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New York Times’ Charles M. Blow’s Disappointing Insult To Bloggers

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Late Tuesday night, in what he labeled a “revelation,” New York Times’ visual op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow unleashed a disappointing insult to bloggers, comparing them to karaoke singers. Blow, whose work I admire greatly, and with whom I have publicly engaged, and publicly credited with bringing the civil rights abuses of New York City’s Police Department’s “stop and frisk” outrage to light, truly misunderstands blogging and the thousands of smart, credible, and passionate journalists who have chosen the blogging platform as their niche. Charles Blow owes not only his fellow bloggers at the New York Times — but more importantly, the hardworking and usually low-paid political, independent, professional blogging community — an apology.

Blow, Tuesday night, wrote via Twitter:

I’m pretty certain most professional singers don’t hold karaoke singers in high regard, so this isn’t a case of projection. Professional singers may not dislike karaoke singers — they may even get gratification hearing them enjoy themselves — but there’s no question that professional singers overall don’t place karaoke singers at their level. Which is the point Blow was making: I’m better than bloggers. I’m a writer. There’s a difference. Perhaps seeing a few angry tweets, Blow that night appeared to attempt to backtrack, and responded to one angry follower, John S. Wilson, with, “heard an amazing karaoke sing tonight & thought wow: sometimes you just need a stage and a mic bc you want to sing w/o pressure,” and then attempted to explain it all away, writing, simply, “l blog.” Wilson, as his Twitter bio states, is a contributing writer for Black Enterprise, Mediaite, the Huffington Post, Politic 365, and the founder of Policy Diary, so perhaps Blow felt obligated to walk back his comments a bit. Here are Blow’s tweets, and my one-way response:[<a href=”http://storify.com/davidbadash/ny-times-charles-m-blow-s-amazing-insult-to-blogge” target=”_blank”>View the story “NY Times’ Charles M. Blow’s Amazing Insult To Bloggers” on Storify</a>]<br /> <h1>NY Times’ Charles M. Blow’s Amazing Insult To Bloggers</h1> <h2></h2> <p>Storified by David Badash · Wed, Aug 15 2012 15:01:47  </p> <div>Revelation: karaoke is to singers what blogging is to writers #thatisallCharles M. Blow</div> <div>And I blog. But it’s a chance to say something but a much more informal. Sometimes you just need a stage…Charles M. Blow</div> <div>@PruneJuiceMedia not a knock. It’s just very democratic and less formal. I blog myself. It’s great when you have something to express…Charles M. Blow</div> <div>@JohnWilson l blogCharles M. Blow</div> <div>@JohnWilson heard an amazing karaoke sing tonight & thought wow: sometimes you just need a stage and a mic bc you want to sing w/o pressureCharles M. Blow</div> <div>@BeckyGMartinez certainly not the way it was meant…Charles M. Blow</div> <div>.@CharlesMBlow says a highly-compensated NYTimes writer who needn’t worry about advertising, traffic, running a business, helping community.David Badash</div> <div>.@CharlesMBlow My respect for you aside, bloggers accomplish more in a day than a NYTimes writer does in a month. That was unfair, wrong.David Badash</div> <div>.@CharlesMBlow You saying, “I blog” is like me telling Michael Phelps, “I swim.” You truly have no idea what real bloggers do every day.David Badash</div> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>Blow truly has no idea what professional bloggers do. And while I have never liked the label “blogger,” apparently it fits the genre of my work, which, in November, will mark the beginning of my fifth year as a professional blogger.

Most professional bloggers I know, including me, work 12-18 hours a day, and often seven days a week. Practically not an hour goes by, if we’re awake, that we’re not working.

I publish on average 10-12 articles a day, and about four each weekend day. The vast majority average 500-750 words, though some are shorter, and a great many longer. I am blessed to have about 20 folks who contribute to our site, although 90% of the posts I write myself.

Bloggers break news. We’re often the “go-to” source for many readers. Bloggers have been known to take down politicians, expose wrongdoing and hypocrisy, and, frankly, tell truth to power in situations that even the New York Times wouldn’t.

On top of all this, we generally work alone. Usually for most of us, certainly for me, there’s no secretary, assistant, or even intern.

We deal with hundreds of emails a day, including requests for ad pricing from potential clients, requests from heavily funded non-profits for free ads, requests from publishers to review books, requests from distraught citizens for information or to highlight their unjust plight, demands for one-on-one debates from readers who have an opposing point of view, hate mail, and requests from every PR person imaginable to do a story on the client or product they get paid to rep that we wouldn’t get paid to write about. Of course, then there are the countless press releases…

Daily, bloggers are writers, editors, researchers, photographers and photo editors, reporters, graphic designers, advertising salespeople, social media directors, public relations directors, and accountants. We are, in fact, small business owners.

And we are obsessed with producing quality content that will interest readers and expand our audience.

But then, of course, there are the personal reasons we chose advocacy journalism and running a “blog” to begin with.

For me, I decided to start The New Civil Rights Movement within mere hours of California’s Prop 8 passing in 2008. If you’ve ever had a calling, if you’ve ever experienced a life-changing event, you’ll understand when I say, Prop 8 was mine.

And so, at the end of every day, which is usually after midnight, I often think about all the stories I wanted to write about that I just didn’t have time to cover.

For a writer, for a journalist, that’s a pretty tough thing to deal with on a daily basis, knowing there are good and important stories that don’t get told, and people I could help, issues I could expose, information I could share, that I just didn’t have time to because I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

Meanwhile, working those 12+ hours every day nets most bloggers not a big income (despite the fact that here at The New Civil Rights Movement, we’re rapidly approaching one million hits a month, paying the rent isn’t easy.) Certainly not what we can all assume is the hefty six-figure salary with benefits, a 401(k), and possibly an assistant, that, say a New York Times op-ed writer earns — and, no doubt deserves.

So, Mr. Blow, when you disparage bloggers as karaoke singers, you’re disparaging people who work hard, are small business owners, and wear far more hats than you do at your job. Blogging isn’t “fun,” it’s not a way to express yourself, it’s hard work and it’s work that only pays when you publish. A day off means several day’s worth of lost ad revenue. There are no paid sick days. No paid vacations. No 401(k). No company-funded medical insurance (I pay about $700 a month on my plan.) No company car. No company cell phone. No company tech department to fix our computers. No water cooler talk.

We don’t have the luxuries you do, nor the resources you do, yet speaking for myself, I can’t imagine doing anything else, because my number one goal is to help my community, help people understand what we’re fighting for, and advance equality.

Blogging is hard work. Bloggers change hearts and minds. We help inform the public. And we have earned, and deserve, far more respect than Charles M. Blow, and others, give us.

Mr. Blow did not respond to an email requesting comment on this article.

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News

‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

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May 8, 2024

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Nikki Haley dropped out of the 2024 presidential race exactly two months ago, and yet on Tuesday 128,000 Indiana GOP primary voters cast their ballot for the former Trump UN Ambassador instead of the presumptive Republican nominee.

“Unexpected warning signs for Trump in busy Indiana primary,” reports Politico, which notes, “Nikki Haley’s performance in the already concluded presidential race could be a sign of trouble for Trump in more competitive states.”

Haley, also a former South Carolina governor, was consistently getting double-digit percentages of the GOP primary vote before she dropped out of the race, even in red states. (All vote totals and percentages are from the Associated Press via Google and are current as of time of publication.)

In Alabama, Haley took 13%. In Oklahoma, 15.9%. In Texas, 17.4%. Tennessee, 19.5%.

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

But after Haley dropped out, effectively handing Trump the nomination, Republican primary voters continued to vote for her, and continued to vote for her almost always in double-digit percentages.

In Arizona, Haley won 17.8% of the primary vote. In Georgia, 13.2%. In Kansas, 16.1%.

And last night in Indiana, Haley took 21.7% of the vote.

It’s not just solidly “red” states.

In New Hampshire, Haley won a whopping 43.2% 0f the GOP primary vote.

Tuesday night as the Indiana results were still coming in but pretty much solidified, David Nir, publisher of Daily Kos Elections, asked, “Is Nikki Haley getting *more* popular? Right now, she’s at 21.6% in Indiana with more than 70% reporting. If it holds, that would be her best showing since dropping out after Super Tuesday.”

Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, replied, “No. It doesn’t have much at all to do with Nikki Haley. It’s that the broadest coalition in American politics is the anti-Trump coalition.”

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

Amanda Carpenter, a Republican political commentator who once worked for far-right GOP lawmakers including Senators Ted Cruz and Jim DeMint, agrees with the anti-Trump theory.

“It’s almost as if…more and more Republicans, each day, are rejecting Trump. Perhaps these [Indiana] voters heard what their former congressman and Governor and later Vice President Mike Pence had to say about the president he served?” she wrote. “In all seriousness though, this is not a Nikki Haley movement showing up in double digits in multiple states. It’s anti-Trump GOP voters. Can you hear them yet? This is real.”

The New York Times last month took a look at what is called the “zombie vote,” votes for candidates who have already dropped out.

According to the Times, the “zombie vote in this year’s Republican primary has actually been low by historical standards. In Democratic and Republican primaries going back to 2000, roughly a quarter of voters picked a candidate other than the eventual nominee even after all the other serious contenders had exited the race.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens to Violate Gag Order and Go to Jail: ‘I’ll Do That Sacrifice Any Day’

“For Mr. Trump,” the Times adds, “what matters is how many of Ms. Haley’s primary voters will rally behind him come November. Polls have shown that her supporters are likely to say they will vote for Mr. Biden. Even so, those same polls often find that many of those voters already supported Mr. Biden in 2020.”

The Nation’s John Nichols last month pointed to just that, after the Pennsylvania primary:

“Haley is not campaigning, but she just won almost 158,000 GOP primary votes in the critical state of Pennsylvania. Democrats think they can swing many of them to Biden.”

Late Tuesday night, pointing to Haley taking more than a third of the vote in some Indiana counties, Nichols concluded, “These numbers continue a pattern of rejection of Donald Trump by precisely the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents he needs in November.”

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‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

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17 hours ago

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May 7, 2024

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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon late Tuesday afternoon issued an indefinite postponement of the court date in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump on Espionage Act charges, in the indictment commonly referred to as the classified documents case.

Claiming it would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” along with other matters, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, wrote: “the Court finds that the ends of justice served by this continuance…outweigh the best interest of the public and Defendants in a speedy trial.”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, “It may be months before we know the new schedule.” Trial had been slated to begin May 20.

“With 13 days before her trial was supposed to kick off, Judge Cannon finally says what has been obvious to every legal journalist I know: She’s not just canceling the existing trial date; she’s also not picking a replacement,” MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin reports.

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

The 37 count indictment was brought after Trump removed well over 1000 items, including hundreds of classified documents, out of the White House, retained then refused to return them, allegedly violating several statutes under the Espionage Act.

“Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack,” according t0 the federal indictment, Reuters reported last year.

The trial now is not expected to conclude before the November presidential election this year.

“This is news but it’s hardly unexpected,” declared professor of law, former U.S. Attorney, and MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance wrote. “Judge Cannon seems desperate to avoid trying this case. This isn’t justice. defendants aren’t the only ones with speedy trial act rights, we the people have them too.”

“After the election,” professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter commented, “if Trump wins Jack Smith gets fired, the case gets dismissed, and Judge Cannon is ready for SCOTUS.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens to Violate Gag Order and Go to Jail: ‘I’ll Do That Sacrifice Any Day’

Attorney and author Luppe B. Luppen noted, “Judge Cannon’s rationale for indefinitely postponing Trump’s classified documents trial is that a large number of pretrial motions remain unresolved—a state of affairs she has literally engineered by failing to resolve them.”

Professor of law and noted election law expert Rick Hasen asked: “Is it too cynical to believe that Judge Cannon timed the announcement of the postponement of a Trump classified documents trial to take away from the salacious sex details from Stormy Daniels’ testimony today?”

National security attorney Brad Moss served up a “silver lining to Cannon not setting a new trial date: she isn’t blocking the DC or Georgia election cases from resuming in the late summer/early fall, pending SCOTUS ruling on immunity.”

Foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf added, “Justice delayed is justice denied. Both the defendant and the public have the right to a trial ‘without unnecessary delay.’ (Sixth Amendment.) When does Jack Smith seek a remedy for the problem Judge Cannon clearly represents? Tick freaking tock.”

READ MORE: Judge Hands Trump ‘Incarceration’ Threat as Experts Say Next Time He’ll Toss Him in Jail

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Trump Battled to Go to Son’s Graduation – So Why Is He Speaking at a Fundraiser That Day?

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20 hours ago

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May 7, 2024

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Last month Donald Trump falsely told reporters Justice Juan Merchan had blocked him from attending his youngest son’s high school graduation, refusing to give him the day off from his required attendance at his New York criminal court case.

Justice Merchan had actually told Trump he would take the request under advisement, but Trump quickly ran to reporters painting the judge as heartless.

On April 15 Trump said, “it looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son who’s worked very, very hard and he is a great student.”

“It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial,” Trump alleged.

The Associated Press reported, “Trump then furthered his criticism of the judge on his Truth Social platform, writing in one post both that he ‘will likely not be allowed to attend’ and that ‘the Judge, Juan Merchan, is preventing me from proudly attending my son’s Graduation.’ He wrote in another post less than two hours later that he is ‘being prohibited from attending.'”

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

None of that was accurate.

Last week Judge Merchan granted Trump the day off from court to attend his son’s high school graduation.

But The Lincoln Project and others on Tuesday posted the announcement for “Minnesota’s 2024 Lincoln Reagan Dinner With Special Guest DONALD J. TRUMP” on Friday, May 17, 2024.

Trump, as The New Republic notes, will be the headline speaker at the event in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which starts at 5:00 PM.

The fundraiser offers supporters the opportunity to spend $100,000, which grants them “10 VIP Dinner Seats | 10 VIP Reception Passes | 3 Photo Opportunities with President Trump.”

Or, for example, for $50,000, a supporter can get a “Chairman’s Host Table – 10 VIP Dinner Seats | 10 VIP Reception Passes | 1 Photo Opportunity with President Trump.”

KARE reports “the visit is expected to be the former president’s first trip to Minnesota of the 2024 election cycle.”

READ MORE: ‘I’m Not Talking About That Meeting’: Noem Implies She May Have Met With Kim Jong Un

Trump has strong motivation to head to Minnesota.

Over the weekend, as NBC News reports, “Top officials for former President Donald Trump’s campaign believe they can flip Democratic strongholds Minnesota and Virginia into his column in November, they told donors behind closed doors at a Republican National Committee retreat Saturday.”

Barron Trump’s graduation from Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida reportedly will be the same day, May 17. Depending on timing, It’s possible Trump could fly from Florida to Minnesota to get to the fundraiser by 5 PM.

Watch Trump’s remarks from April 15 below or at this link.

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