http://www.jameswolcott.com/ Pajama Bottoms (III) Posted by James Wolcott
With all the kindness in my heart that I could scrape together on short notice, I tried to warn The Nation's David Corn that by lending his name to the blog roster of Pajamas Media, he risked being associated with the worst sort of wharf rats and riffraff. None would condemn him for seeking other inklings of steady income, but not if it meant working the piano bar in a house of ill-repute. Corn spurned my well-intentioned counsel, deflecting my Polonious advice by casting aspersions upon Vanity Fair. If he had only listened, he might have spared himself needless shame. That's what happens when you let pride overrule the nagging voice of reason. Today Corn no doubt wishes he had heeded mine and similar admonitions, given the industrial-strength stinker Pajamas Media has become, the internet's first Edsel. I mean, it renames itself Pajamas Media--after the inept interlude of branding itself Open Source Media--and unveils its new cartoon logo: a bathrobe. To quote a line from David Mamet, these guys could fuck up a baked potato. Corn isn't the only lefty modeling a vivid shade of chagrin this winter. Marc Cooper also signed on as a cavalry member of F Troop. He insists that he did so with his eyes open. In which case he ought to have his eyes checked, rinsed, and rotated. Cooper had what I thought was a very indecorous response to readers who heckled him in his comments section for associating with some of blogworld's most prominent banshees and mouth-foamers such as--oh, well, just go look at their blogroll. It's like a parade march of outpatients and amateur militarists. Indeed, Cooper got a tad testy with his nitpickers. Testy to the point of dropping his apostrophes and going e.e. cummings on us. "Well. Im quite pleased Ive given some of you something to do. I think what Ive said up till now is all that I will say for the time being about OSM as you critics are beating a dead horse. You havent said a single thing that I didnt know long before going into the project. "Perhaps you would like me to catalogue the mirror wingnuttiness that I bump into day-to-day at my more respectable job with The Nation: writers who believe that there's a burgeoning national Russ Feingold for President movement; that Castro's Cuba is really more democratic than Schwarzenennger's California; that it's a pity the Soviet Union collapsed; that a new book critical of Mao must be written by the CIA; that it's just fine and dandy to have an anti-war movement managed by acolytes of Kim-Il Sung; that we mst provide material support to the armed resistance in Iraq so on and so on ad infinitum. I find that stuff to be equally crazy." I must say, this isn't very collegial of Cooper. It teeters on the brink of journalistic disloyalty. Are the editors and staffers at The Nation aware that one of their "name" byliners is badmouthing them like this?--portraying them as a bunch of coconuts and cuckoo-birds? I feel obliged to mention this indiscretion to Katrina and Victor at The Nation's Christmas party, to which I've been cordially invited. I'll weave it seamlessly into the conversation so that I don't come across as a snitch. I can be very subtle after the first cocktail. Having planted that flea in their ear, I shall take my leave and "mingle" with the other Nation revelers to learn more about running guns to the Iraqi insurgents and work-study programs fostered by Kim Il-Jung before we all put on our coats and scarves and go out and uproot a Christmas tree. -- www.marxmail.org
