Category: Uncategorized

As many of you know, I’m a data junkie. Since one’s data is often incomplete, it is a mistake to assume perfect knowledge and understanding based on interpretations of what one has, but some data is almost always better than none. For example, it would be reasonable to assume that since Ben Shapiro, Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt, (just to add a third recognizable name to those mentioned in the previous discussion), are all much more widely distributed and quoted in the legacy media than I am, their WND readerships would be expected to be correspondingly larger.

While one could try to make the precisely opposite case based on that very broader distribution, the fact that the two biggest names on WND, Ann Coulter and Patrick Buchanan, have dependably maintained the two largest column readerships* there for the last three years, tends to indicate that broader exposure should lead to larger readerships on WND.

One of the nice things about hard data, however, is that it exposes the underlying flaws inherent in one’s assumptions. The “explosion” of country music in the early 90’s was no such thing, all that happened was that Musicscan started tracking actual CD sales instead of depending on a few influential music stores to report what was selling well. Bookscan has begun to do the same thing, although the New York Times bestseller list is still a statistically unreliable poll of a surprisingly small number of stores.

I suspect the same thing will likely happen with regards to political and sports commentary over the next decade. For five years, I wrote a video game column that appeared in as many as 14 newspapers around the country, (including Boston, Atlanta and St. Paul), but the small amount of email I received led me to believe at the time that not very many people were actually reading it. The fact that Craig Westover’s very good blog has only a few more readers than any other random no-name blog despite his holding a regular spot on the St. Paul Pioneer Press op/ed page tends to support my theory that a only fraction of the people who subscribe to the newspaper actually read it, in contradiction to the self-serving theory advanced by newspaper ad sellers that there is a multiple involved.

So, what is the hard data available to us? Well, I can’t give out actual WND numbers since that is confidential to their business, but I can express them in comparative percentages. Over 2004, Ms Malkin averaged a column readership that was 97.8 percent of mine. Mr. Hewitt averaged 57.4 percent, and Mr. Shapiro averaged 48.5 percent.

These figures also hold up for the first six weeks of 2005, except for Mr. Shapiro, who has been declining precipitously, down to 19.7 percent, as his recitation of Bush administration talking points apparently grows tiresome in a post-election environment. The gold standard, as you might expect, is Ann Coulter. You could say that I am her bitch, since my column readership is only 62.1 percent of hers.

Still, the readership numbers are interesting when you consider the fact that my writing has been found to be completely undesirable by the newspaper editors who serve as legacy gatekeepers. This would appear to suggest that if I wished to pursue a career in editorial commentary, I would do well to either convert to Judaism or undergo gender transformation surgery. Needless to say, I’m not considering either.**

Now, keep in mind that none of this proves that I’m not a terrible writer. Popularity is not synonymous with quality. But what it should demonstrate that a proven ability to maintain a respectable readership is only one factor out of many that go into the saleability of a column. Syndication likely is more survival of the fittest than a scam, but the determining factors are not necessarily what you might assume them to be.

*Only WND’s regular weekly columnists were included in this little investigation. Neither Mr. Farah’s daily column nor the occasional one-shot were included.

**While I very much appreciate his gung-ho support for my column, I must reassure BLACKFIVE that WND has no intention of dropping me. It is Universal Press Syndicate that has done so, but since they hadn’t sold the column to anyone, this has precisely zero effect on anything.

The White Buffalo demands blogtime for gay penguins:

A German zoo has scrapped plans to break up homosexual penguin couples following protests from gay rights groups. The Bremerhaven Zoo had earlier flown in four female Humboldt penguins in an attempt to encourage three couples discovered to be all male to reproduce.

The zoo originally defended the experiment, claiming that the birds were an endangered species, but following protests from gay rights groups, director Heike Kueck has said that the zoo is abandoning the plan….

Gay groups had earlier protested against “the organised and forced harassment through female seductresses” in an open letter to Bremerhaven’s Mayor Joerg Schulz.

Forced harassment through female seductresses… it sounds like Big Chilly’s life story. I’m wondering if these penguins will be given honorary VQPF status or if the notorious Party Friends, (who are generally GLBT-friendly), are too speciesist to – ahem – ride the penguin.

We may have to rethink that Linux slogan, gentlemen.

CW has a suggestion:

This awards season got me thinking, “How about some Vox cred for your loyal readership?”. For example, in the catagory of:

Least Likely to Vacation North of the Mason Dixon – Nate

Best Home Arsenal – Nate

Longest Comments – Nick B.

Most Consecutive Comments – Nick B.

Most Layers of Tin-foil in His Hat – Me, maybe Dread

At year end, winners in each catagory would receive a statuette of Michelle Malkin, known as the Vox Daisy.

Statuette? I think blow-up dolls would be more appropriate, considering that rather unfortunate WND picture. And while I appreciate CW’s paranoia for the work of psychosocial art it is, it’s clear that it’s the Dread Pirate who wears the tin foil crown.

Other categories:

Most Likely To Weep During His Acceptance Speech: Bane

Most Likely To Segue Into Anti-Papism: EN

Most Likely To Have Photoshopped Fakes of Vox Sans Clothing: Zink

Most Likely To Have Actual Pictures of Vox Sans Clothing: White Buffalo

Most Likely To Get Banned In A Momentary Fit Of Pique: Bill

Most One-Track Mind: Crystal Lake

Most Intellectually Fearsome: Res Ispa

Best Left-Wing Sport (varsity): Franger

Best Left-Wing Sport (junior varsity): TimF

Miss Congeniality: Dystopia

Best Three Monkey: Craig

The Executive Director of mediachannel.org suggests cheese with what he presumes to be my fermented whine:

Born again libertarian Vox Day (pseudonym anyone?) has taken a break from his usual outrage to gloat over the Jordan resignation: “Jordan’s accusation made no sense at all,” he writes. “Because if American troops were going to target journalists, those topping the list would almost surely be the left-liberal elites working in New York City and Washington, D.C. The legacy media has hated the American soldier since Vietnam…”

Vox’s anger at the “New York Times and by the ABCNNBCBS cabal” seems to stem not only from a belief that liberals are leading America on a “long march toward lethal socialist utopia,” but also from his failure last year to sell his column to a single newspaper. Vox says he’s the victim of a vast left-wing media conspiracy. Or could it be that he’s just a crappy writer in need of a heavy dose of anger-management counseling?

Actually, I’ve despised the NYT and the ABCNNBCBS cabal long before I first put fingertips to keyboards with the intent to commit nonfiction. I sent Mr. Karr the following response:

Dear Mr. Karr,

While I may be a crappy writer – I will leave it to others to decide – you appear to be under a number of mistaken impressions. I hope you will not mind if I correct them.

First, I was not trying, and failing, to sell my column, Universal Press Syndicate was. Among other things, they informed me that numerous editors told them that my language and sentence structure was too difficult for their readership and even advised me to consider dumbing it down.

Second, it is interesting to note that in the one place where hard numbers make direct comparisons possible, my readership has, for the last two years, been larger than every other columnist at WND but two, including more widely distributed contributors such as Michelle Malkin,
Hugh Hewitt and Ben Shapiro. In some cases, it sextuples them. This would seem to indicate that reader lack of interest in my writing has not been the determinative factor.

And finally, while it is true that having published three novels with a major New York publishing house is no definitive proof of writing talent, it is arguably suggestive of some degree of literary competence.

As for the “pseudonym”, follow the Latin into Greek and you’ll find that it’s all perfectly clear.

With regards,
Vox Day

I do have to say that I am impressed that he got the small-l libertarian part right, and that he clearly understood the import of the adjective modifying the noun. But truly, my disdain for the Left is in no way increased by the failure of UPS to find legacy media interest in my column. That wouldn’t be possible.

Jonah Goldberg recounts an Important Democratic Moment:

Later, at another gathering, Gloria Nieto, vice chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, broke into sobs, wondering aloud whether the Democrats would remain a welcoming home for lesbians. Dean immediately “leaped off the stage into the audience to hug her,” writes Carnes. “With a sob of his own catching his voice, he brought the audience to standing ovation” when he declared, “That’s why I am a Democrat.”

Yep, that pretty much describes the intellectual appeal of left-liberalism. Someone, somewhere, needs a hug.

Hold me, Ralph….

Nicholas Kristof makes a flawed assumption:

Other developed countries focus much more on contraception. The upshot is that while teenagers in the U.S. have about as much sexual activity as teenagers in Canada or Europe, Americans girls are four times as likely as German girls to become pregnant, almost five times as likely as French girls to have a baby, and more than seven times as likely as Dutch girls to have an abortion. Young Americans are five times as likely to have H.I.V. as young Germans, and teenagers’ gonorrhea rate is 70 times higher in the U.S. than in the Netherlands or France.

I don’t buy for a second that teenagers in Europe are engaged in anywhere nearly as much sexual activity as teenagers in the USA. Having lived in Europe for more than a quarter of my adult life, I can testify that the casual sex scene is much, much less rampant than in America. In earlier times, I also knew two foreign exchange students fairly well, one from Germany and one from Switzerland, and both of them were in delighted awe of how accessible the American girls were.

Even now, Big Chilly can occasionally be heard quoting the immortal words of our German friend, a tall, handsome fellow in the midst of a three-week, Rommel-like blitzkrieg through American maidenhood from sea to shining sea: “Oh, I luff zee American bitches!”

David Brock makes an ass of himself, again:

Monday, he noted examples of how the “professional” or “mainstream media” are influenced by conservative talk radio, the Internet and think tanks. That influence, Brock said, will diminish as the conservative “lies” are exposed. “The conservatives seem to be particularly vulnerable because the quality of their research is particularly low. There is typically self-interested money behind it and of course they are simply willing to lie,” Brock told a group of interns at a luncheon at the Center for American Progress headquarters in Washington D.C….

Brock also said that the “mainstream media” is not really on the side of liberals, as many conservatives contend. “As far as the mainstream media is concerned, know that it is not on your side as much as the conservatives will like to claim that the media is liberal,” he said.

The legacy media is absolutely and almost completely on the liberal side. This is the case by any metric you can choose – political registrations, presidential votes, identifiable deological assumptions – the sole case progressive/liberals make is that the media is owned by corporations. Of course, if this is a genuine basis for ideological determination, Hollywood is equally “conservative”.

Apparently, I’m a little bit older today than I think I am.

Yesterday I got an e-mail notifying me that my 2004 Federal tax return was rejected because the date of birth I provided did not match the information currently available on the very ominous sounding “IRS Masterfile”. This Masterfile is purportedly based on information provided by the Social Security Administration as I was strongly advised to take the matter up with them.

Being very eager to see my somewhat substantial tax refund returned to me as soon as physically possible I immediately phoned the nearest Social Security office. That phone conversation went something like this:

Overpaid Government Worker #1: (in broken English) Social Security Administration.
Me: Yes, your records have my birth date incorrect and I’d like to get that cleared up.
OGW 1: Okay, what you need to do is apply for a new Social Security card.
(Silence)
Me: And…how do I go about doing that?
OGW 1: Well, you need to fill out an SS-5 form and either mail it to us or bring it in with two forms of identification with your new birth date on them.
Me: Ummm…it’s not really a new birth date. It’s the same one that I’ve had for quite some time now. I just need you guys to correct it in your files.

Imagine how the Atomizer will feel if he ever bothers to get his IMF translated and discovers that according to the IRS, not only is his date of birth incorrect, but he’s not a human being at all, being classified instead as a Guatamalan corporation manufacturing sewing machine parts.

I don’t see why people are making such a big deal about Chris Rock’s comments. First, if you’re the typical self-centered single guy, with all the morality of a Great White Shark, why in the name of the Black Goat’s one thousand young would you not be grateful for a free pass from undesired fatherhood? In days of yore, getting a woman pregnant brought the fun to an close; now, at the low, low price of $300 and one deceased Legally Subhuman Entity, it’s back to the circuses. And if you’re an adult lover of hot teen sluts unfortunate enough to knock up the attractive thirteen year-old from your social studies class, the vacuum will hide the evidence and the clinic will be happy to take a check from a concerned “uncle” without asking any questions at all.

It’s not just male predators who are enthusiastic about the beauty of abortion. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists must love it too. Think of all the damn Negroes who would otherwise be knuckling about the country and fantasizing about slaking their grunting gorilla lust on the pure sweet flesh of white women. Instead of one billion slant-eyed Chinks, we’d be stuck with two billion. The subhuman Slavic peasantry wouldn’t be shrinking if Russian women didn’t use it as birth control. And if JAPs from every East Coast university weren’t filling Planned Parenthood clinics, the Endlosung Mach II would be set back by decades. Ah, if only we could sell towel heads and sand monkeys on the concept, what a wonderful world it would be!

Clearly, abortion is beautiful.

Waterboy waxes wroth:

“So a gay man with AIDS is a “loaded gun”, now? With the “potential” for harming others?”

Based on what the New York Times was saying about behavioral tendencies and transmission rates, I don’t know if we’re talking about “potential” so much as “probability”. Perhaps someone who pays more attention to this subject than I do can actually work out the percentages. But keep in mind that it was not me, but Larry Kramer, the well-known AIDS activist who now has the disease himself, who asserted that gay men are “murdering” each other.

Is a heterosexual man with anthrax a “loaded gun”? A heterosexual woman with Legionnaire’s Disease?

Actually, if you stop and think about it, loaded guns are not only perfectly legal but Constitutionally protected as well. I don’t recall any Amendment specifically protecting diseased penises, but I can have another look and see if I can find one hiding in an emanation somewhere… although I suspect it’s more likely lurking about in a penumbra.

The burden of proof should not be on those who wish to use proven public health measures to eliminate AIDS, but on those who wish to defend the right of one individual to transmit a lethal disease to another individual. The significance of the New York Times article is that even some of those who have long defended special treatment for AIDS carriers are beginning to throw in the towel.

As I mentioned in the comments, I don’t actually take any issue with allowing people to experience the predictable consequences of their actions. For the last twenty years, the gay community has argued vociferously for special treatment of its signature disease. It appeared to be working for a while, now there are some signs that it will not continue to do so. I find it very interesting that it is precisely those who are most vulnerable that are the very ones who insist on continuing to allow the disease an environment in which it will flourish.