Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Congratulations Digby!


2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism

Heather “Digby” Parton grew up all over the world as the daughter of a peripatetic employee of the vast American Military Industrial complex. After a traditional 1970s-style misspent youth and fitful education, she landed in Hollywood and spent a couple of decades as an executive in the film industry, pushing the usual paper and making the usual deals. Out of a need to vent her frustration with the state of America's politics, she began writing daily political analysis, punditry, random musings and snark on her website “Hullabaloo” in 2002. It soon turned into a full-time vocation, obsession, and, surprisingly, a new career.

Digby became one of the leading innovators of the new form of writing called “political blogging,” most succinctly defined as an informal but in-depth rolling conversation about the issues of the day. In the process, she caught the attention of columnists such as James Wolcott, who declared “Digby’s blog is a Paul Revere gallop through the pitched night of the Bush years,” and Paul Krugman, who frequently linked to her posts, introducing her as "the blogger Digby — who is, by the way, one of the best writers you’ll ever encounter, on or off the Internet." She gained a devoted following among political junkies of all stripes that lasts until this day.

Her blog has influenced many of the next generation of liberal intellectuals and journalists ...
Great news and well-deserved.

Now I double-blog-dare ya to turn your comment section back on :-)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I generally like digby, however she and Pierces support of Greenwald and then bitching about when people start to do what he wants (ie vote the Democrats out, threaten politicians with guns) are the two best examples of why both sides are hypocritical as fuck and pull "it's OK when we do it".

Their blogs have also provided great fodder for why me and my usual cohort aren't voting in 2014 or 2016 and just going to say "idiots, idiots and hypocrites everywhere". For this year we're just going to cook food, get drunk, and play Titanfall.

Lately I've shoved your blog around the office to show that once Pierce admitted you existed and there was some back and forth that you backed off your assertions about this issue as well. For proof that both sides get their grift on and all values go out the window when there is a sniff at greater exposure or cash.

From Beltway land.

Cinesias said...

I remember when Hullabaloo was "changing" its commenting system.

Looks like they're still working on it.

Personally, if I can't comment, regardless of how irrelevant I may be or that no one reads it, I don't read the blog.

If I just wanted words thrown at me without the ability to throw them back, I'd be reading newspapers or some other anachronistic method of gaining information in only one direction.

steeve said...

"idiots, idiots and hypocrites everywhere"

Again we see the existence of imperfection used to end an argument.

But the existence of imperfection is so obvious that it should be used to start an argument, as in "given that our country is full of hypocrites, we should..."

Like maybe pick the hypocrite with good policies over the hypocrite with bad policies, seeing as how policies actually matter to actual people.

Jack said...

This is great news. Digby is an amazingly good writer, and an amazingly sharp analytical thinker. This prize is incredibly well deserved. I'm so thankful that she has stuck with her blog year after year. I started reading her back in the early 2000's, at the same time we were all following Atrios and the early TPM. After all this time, Digby continues to turn out gem after gem. Every. Single Day. She's an All Star on Team Liberal.

Hey, did you know that she has comments on the MOBILE version of her blog? I have no idea why it's set up like that, but there actually are comments if you view her blog on a mobile device. Unfortunately, the comments are not very active, probably because they're *only* visible on mobile.

I do hope Digby someday acknowledges that much of her Obama-bashing turned out to be unfounded. She has been pre-bashing Obama for destroying Social Security for years. I hope she comes around to admit she was wrong to do so and that in fact, Obama preserved and protected the entitlement programs that are critical to the survival of most of the American population, and that those programs would have been gutted or eliminated if either McCain/Palin or Romney/Ryan had won the presidency.

I've also been disappointed to see her let herself be completely misled by the lies and disinformation of Glenn Greenwald and Ed Snowden. But Digby's problem is the same as most people's: She does not have a detailed understanding of the technology at the heart of Snowden's disclosures, so she (like the public in general) can be very easily misled if the person she's trusting isn't giving a fair, objective account of the facts.

The person she's trusting is Greenwald, and Greenwald is not reporting the news in an objective, factual manner. Greenwald is not a *journalist,* but a *litigator.* And that means that instead of presenting the facts in a fair, objective, and accurate way, he pitches a skewed account that omits everything that hurts his case -- even when that means omitting the truth or critical mitigating details. Likewise, he amplifies and exaggerates everything that helps his case. The result is a thing we call "bullshit," but Digby and most of the public believe every word. Because they start by trusting Greenwald and don't have enough independent understanding of the technology to question his account.

Anonymous said...

I like Digby's blog a lot, and I think that her award is well deserved. However I really thought it was MUCH better when she had a comment section. Usually the comments, as a whole, would wind up being as good as, or better than, the post they were addressing.

It was nice being allowed to add ones own two cents to the conversation. That's when it WAS a conversation of course now, alas, it is no longer a conversation, but a one way lecture - Sigh....

It seems like the trouble started when thereisnospoon showed up. He's alright, and everything, but some people in the comments were critical of him and then suddenly no comments.

Also Digby kept saying it was only temporary, the comment section is returning, bla bla woof woof. All apparently untruths. Oh well, at least Driftglass still has comments. Way to go Drifty.

Anonymous said...

Look at her with all her fancy books in the background ....

Kathleen said...

Considering that the awards, prestige and attention seems to go to "journalists" and bloggers who attack Obama, you may want to consider "rebranding", Driftglass. You and some of the drooling, bootlicking, Obamanation sycophants who comment here don't feed the Odious Obama Purity Troll Poutrage Factory. There's gold in that Purity Troll "d-emo-graphic", I'm tellin' ya!

Monster from the Id said...

I agree with Spoony on a bunch of things, yet something about him makes me uneasy.

He displays a definite authoritarian streak at times. He has said words to the effect that AGW deniers are guilty of "crimes against humanity"--he doesn't seem to admit the possibility of honest error. He prudently stops short of saying what he thinks should be done with such villains, but one can guess.