Quoting nikkibong: ::Sigh::

I read this, then I gave the diavlog a few minutes, and then I looked at the section titles, and all I can say is ... yeah. Emily can be much more interesting than this. It's a shame she keeps coming on this site only to be paired with Ctrlhouse or to recapitulate whatever I imagine to be the topics du jour on XX.

I'm sorry to disagree with the previous comments, but I found this diavlog interesting and enjoyable, and too short. Everything in life doesn't have to be contrarian.

Quoting ogieogie: I'm sorry to disagree ...

Everything in life doesn't have to be contrarian.

Whatever you say. ;^)

The first five minutes of fawning over the Obamas and of power couples in general was tedious and a tad obnoxious, but the fantasy of "what if?" is interesting to toss around. (It will be a lot more interesting 8 years from now, but why wait?) Is there too much testosterone in the White House? (Way too much.) Would Hillary have had to shape her HQ (Hawkishness Quotient) in order to pander to sexists who would have attacked her as dithering? (A good question.) What would Hillary wear? (Who cares?) What makes the speculation anticlimactic is that women have been and are heads of state already all over the world, and Emily and Hannah act as if Golda Meir, Margaret Thacher, Indira Gandhi and many others had never existed. (If a tree falls in Latin America, Asia or Africa and Americans don't hear it, does it actually make a sound?)

Why not bring on some people with a really counter-intuitive, daring take on things, for a change?

Waiting for the weekend! The weekdays are a bit slow....

Mad Men: whatever. My mother is obsessed with this show. I am not into these sort of high-concept television serials, so I probably won't be interested in 25 or 30 years when a similar show is produced for the children of baby-boomers to have a similar nostalgia-fest where we can look back and point out to our children about how backwards and messed up the 1980s were.

Quoting bjkeefe: ... the topics du jour on XX.

Not that either of these diavloggers had anything to do with this, but one of their XX blog colleagues, Lucinda Rosenfeld, wrote such an appalling "advice" post a couple of weeks ago that attention should be called out, and maybe Emily and Hanna will shout at her (some more, if they have already).

Quoting nikkibong: Someone from Counterpunch. Alexander Cockburn, perhaps?

LOL, that'll be the day. BhTV simply does not do radical, or even leftist, except in extremely rare circumstances. David Corn and Eric Alterman are about as far left as you have ever or probably will ever see on BhTV, for whatever reason. Jane Hamsher is a real liberal, and I loved all of her appearances, but she hasn't been around in a while. I gave up asking for Chomsky a long time ago. As famous and well-respected as he is, and though he could easily be obtained (I would guess; he agrees to about any media request), he's obviously not the kind of person BhTV wants to promote. BhTV seems to prefer the neo-liberal left (i.e., not really liberal) to the glibertarian right: Very few real leftists, and very few traditional conservatives from the Sean Hannity mold, with the one exception of Jerome Corsi's single appearance, and Jonah Goldberg's regular appearances. David Frum is about the closest thing to a bona fide conservative who regularly appears on BhTV, and he's now considered an apostate by other conservatives — despite having written this remarkable tome.

Quoting ogieogie: Everything in life doesn't have to be contrarian.

Exactly. In fact, I would turn this around and address it to Rosin and Bazleon. I'm not calling for more "contrarianism" here, if by contrarianism you mean knee-jerk "counter-intuitive" takes on pretty rote subjects. (I probably shouldn't have used the term 'counter-intuitive' in my first missive.) Rather, in calling for more representation of perspectives outlined in sp!ked or Counterpunch, I'm asking for a sustained critique of contemporary established notions. In sp!ked, that tends to take the form of an unequivocal defense of freedom of speech, and a questioning of the role of Science (big S) in contemporary society. With Counterpunch, you get really deep questioning regarding the role of American Power worldwide. While I don't endorse wholesale the perspectives of either mags, (in fact, I once leaf-leafletted an Alexander Cockburn event in Portland, earning me a rebuke from Cockburn himself!), they do represent meaningful and engaging critiques of dominant strands in society. Bazelon and Rosin, by contrast, are that deadly combination of being both boring and fundamentally unserious.

I think Hanna is wrong to imagine that Hillary would have a better working relationship with Republicans than Obama has if Hillary were president. Though Hanna did seem to retract that thought in her next couple of sentences.

The Obama White House is not a frat house, it's a hack house, and the best explanation of why the candidate who promised to bring everyone together attacks anyone who shows where he's wrong, where his position has changed or where he's downright lying, instead of addressing the embarrassing facts. It also explains why his top echelon seem to be much more adroit at attack-speak than they are at actually governing. That Obama's senior advisor for public engagement called their comical attack on Fox News an attempt to 'speak truth to power', as if she's some air-headed college student wearing a Che t-shirt, and not a senior advisor to the most powerful man on earth, really shows the absolute disconnect from reality that this administration is suffering from.

Totally agree with the earlier comment about foreign female heads of state. When I'm in charge, all these tedious feminists who currently whine about glass ceilings blah blah blah will be rounded up and forced to watch 10 straight hours of Margaret Thatcher debating in the House of Commons in 1979. You want role models? TAKE A GOOD LOOK.

Quoting Mari Dupont: Totally agree with the earlier comment about foreign female heads of state. When I'm in charge, all these tedious feminists who currently whine about glass ceilings blah blah blah will be rounded up and forced to watch 10 straight hours of Margaret Thatcher debating in the House of Commons in 1979. You want role models? TAKE A GOOD LOOK.

So a single contrary example provides a nullifying counterargument. That's a nicely efficient system of logic.

It was not Joan, but January Jones who was in DC on Monday. Politico even showed her picture. And she may have been with a Lautenberg staffer for innocent reasons having met w McCain and Lautenberg about shark finning early last month. I found this conventional too. I was excited to have the topic of Mad Men broached. But so much was superficial. No discussion of the politics of the period and tv versus now (and Sterling Cooper worked on the Nixon campaign in 1960). Also, I would have appreciated the bloggingheads' take on how Don treated Betty with such disrespect despite her "having all the power" in the relationship. Maybe the discussion would have been more interesting if the views of each were contrary to each other instead of in such agreement.