November 17, 2007

Well. Nice To Be Famous, However Briefly.

So they are "bloggers," and I am only an "L.A.-area blogger." Just a local chick who drove up for the event in her bitchin' PT Cruiser. Oh, the shame of it. Did anyone ever abuse Moxie so? Of course not: after all, she's blonde.

FWIW, I did ask the Big Dawgs for advice on improving my traffic. Rusty suggested that "sometimes the shallowest posts bring in the most hits," and you could never go wrong by posting pics of girls in lingerie. Ace told me that the fastest—if not quite the classiest—way to get traffic was to blog about how hard it was to find a bra that was the right size for one's ample breasts. When I told him I was okay now that my local Nordstrom had a new buyer, he looked at me funny. After that, he spoke more slowly, and a bit more loudly. And he used shorter words.

Finally, I asked Jeff. I was sort of expecting him to discuss some part of my body about which I should do some real in-depth/hard-hitting reporting—and I think I arched my back, just to be safe—but he merely enquired as to whether his pecs had met my expectations.

"Well, you're wearing a T-shirt with sleeves," I responded irritably. "So I can't see them as well as I might. But if you must know, the biceps pass. Get me another Bloody Mary, willya? Put it on Rusty's tab. Or your wife's." After that, I kind of stewed in a corner for a while, muttering under my breath, and then I went upstairs to write neo-feminist screeds in defense of manhaters.

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November 15, 2007

Ronnie's Jeep.

And some blogger.

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This is at the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara, which is run by the excellent Young America's Foundation. It's partly a museum, and it houses some archival materials from the Ranch itself. It also contains a small theater in which footage of Reagan's speeches can be viewed.

The small-but-growing library encompasses all the ideas commonly labeled conservative ("from Ayn Rand to Dinesh D'Souza," as our gracious guide, Bryant Conger of the local staff, put it). And YAF will be installing a bookstore soon. The library is not for archival purposes, of course—there's something-or-other in Simi Valley that handles that task—but rather a working library that will ensure the students who attend workshops, events, and classes at the Center will be able to access ideas that their high schools and universities may have, um, forgotten to let them in on.

The main feature in the entrance is a piece of the Berlin wall (from the colorful, graffitti'd Western side, of course), framed by the Pink Floyd Ronald Reagan quote, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

The most important room in the Center is the classroom. YAF takes a lot of its educational work "on the road" to campuses throughout the country, but it now has a facility in Santa Barbara that makes larger-scale conservative functions affordable to those who live in the Western states on a shoestring (such as mendicant bloggers and, much more importantly, college students).

The entire installation is run, by the way, with private funds only, with no corners cut—or even rounded off a little. (Really: don't get me started on what a class act YAF is—from hosting bloggers at the Leadership Conference to the quality of the banquet food at its events. I've attended a lot of entertainment industry functions, and the catering at the YAF banquets was a step above what I've had at any of those dinners in Manhattan or Beverly Hills. [Blogging ethics standard disclaimer: I ate the food. But only enough to verify that it was up to my foodie standards.])

Naturally, there was no general agreement from Conference attendees about such things as the relationship between Church and State, or on what Reagan's legacy might be beyond the liberation of millions of people from totalitarianism. That's all to the good: Classical Liberalism (that is, conservatism) is about the free exchange of ideas. Open dialogue.

So why does YAF use Reagan's legacy—the preservation of the Ranch and the installation of the nearby Center—as a jumping-off point for promoting conservative ideals? Because, like Abraham Lincoln, Reagan got lots of things wrong, and got the most important thing very, very right. In fact, the thing they both got right was the very same thing.

Slavery is wrong, whether it is perpetrated by private individuals, or by the State.

Thanks once more to Jason Mattera of YAF's national team for putting together some of the media outreach at this rather extraordinary event.

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November 12, 2007

Let's Blog Those Stories, Boys.

Of course, they're all getting to 'em faster than I am, because I'm female and oppressed and shit.


We all took slightly different quotes away from the meeting with Sarnow. My recollection, contra Rusty's, was that Sarnow said he owned the Mad Magazine satire of 24 personally—not that he had sent the artwork to Parker/Stone as a gift. But I could be wrong, and I know Klein has the entire meeting on tape, so we can check on that if we like. (Or we could simply decide what we want the facts to be, and report it that way, as the MSM does.)

I do remember him saying that "you know you've made it when Mad Magazine does a parody of you."

Don't trust my memories, though: I had left my writing pad and computer back in the banquet room, and was busy taking pictures and attempting not to freeze to death.

But I did like Sarnow.

I know people have been asking whether the blogosphere is simply a circle jerk, and I feel that the final answer is "yes." We are blogging about a meeting we had with a producer on the basis of our having blogs. Then we are blogging on each other's coverage.

So: the same thing the MSM does, but with more wit and verve.


Ace covered much of the Sarnow speech, along with our private meeting and the public Q&A, here. Stacy McCain's account is here.

Goldstein shares some tidbits about that meeting here.

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Former Attorney General

. . . John Ashcroft was everywhere Saturday night. I kept bumping into him. I think he and his wife were stalking me.


(Actually, he was speaking at the YAF Conference, getting an award at the Reagan Center in Old Town Santa Barbara, promoting his book in a relatively low-key way. But that doesn't sound quite as good, does it?)

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Yeah, Well.

The real reporters among us went ahead to file stories about how Joel Surnow endorses Rudy Guiliani. Others of us wondered how Surnow could not know that there really are talented writers out there who cannot get their work looked at by studio executives, due to the fact that most executives are not as smart as he. Then we endured his (probably correct) speculation that the Writers' Strike will drag on for months, and could end up breaking the Guild.

"Who is the real winner in this situation?" he asked us. I sat there like an extra, and he chided us for not realizing the answer. Bloggers, he asserted, should know this stuff.

"Who, then?" I asked.

"Nikke Finke."

"Oh, yes. Of course."


I spent most of the interview admiring the partnership between Surnow and his charming, intelligent wife, and attempting to frame tricky shots in the luscious winter light.

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Joel Surnow talking to the usual suspects: Philip Klein of The AmSpec Blog, Ace of Ace of Spades HQ, Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, Stacy McCain, and Jim of Gateway Pundit.

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November 11, 2007

Talking 'Bout Last Night.

I struggled with a bad case of exhaustion last night, because I had forgotten to take some of my nighttime meds the evening before. (Yes: my pill case rivals that of your average recently released psychiatric inpatient, NTTAWWT.)

But despite it all, I went down to the hotel bar and joined Rusty, Ace, the Goldsteins, Philip Klein (to whom I was rude last winter—and I still haven't apologized, because I'm hoping he'll just forget) Stacy McCain, and our benefactor at YAF (the Media Wrangler Who Can Handle Bloggers) for one last drink.

And it was all good. Even Rusty decided to come down to the bar for one more, although he was getting up very, very early to get on his plane the next day, and fly to . . . wherever it is that Rusty lives. I've always assumed, myself, that it's in Area 54.

It was kind of like being at Count Linguist's house after a party on a Saturday night. You've got a crowd of ridiculously smart people who are all exhausted and/or impaired by caffeine/alcohol/THC/overstimulation of their tender wittle brains, and the definition of "funny" changes accordingly. On Saturday night Mrs. Goldstein and I lounged on a loveseat while the guys threw out lines, seeing if we might laugh. I always did, because I could see that some of 'em were in "comedic brute force" mode, and the earlier we laughed, the better it would go for us.

I've been sworn to secrecy, but I can divulge that many of those present had somewhat. . . um . . . mixed emotions about Andrew Sullivan.

The subject of torture came up, and I opined that my having to wait more than 10 minutes for a second bloody Mary was a coercive questioning technique that should be banned internationally. So Goldstein came back with more tomatoey, vodka-infused goodness.

You heard it here first! This is hard-hitting news, boys and girls!—with a few notable exceptions, bloggers like the drinkey.

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November 10, 2007

Jeff Goldstein was

. . . in rare form last night. He doesn't get out to many of these events, so he had to compress a lot of showmanship into one evening. He brought the funny, but it was also rather wearing, trying to keep up with him.

At one point I whispered to his extraordinarily beautiful wife, who knew how many drinks he'd had—rather a large number, I suspect—"is there an 'off' switch?"

"Absolutely not," she told me serenely.

"Um, how about a 'low' setting, so we can all pace ourselves?"

"Not at this point." And she smiled.

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Up in Santa Barbara.

Last night's keynote at the YAF conference was by Dinesh D'Souza, who gave a summary of his arguments against what we might call the "Hitchens critique." His speech also hit—very effectively—some of the points outlined in his book, which was available on the media table. (Of course, I couldn't find the media table, but I really liked the college students I sat with through dinner. And sure enough, my copy of D'Souza's book was waiting for me there at the blogging nexus after dinner, along with Rusty Shackleford, Ace o' Spades and Jeff Goldstein; the latter's lovely wife joined us for a couple of drinks in the hotel bar, until she and I both got too tired and cold to keep up with the guys, who had moved the conversation onto the cold beachside bar veranda to accommodate the smokers.)

I'm getting old, but I'm not wearing the bottoms of my trousers rolled, so I guess it's okay.

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