Classical Values :: I'd rather be watching South Park (No seriously!)

March 02, 2007

I'd rather be watching South Park (No seriously!)

Does "the right" have "a penchant" for making things up?

That's a fair question, and it was posed by Skippy, who left a comment here:

before we clutch our collective pearls in collective disgust at the left, let's take a look at newsbuckit's actual process and data.

as i point out on skippy, while it was flattering to be labeled as one of the 18 biggest liberal blogs, there's no traffic ranking in blogtopia and yes, i coined that phrase, that puts my blog anywhere above 500 in ranking.

even worse, i personally couldn't believe skippy had 419 occurrences of swear words (because i have a pretty stringent approach to using swear words only for emphatic points or jokes, and usually substitute asterisks for vowels).

so i tried to reproduce his results, by using the same method he outlined in his piece.
my google search resuled in a mere 137 instances, less than 1/3 of what ishmael insists skippy had.

i also point out that he conveniently didn't count protein wisdom written by jeff "slap your face with my c*ck" goldstein on the conservative side.

i would suggest that instead of defending the usage of swear words, the left start attack the right's penchant for just making sh*t up.

skippy - March 2, 2007 12:52

This interested me, so I ran the "template" and I got 293 Carlin filth hits for Skippy.

This left me only more puzzled, and as I said in the comments, I'm not an expert on this process. Tinkering around, I found that it makes a difference* if you have a space between the colon which appears after the word "site" -- and I don't understand why it should. I tried again and I got 136 Carlin filth hits for Skippy!

Sheesh!

A leftist with a "cleaner mouth" than the sleazy, Marcotte-certified-sociopathic Classical Values!

Mortified though I was, I conceded that "he" Skippy, was (is) cleaner than "I" am!

Bearing in mind that I think this is all a bit silly (for starters I don't think I am responsible for what others say -- either commenters or other bloggers) I still thought it would be fun to rerun all the blogs listed in the News Buckit link that I cited.

After all, if "the right" is said to be "making sh*t up," I'm chargeable with the offense of being part of the "made up right" if I have linked made-up stuff and refused to examine it.

So, this will tedious, but here I go.

The blogs are all listed in the same order News Buckit listed them, according to the charts he used.

Here's the first chart -- "Blogs on the Left":

What follows are my results, each one Googled "by hand" according to the template I used yesterday.

The News Buckit results are in parentheses, following mine.

155,000 (146,000)

4310 (3520)

144,000 (109,000)

275 (278)

(Whether these searches turn up the type of comments Atrios uses, I do not know. Not that comments should matter, but I suspect that comments that are permanent and built into the blog will turn up in a search, whereas the whateverthef*ck temporarily hosted comments won't. I hate this stuff, OK? I really do!)

GRRRR.......

162 (160)

3900 (3820)

90,500 (78,200)

273 (285)

73 (73)

4700 (4580)

5610 (5410)

Hey I still hate this, OK? It interferes with my ability to think, and what I hate more than doing it is the certain knowledge that people are paid to do nothing but this horrid drudgery, and no one gives me a dime. (You couldn't pay me to do this sh*t.)

Bitch Ph.D.

338 (330)

Skippy

136 (419)

Legal Fiction

32 (32)

Glenn Greenwald (blogspot)

27 (27)

Glenn Greenwald (Salon)

56 (1)

Talk Left

415 (421)

MyDD

26,100 (30,400)

Democrats.com

1680 (1730)

OK, that's the list that News Buckit has from the left. Some are higher, and some are lower -- the only real anomaly being Skippy.

I don't see evidence that anyone at News Buckit is "making sh*t up."

So now I guess I'll have to fact check News Buckit's results from "right" side of the blogosphere. (FWIW, I don't think "right" applies to Glenn Reynolds, which is why I placed it in quotes.)

Same deal; here's the chart:

And my results (with News Buckit's in parens in red):

157 (230)

118 (121)

107 (103)

698 (781)

68 (68)

40 (40)

40 (38)

408 (412)

537 (552)

278 (292)

1520 (1490)

1990 (2000)

Next up is LaShawn Barber. I know her and I know she isn't foul mouthed and I'll tell you what. My fingers are too tired to keep this up. The results are all so close that I am convinced -- beyond any reasonable doubt -- that News Buckit is not guilty of "making sh*t up."

I understand Skippy's complaint, though, and I'd be pissed as hell if someone accused me of four times the amount of foul language that I actually use.

I cannot account for the error in Skippy's case, but I always think it is wrong to make a generalization about everyone perceived as being on the same "side" of someone (I don't know much about News Buckit's politics, for example) because of what one person said. All the more so when the generalization is based on someone who may have made one mistake -- but who clearly didn't make anything up.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

(Sorry, but I just felt like I needed to stir up some shit hits.)

* Actually, putting a space after the colon makes a HUGE difference. Like from a piddling 118 to a whopping 77,500.

UPDATE: At his blog, Skippy points out that Jeff Goldstein was not included on the list of "right" blogs. I don't know what the explanation is for that, and while I see him as more of a libertarian than a rightist, the fact is, Glenn Reynolds was included on the list, so I think it's a fair criticism to say that Jeff should have been. (He'd have added another 6,620 to the list. Nowhere near the top lefties, but high enough to make a clean-mouthed wimp like me like him.)

I don't think that the failure to include a blogger constitutes "making sh*t up," however. But I'd like to know what their parameters were. (I avoid statistics like the plague, and I am not about to check anyone's ratings with the various ratings systems. Whether out of blissful ignorance or abject fear, I try to avoid the ecosystem.)

I love the irony that Skippy is protesting his being called an A list blogger.

I'd be honored by such a "smear." (Although I admit, it might motivate me to check out my actual rating in the ecosystem.... Others can check out Skippy's if they want. This has been tedious enough.)

posted by Eric on 03.02.07 at 10:28 AM

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Comments

Does context matter?

On a site like Malkin's, I'm pretty sure the only time she posts unedited expletives, is when she's making a point about how vile the batshit (sorry, couldn't help myself) emails and blogposts about her are.

It's meaningless to quibble over this though.

It's a matter of style, and choice, and it probably does reflect a certain 'Rebel Without a Clue' stance common on the left, whereas on the right there's more often a greater respect for concepts of decency given there's also a stronger correlation of religiousity and right-wingedness.

But the content is what matters, and when it comes to content, in my biased opinion, the left also suffers in comparison to the right.

So the question is, does uninhibited use of language inhibit thinking, or vice versa?

XWL · March 2, 2007 03:00 PM

Of course, this is all terrible methodology, because it counts the total rather than the rate (total uses / total posts or total uses / total wordcount).

Sigivald · March 2, 2007 03:25 PM

OK, this episode has gone from someone's threadjack, skipped over 'pi55ing match', quickly passed by 'story' and 'dust-up' and blasted straight through to 'kerfuffle'.

But has it reached the status of 'blogwar' yet?

It's really important that I know. Memes may depend on it.

Socrates · March 2, 2007 03:26 PM

Could we have Sailor Night at Classical Values in order to "improve" your rating?

M. Simon · March 2, 2007 05:15 PM

Obviously, they missed the Anti-Idiotarian Rottwiler, because Misha's site would have caused the counter to overflow.... 8-)

SDN · March 2, 2007 08:07 PM

Simon, might you happen to know a sailor who could start the festival?

(I'm wondering whether Google counts links, because if they do, I have used all of Carlin's words dozens of times in a single post. Probably set a new record.)

Eric Scheie · March 3, 2007 09:19 AM

If you read my comments at the GatewayPundit site (which NewsBuckit listed as the mirror) I tore the credibility of the survey to shreds soon after it was posted. It's "fake but accurate."

Where am I coming from? I don't care much about profanity. I think prominent left-wing bloggers use those words much more, and a valid survey would show that. But none of that makes it okay to use a survey with goofy methodology that, on its face, is worthless.

A lot of Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq. That doesn't make the 650k Lancet survey valid. I'm not saying signing on to this stupid survey is in any way equivalent, but it undercuts any message we might have about the importance of relying on statistics that aren't pulled out of someone's backside.

Daryl Herbert · March 5, 2007 08:47 PM