Let Them Eat My Cake Recipes!

Matt Welch | April 25, 2005

The pre-launch Huffington Post continues to be a rich source for the kind of unintentional comedy I haven't enjoyed since watching the likes of Lou Dobbs, C. Everett Koop and Sydney Schanberg go bonkers with dot-com greed back at the end of the last Internet publishing boom. Today's laffs, courtesy of the New York Times, come from the sight of the HuffPost's Walker Cronkite and Nora Ephron -- two of the most difficult Americans to avoid this past half-centry -- talking up the joys of finally having a platform to freely express themselves.

"This gives me a chance to sound off with a few words or a long editorial," said Mr. Cronkite [...]

Ms. Ephron, the writer, who is one of the bloggers, said it was this casual aspect of the venture that appealed to her. "The idea that one might occasionally be able to have a small thought and a place to send it, without having to write a whole essay, seems like a very good idea," she said.

She also sees the Post as a chance for the left to balance out the right.

"In the Fox era, everything we can do on our side to even things out, now that the media is either controlled by Rupert Murdoch or is so afraid of Rupert Murdoch that they behave as if they were controlled by him, is great," she said. But sometimes, she added, "I may merely have a cake recipe."

Comments

|4.25.05 @ 1:51AM|#

typo!

walker conkrite

Matt Welch|4.25.05 @ 2:04AM|#

Thanks!

|4.25.05 @ 4:40AM|#

I'm trying to figure out out which is worse: Christian-right types talking about how they, as members of the biggest religion in the world, are somehow so persecuted and silenced, or Leftist media types talking about how they will FINALLY have a voice. I mean, Walter Fucking Cronkite!? Truly it is a great day when the biggest news media figure of the past 50 years can abandon his samizdat printing press in the basement of the brave dissident peasants who have hid him from government forces and finally speak to the public. Get over yourselves.

|4.25.05 @ 4:40AM|#

Sounds like Uncle Walt hasn't figured out the way it is.

Ranger|4.25.05 @ 8:47AM|#

Damn it, now Rupert Murdoch is gonna start shilling cake recipes!

Can't you just hear Hannity shilling for "Freedom* Chocolate Cake"?

*freedom as in "freedom fries"

|4.25.05 @ 9:31AM|#

"I'm trying to figure out out which is worse: Christian-right types talking about how they, as members of the biggest religion in the world, are somehow so persecuted and silenced, or Leftist media types talking about how they will FINALLY have a voice."

it is a tie.

though that cake recipie will put them over the top.

more to the point...these guys couldn't afford the bucks to host their own blogs? what the flipper fuck?

|4.25.05 @ 9:32AM|#

Dave,

This is our new (or, not) cultural meme: the culture of victimhood. We see it everywhere, in all walks of life. Thomas Sowell calls it the quest for "Cosmic Justice". It is the feeling that, if anything doesn't go your way, you are the victim of some sort of injustice. We sue everyone in sight. Even when the reality is that you are not part of an oppressed minority, it is a more comforting position to be in...so people create this perception of such.

|4.25.05 @ 9:36AM|#

"these guys couldn't afford the bucks to host their own blogs? what the flipper fuck?"

Given how enamored they seem to be with this whole newfangled contraption called "blog", I highly doubt they even realize that all it takes to get a blog, for free no less, is 10 minutes of your time to sign up with blogger.

Either that, or it's just stage-fright, the whole "comfort in numbers" thing. Maybe they're just afraid to venture out into the journalism world again by themselves.

|4.25.05 @ 9:43AM|#

"Christian-right types talking about how they, as members of the biggest religion in the world, are somehow so persecuted and silenced..."

Because having large groups of people means you are never persecuted, and context never matters. Like the Chinese or the Indians. No Indian or Chinaman can claim to have been treated unjustly because they are so numerous.

|4.25.05 @ 10:06AM|#

"Because having large groups of people means you are never persecuted, and context never matters."

It's not just numbers, it's power. You can't even think about running for public office in this country unless you're a god-fearing christian...yet, somehow, they are "opressed"? The absurdity of the "christians are oppressed" is obvious, given just how pervasive christianity is in this country. Going back to your example, if these folks want to see oppression, look at the Indians or Chinese. That's oppression. This hogwash with the christians and the left, well, it's just a goddamned act. Oh, woe is me...I can't post my motherfucking religious doctrine in the secular state courthouses. Wah Wah Wah!

|4.25.05 @ 10:39AM|#

Evan,

That depends on the definition of "oppressed" that people are using. I give you my old Italian grandmother's version as an example. Anytime a family member did anything she didn't like (haircut, career choice, dating the wrong person, don't like lasagna, etc.), you were "breaking her heart" and hurting her personally. Sadly, that's the definition of "oppression" that fundamentalists seem to embrace and have duped other christians into believing.

|4.25.05 @ 11:50AM|#

On the anti-Christian bias:

www.infidels.org/misc/humor/lioaca.html

|4.25.05 @ 1:14PM|#

Finally, the limousine liberals of America will have a voice!

Hey, if they want to do it, do it, but acting like they've been silenced bugs this shit out of me. Just like when Republicans complain that the Democrats are ruining this country, even though the Republicans have a solid lock on power.

There's nothing more annoying than a partisan experiencing imaginary victimhood. Well, OK, Jim Carey's pretty annoying, but I still think the partisans are slightly worse.

|4.25.05 @ 1:59PM|#

Jim Carrey was a lot less annoying before he broke into the mainstream. Those old Fire Marshal Bill sketches on In Living Color had me in tears.

|4.25.05 @ 2:03PM|#

From Michael's "infidels" link:

"At baseball games, you can often spot people carrying signs that read "Origin Of Species, page 34"."

Just once, I'd like to see that. That would make me laugh!

|4.25.05 @ 3:27PM|#

"Either that, or it's just stage-fright, the whole "comfort in numbers" thing."

it seems sort of strange, considering they could pay for hosting, software, a machine to run it from and a team of professional ghostwriters to publish the thing.