followed a trackback from Fred's post to a blog called cacheop, which offered this reaction:

A survey pointed last year that 21% of blog readers are also bloggers. Two possible scenarios: 1 - the percentage will keep going down as weblogs become more popular thus separating the blogging elite - the so-called A-bloggers - from its readership. That's when blogging gets into the same cycle that we see MSM today. Scenario 2 - as readers/commenters start to affect the content of the blogs they read, the line between producers and consumers of information would become blurred. Eventually some bloggers will start inviting the star commenters to start posting regularly. That's when the echo chamber will face resonance and perhaps explode. What comes next?

I'm not sure what comes next, but I think I got a hilarious preview yesterday at the Personal Democracy Forum, organized by my friend Andrew Rasiej. (Andrew, by the way, is running for Public Advocate here in New York and has some interesting plans for using "the conversation" to stimulate political dialogue). The last panel of the day had an all-star cast of bloggers, if such a ridiculous thing can be said to exist (it's like saying something akin to "Icelandic Megastars"), including Arianna Huffington, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, and Tucker Askew.

The panel, moderated by the numerically bylined Jennifer 8. Lee of the Times, had all the usual blogging revolution points.

MSM doesn't get it. Check.

Dean's campaign was just the start. Check.

The gatekeepers are toast. Check.

The revolution is being led by a hundred or so paunchy, middle-aged, all-white, predominantly male cybergeeks clinging to laptops like life rafts on the Lusitania. Check - no wait, that was just a snarky observation Andrea and I made about the audience.

In any case: blah, blah, blah, blog, blog, blog.

But the organizers of the conference (who included the redoubtable Dawn Barber) had set up a little trick: a massive screen behind the panel which carried a live IRC feed from the audience. Suddenly, Larry the Laptop Lizard was in full smackdown mode, and the bigshots were at his mercy. The results weren't exactly enlightening. But they were hilarious. Ms. Lee's initial affectation came in for particular ribbing. And as the words flowed on the screen, another strange thing happened: the panel came to nearly a dead stop, and the panelist turned around and started reading.

When You Come to Water

A troupe of rock and roll rebels took the stage in the cool, humid gloom of the Jones Beach amphitheater Saturday evening: Velvet Revolver, all thin leather and tattooed glory, old-fashioned Marshall stacks and Les Pauls, a tribute to the big bands. No, not the musicians favored by the proletarian masses Robert Moses brought to this public paradise by the sea starting in 1929, but the really big acts. The pros. You know, Guns N Roses, dude. From back in the day, man, the gilded stadium rock era of the 80s.

Just as their glowing acronym reminds so easily of the legion VR's on postal boxes, bridges, and old benches around London, the band itself is all Victorian nostalgia, like the musical Scrooge at Yuletide. All the props were there: including the trademark top hat favored by Slash, the mop-haired cheroot-puffing bootblack guitarist. The band strutted and slithered and preened and wailed, striking all the requisite rock god poses like the dirty but lovable street urchins of jolly old London. You have to admire those Baker Street Irregulars, Watson.

All good fun, weak original material, an amazing (and very, very loud) facsimile of GNR meets Stone Temple Pilots - all in all, a definite step up from Beatlemania, greeted with moderate enthusiasm by the Jones Beach crowd. Moms, dads, and their pre-teens pumped their fists when front-man Scott Weiland opened the set with the trademark 80s challenge, "ready for some motherfucking rock and roll, New York?"

In an era when only the big-time geezers can sell out stadiums, when a surviving third of an original band is all that's needed to go back on tour, and when few old-timers bother with trying to create art any more, the 40-year-old Slash and friends pounded out virtually the entire VR catalog, all one record of it. The guy can play, and generally it was an entertaining evening - until the material ran a bit thin...that's when Weiland, adorned in a ridiculous-looking SS death's head cap, climbed to the top of the mini-stadium and began railing against the "maggots and vermin and mosquitoes" - mosquitoes!? - of the record industry. Surrounded by a phalanx of beefy security men, the 120-pound former junkie used a megaphone to complain that the record industry has shrunken to only three major companies and that The Man is sucking the life out of sacred rock and roll.

It's tedious to listen to this drivel, especially when it drones on for a quarter of an hour from the lead singer of a wholly manufactured Los Angeles super-group making its living off of a calculated and well-marketed return to the spotlight. Funnily enough, VR was signed for its combined comeback by the once-venerable RCA Records, a unit of BMG Music, which then merged with Sony Music. The deal no doubt cut costs, as the recorded music industry continues to hemorrhage profits; but by the by, Velvet Revolver won a Grammy for best hard-rock act and its formerly under-employed musicians (including three from the comatose Guns N Roses) were back making decent money. Brilliantly marketed with a slick well-produced record - all backed by the mosquitoes - VR is now on the road on a national tour, and my brilliant artist and I took in the show by the sea this weekend (she digs the hard-core LA sound, so who am I to argue).

Indeed, the entire concert was a masterful example of event marketing, mainly leather and motorcycle-based for the faux rebels from Oyster Bay and Larchmont. Harley had all of its spiffy 2005 models on hand for inspection and A&E was showing off its deal with Velvet Revolver, which provides the soundtrack for the new "reality" TV show based on the life and times of daredevil inheritor Robbie Knievel. And there was Knievel on the big video screens in preview mode just before VR took the stage - and there, right there (as Cosell used to say) during the set itself, just minutes before Weiland's stupid anti-corporate rant.

There are reasons to smack big media and to take a shot at corporate greed, consolidation, and the CEO culture. But wealthy, light-weight, gyrating rock crooners don't exactly throw the best punches.