dagblog - Comments for "Everyone's Podcasting! But Who Is Still Reading?"

Right wingers are still

artappraiser — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 18:20:39 +0000

In reply to Everyone's Podcasting! But Who Is Still Reading?

Just found out that right wingers are still reading, or their family buys them the books of their favorite screamers and conspiracists on Father's Day or something, see

http://dagblog.com/comment/269709#comment-269709

He was so opposed to

Orion — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 03:02:41 +0000

In reply to Fundamentalist Islam is the

He was so opposed to fundamentalist Islam that he was willing to support policies that inadvertently opened the door for fundamentalist Islam! The big flaw in his thinking was not understanding the Arab world as a place with a history that was not necessarily his history. A stranger can break a vase, but only the artisan can repair and build a new one.

Given all that, still among, if not the most impactful intellectual of his era.

Fundamentalist Islam is the

ocean-kat — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 02:12:36 +0000

In reply to People are reading, though.

Fundamentalist Islam is the most extreme form of everything he hated. Illiberal, misogynistic, repressive, irrational ect. and most of all, a religion. He was willing to do anything, support anything, no matter how stupid and counter productive to try and combat it.

I think Hitchens saw the

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 00:57:37 +0000

In reply to People are reading, though.

I think Hitchens saw the question of support for the Iraq invasion as a close call. When he decided to support it he went full tilt and used his skills to try to convince everybody to do the same and went further than the evidence would support in his rhetoric. Part of his method was his skill at putting down those on the other side of an issue. He was fun to listen to.

Hey Michael,

Orion — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:57:44 +0000

In reply to People are reading, though.

Hey Michael,

I have a lot of thoughts I want to get down. Dag allows a level of anonymity and since this is a hobby, it's as good a place as any to get them down. As for Hitchens, a lot of the policies he advocated were a miserable failure and a good amount of his political writing logically made no sense, i.e. despising the Clinton's but championing their doctrines. However I think his writing is historically an excellent documentation of the Post Cold War western mindset, which honestly didn't make a lot of sense.

People are reading, it is

rmrd0000 — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 17:31:18 +0000

In reply to Everyone's Podcasting! But Who Is Still Reading?

People are reading, it is just easier to do via iPad or Kindle. You can preorder books and have them show up on the day of release. Books allow you to delve in to a topic. I love podcasts, but they require a lot of time to go through, thus many audio and video podcast go untouched.

Music didn't get figured out

ocean-kat — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 15:29:06 +0000

In reply to Everyone's Podcasting! But Who Is Still Reading?

Music didn't get figured out on the internet. In the face of wide spread theft of creators work there are a few sites that make trivial payments to artists that barely stems the tide. Here's one more recent article out of dozens of articles explaining the situation.

Not OK, computer: how it feels to have your music leaked

People are reading, though.

Michael Maiello — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 03:44:37 +0000

In reply to Everyone's Podcasting! But Who Is Still Reading?

People are reading, though. They’re reading online and they’re even reading books (but they’re not carrying books, they’re reading on phones). Podcasts are great, but they’re not like music you can play in the background. To listen to a podcast, you have to listen. Hard to do it while multitasking. I can switch easily between reading for work and an article on Dag or Slate.

Hitchens is an interesting guy to bring up. I’ve always been a fan. But remember that he became a superstar as a liberal and part of his later stardom is that he supposedly switched sides and became the latest stage and smartest neocon. He was out there saying Henry Kissinger was a war criminal. He’s still right about that. Everyone says he converted after 9/11 and that’s somewhat right, because he was reacting to fascist elements emanating from the Middle East. While you can say he took it too far, the leader of Saudi Arabia assassinated a journalist outside of his own borders and it seems there will be no comeuppance.

But I don’t think 9/11 was really the source of the Hitch switch. I first started reading him in the 90s, when he was protesting the “Oil for Food” program after the first Gulf War, that was supposed to allow Iraq to sell oil to meet the needs of its people without being able to fund its military. It was a terrible program, corrupted by Hussein, by international oil traders and by the UN itself. Hussein starved Iraq and blamed the sanctions. Hitchens new it was a sham and spoke out about it. Hussein was one of the Oil for Food culprits and whe. it came to Hitch supporting Iraq War II, I think this had more to do with his reasoning than 9/11 did, especially given that Hitch well knew that Hussein had nothing to do with Iraq.

Nice to see you stop by!