CPAC Blogging: Horowitz Edition

Last night David Horowitz held a reception for his new website, Discover the Network. (They were serving up generous glasses of Dewars, which may explain my having forgotten to blog it at the time…) It's basically a right-wing version of MediaTransparency.org, a list of connections between various left-wing groups and funders.

It looks pretty comprehensive, and the link-visualization feature is super cool. I'll confess, I've always found the resort to argumentam ad funderam and guilt by association a little grating, but on the other hand, those who live by the sword…

Comments

[joe]

Thanks to Horowitz's site, I now realize that some liberals - you might want to sit down for this part - were RADICALS during the 60s. Man. Which, you know, changes everything.

Seriously, if my job existed because of Scaife money, I'd try to discredit "argumentam ad funderam," too.

[Ken Shultz]

"It looks pretty comprehensive, and the link-visualization feature is super cool"

When I saw this, I immediately thought of the work of the artist Mark Lombardi. He made visualized drawings of different scandals, and his work was and, as far as I know, continues to be. Indeed, as I've heard tell, the FBI requested his visualization of the BCCI scandal from a museum in the wake of 9/11.

...In fact, I would hazard a guess that the inspiration for the Discover The Network's visualization tool was the art of Mark Lombardi.

Here's a link to an article about Lombardi:

http://www.boingboing.net/2003/12/09/friendster_or_foeste.html

Here's a link to a detail on one of his pieces:

http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html

...and here's a link to more pieces:

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

[Ken Shultz]

"He made visualized drawings of different scandals, and his work was and, as far as I know, continues to be."

...continues to be exhibited, that is. I understand he has met his end.

[joe]

It just occured to me: who the hell is David Horowitz to try to discredit someone on the grounds of Vietnam-era radicalism?

[thoreau]

who the hell is David Horowitz to try to discredit someone on the grounds of Vietnam-era radicalism?

Most of those radicals became much more moderate versions of their old selves.

Horowitz is just as radical as before, but on the opposite side.

I'm not sure how that makes him any more respectable than he was in the past.

[Douglas Fletcher]

That's pretty funny, getting into a high dander about someone getting into a high dander. Kind of postmodern, like a Red Skelton skit.