Fwd: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Actually, never mind Douthat, got something else for now. Michael Wolff is in London for the Changing Media Summit, where he was one of a handful of speakers along with the likes of Jimbo Wales (Wikipedia). Meanwhile, he's been writing a series of blog posts and tweets that, together with certain aspects of his career as well as past statements, would seem to illustrate why this fellow shouldn't be speaking at any conferences billed as being a "a blueprint for creative and commercial success in the digital world." Here's a brief what's-wrong-with-this-picture for you:

1. On the 16th, Wolff posts a piece entitled "What if Twitter is for girls" in which he cites some unnamed "person from the high media stratosphere" as offering "the following hypothesis: The Twitter demographic skews notably female." Then he goes on to "analyze" this non-data by way of a number of observations he seems to have pulled out of the air, eventually concluding with the following: "Anyway, my friends point is a large one: If Twitter is really for women, if we can define this medium so conventionally, then this is a media business modelfinally." This makes no sense. How would that make it a business model? You might assume that I am taking this out of context and that the reasoning behind this may be found somewhere else in the column. Nope. Also, keep in mind Wolff's quickness to grant Twitter the elusive "You've found a business model!" badge; we will come back to this.

2. Wolff's high-media stratospheric friend is wrong. As of last year, American Twitter users were divided 53 - 47 male to female in a country in which females make up a slight majority. There is no "skewing" here, particularly not of the "notable" sort. This took me all of two minutes to find out, and no one sends me to fucking London to go tell everyone about how the internet works.

3. In the same column, Wolff writes, "Perhaps, no surprise, women's tweets seem much more likely to be personal rather than professional, upbeat rather than serious, confessional instead of political." Later: "And, indeed, men seem to try to turn Twitter into PowerPointa set of professional notes." Elswhere: "The men who do well on Twitter, in fact, sounderlike women. Theyre self-consciously menschy." I've never been able to figure out what menschy means, but if we're going by gender stereotypes, take a look at what's up on Wolff's own Twitter feed, in which two of the last four tweets as of 7 EST Sunday are as follows:

But first lunch at the Wolseley with A.A. Gill...then to Heathrow

A British lunch (new British) in Lambeth at Anchor & Hope...fennel gratin and roast wood pigeon

These strike me as sounding "personal rather than professional," to put it nicely. Which is not to say that the manly Wolff does not "try to turn Twitter into PowerPoint - a set of professional notes." Here are his most recent forays into his professional realm of news:

I just can't get enough of this Pope story.

There's an awesomeness to the Church and the Pope's predicament. It starts to feels like the end of European history. Yikes.

One has to wonder how he would have felt during the Reformation or even the time of John Wyclef if he thinks some already-dying scandal with minor implications for the pope marks "the end of European history" or even a tingling of such. Is the Catholic Church really going to go into decline over the minor possibility that a particular pope did not take some action that he should? Is he unaware of World War II, or that pope who had the corpse of the previous pope dug up, clothed, and put on trial? This man has zero news instincts and he's supposed to be some icon of the news industry, at least according to Newser press releases.

4. Noting that Wolff has deemed the alleged yet clearly non-existent dominance of females on Twitter to be something akin to a "business model," it is all the more wacky that he continues to attack Rupert Murdoch and Sulzberger's attempts to monetize online content as some sort of crazy, crazy scheme that will definitely fail, as he did once again less that a week ago. Would the NYT be more viable if they figured out that a lot of women read the paper? Would that constitute a "business model"?

5. I mean, what the fucking fuck, man?

6. Remember that Wolff is writing all of this on a blog - blogging being a medium that he predicted would fail, as The Observer itself noted a few years back. This is the guy who was flown to London last week to go share his expertise on all things internety.

So, hook could be Wolff's inexplicable speaking gig at this London conference, could move from there into his tenuous grasp of internet media and his incompetent spokesmanship on behalf of Newser, and then go into his lack of any value whatsoever as a political analyst (he writes for the same Vanity Fair Politics and Power blog that I do, so I've seen him try his hand at political analysis - he never bothers with policy, being of the sort who presumably considers concern with such things to be provincial.

Let me know if you want me to go ahead and go after Wolff. It'll take, like, a day.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown

Brooklyn, NY

512-560-2302

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Off the bat, Ross Douthat has been spending a lot of time defending his precious Vatican in light of the latest revelations regarding child molestation and the apparent acquiescence of Ratzinger, as may be seen in the first couple of posts here:

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/

Would something along these lines work as a hook if I can move fast on it? Also, will get back to you with a peg on Michael Wolff as soon as I'm done looking into it.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 5:21 PM, Christopher S Stewart <csstewart@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, thanks.

Christopher S. Stewart
+646-338-3756
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:13:02 -0400
To: Christopher S. Stewart<cstewart@observer.com>
Subject: Re: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Howdy again-

Finished up some other projects and ready to begin on these articles. Will try to determine who's got the best hook off the bat. Will I be able to contact you at this e-mail address over the weekend to run any said hooks by you first?

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Chris-

Thanks again for having me in today; I'll get back to you soon when I've figured out which of our targets provides for the best pegs.

I've got another piece on Thomas Friedman that just went up a few minutes ago on the politics section of Huffington Post, in case you're interested in the guy's general ridiculousness.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Heading over now, see you at 3.

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

See you then

On 3/15/10 2:30 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Sure, three is fine.

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

Yes. Can we actually say 3?

On 3/15/10 2:25 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Absolutely. We're meeting at your office, correct?

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

Hey. Just confirming Wed. 2, right?

On 3/10/10 11:18 AM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Certainly. Let me know what day and time would be good for you; I should be wide open.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

Lets talk. Maybe coffee next week?

On 3/9/10 9:38 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Chris-

Thanks for getting back to me.

We could go a couple ways with this. If by critic profile you mean a piece on a particular pundit, then certainly; I could do one on Friedman, Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Peretz, Bennett, or a couple of other fellows I've been researching but didn't put into the book, such as Ruben Navarette. Let me know what you're thinking in terms of format.

Thanks again,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 9:54 AM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

Hey Barrett,

Thanks for sending this along. The subject looks intriguing. And it makes me wonder: are there any profiles that we could pull from it? Or maybe youd be up to proposing a critic profile? Im open to ideas.

Thanks,

Chris

From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 6:16 PM
To: Kyle Pope
Subject: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Hi, Kyle-

I wanted to check and see if you might be interested in taking a look at a few excerpts from my upcoming second book, Hot, Fat, and Clouded <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982139144/ref=s9_simi_gw_s0_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1Z0RYG59CYBZAVNP0E6T&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846> , which concerns the manner in which our nation's most respected columnists - Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, and Richard Cohen, for instance - have gained and maintained their positions of prominence despite having made all sorts of failed predictions, contradicted themselves on rather important issues, and otherwise contributed to the general public misunderstanding.

I'm a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, Skeptic, and True/Slant, and my other work has appeared in dozens of additional publications. My first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, was released in 2007 to praise from Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, among other swell folks.

Let me know if you'd like to see a selection of excerpts for potential publication.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown

Brooklyn, NY

512-560-2302

--
Christopher S. Stewart
Deputy Editor
The New York Observer
1.212.407.9348