21 Comments

1. Tom Hilton  •  Jul 9, 2006 @5:41 pm
   

   Well, that’s some useful perspective…and it would explain why I’ve never heard of this person before.

   But of course perspective has never been the right’s strong suit, and they regard it as next to irrelevant; hence their belief that some ‘kill Bush’ comment by some loser at Democratic Underground is a) a monumental atricity and b) representative of the entire ‘left’ (which is to say, everyone to the left of Zell Miller), while eliminationist rhetoric from the most prominent Republicans is a) excusable and b) not the responsibility of anybody else even if they link approvingly to the comments.

   I’d be curious to see Goldstein’s site meter as well; god knows he’s milking this thing for all it’s worth. This is probably the best thing that ever happened to him.

2. Swami  •  Jul 9, 2006 @5:44 pm
   

   Now, what do these charts tell us?

   They tell us that Michelle Malkin’s style of blogging works, at least for bringing in the numbers. The more outrageous and offensive the post the more people are drawn to it..Just like radio shock jocks. Bubba the Love Sponge never got so high a rating as when he had some redneck crastrate a hog on the airwaves so people could listen to the screams of a helpless animal. Fortunately, Bubba got charged with a animal cruelty violation.
   The fact is that people respond to outrageousness..

3. Bonnie  •  Jul 9, 2006 @6:37 pm
   

   Not only do most of us liberal blog readers not read Deb whatshername’s blog–much less heard of her; but, most of us don’t read the conservative bloggers either. As far as I can tell, no liberal person (blogger or otherwise) needs to apologize for Deb whatshername. I don’t even feel obligated to apologize for any thing my twin sister says. This is just more projectionism from the right. Or, maybe they actually do understand that the silence they are complaining about is a direct result of the fact that no one other than their brainwashed followers reads them.

4. The Ugly American  •  Jul 9, 2006 @7:34 pm
   

   Maha if you look at this chart it appears she has averaged 500 to 1k hits per day for some time and had a spike of close to 5k hits as far back as october of last year. (I thought skippys link went to this chart but it doesnt any more. Maybe I was confused.) you will also notice this post was from Feb 14 2005 well over a year ago.

   If I am reading the chart wrong someone please correct me.

5. maha  •  Jul 9, 2006 @8:25 pm
   

   Ugly: That chart is visits and page views per MONTH, not per day. She was getting 500 to 1k hits per MONTH.

   Here’s the same chart for Mahablog.

6. OtherLisa  •  Jul 9, 2006 @10:25 pm
   

   Who is this person? Did I miss something?

   I think I’m glad I did.

7. lurker  •  Jul 9, 2006 @11:10 pm
   

   ya know, after that whole “let’s find out where the NYT employees’ children go to school and alert the local child molesters” deal i hardly think the right wing should be tossing projectiles from their greenhouse..

8. skippy  •  Jul 9, 2006 @11:31 pm
   

   hey, maha, your comments are still goofy…when i hit “preview” i lose my comments entirely.

   anywho, what i was going to say:

   firstly, thanks, maha, for the link.

   but secondly, reader tom maguire on my blog points out what ugly american discusses, and that is, ms. frisch has been at it longer than a year. tom finds archives for south(west)paw from nov. 02, tho, in his words, “she is mercifully irregular until about october 2004.”

   thirdly, ugly american, my link went to ms. fricsh’s visit, not page views. visits are generally a lower number than page views for the same period. but i concede your point that frisch has been blogging for longer than a year.

   but fourthly, and i think this is the important part, the techonorati list shows that, preceding this link-orgy of the last two days, ms. frisch’s blog was linked to by only about a dozen blogs in the last year.

   thusly reinforcing my premise of, “hah? who cares?”

9. SPIIDERWEB™  •  Jul 10, 2006 @6:04 am
   

   I’m rather proud my blog has slowly, agonizingly so at times, grown about 10 readers at a time. Yeah, there was the short spurt when Crooks & Liars gave me a shoutout and I had 600 hits in one day and slowly tapered off.

   Its nice to gain readers who appreciate what one writes and aren’t just looking at the traffic accident.

   I keep coming back to this blog because its consistently good and offers valuable insite. I’ve no desire to visit the crash scenes of Malkin, Instapudding, NRO or any of the other wingers who spew nonsense and hate.

10. maha  •  Jul 10, 2006 @6:24 am
    

    I’m rather proud my blog has slowly, agonizingly so at times, grown about 10 readers at a time.

    The first couple of years I ran Mahablog, any day I got more than 500 visits was cause for celebration. Of course, at the beginning if I got more than 500 hits my idiot web host would shut the site down because I’d exceeded my bandwidth allotment.

11. The Ugly American  •  Jul 10, 2006 @12:04 pm
    

    You make a good point Skip, and thanks for correcting me Maha on the chart. That makes her site visits about 16 – 35 per day before this happened.

    You may very well be right in that she is just looking for attention. I noticed another post she posted not to long before this studying the trends of current hot topics based on google searches.

    Could this be some whacky experiment gone horribly wrong?

12. maha  •  Jul 10, 2006 @12:21 pm
    

    U.A.: Yes, she might just be acting out to get attention, which is a big reason not to give her any attention. Judging by her archives, her head isn’t screwed on all that tightly.

13. Julie O.  •  Jul 10, 2006 @12:50 pm
    

    Speaking for all self-identified liberal unknown bloggers everywhere, using words to intimidate is bad, m’kay?

    The trouble is, too many right wing nut jobs are intimidated by superior arguments and vocabularies.

14. RW  •  Jul 10, 2006 @4:04 pm
    

    Not all “righties” are demanding that people post an appropriate level of outrage and not everyone is lumping that nutcase in with “liberals” or “the left”. Yeah, some are, just like some commenters on this site can’t go two sentences before attempting to turn this onto something bad towards their enemies (the right). Look, she’s obviously not right in the head.
    And, no, she doesn’t represent the left.
    And, no, the left doesn’t have to go out of its way to distance itself from the likes of her *any more than the right should do the same* (something to keep in mind during, oh, every Glenn Greenwald post).

    I liked the end of this post….it’s good advice to just ignore those who are screaming the loudest with a warped megaphone. I’ll say this, though, the added moral equivalence that I’ve seen throughout surely doesn’t help any more than what you’d proabably say if there were hoards of righties that said “oh, I don’t condone what Trent Lott said about Strom Thurmond, but let’s talk about how bad those lefties are!” instead of a throng that called for him to step down.

    Please, folks, if you’re going to say something about that cretin simply say “ugh” because trying to change the subject to how bad/hypocritical/evil the designated person on the right is (take your pick from Malkin, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) makes condemnations look as sincere as Frisch’s initial apology. She’s ignorable & her fifteen minutes are almost up.

    But, this isn’t about how bad the left is. Or the right.

15. maha  •  Jul 10, 2006 @4:19 pm
    

    RW — We agree that the Frisch affair isn’t about how bad the left or right is. In this case, it’s about Frisch, who doesn’t represent anybody but Frisch, and what she wrote, which was way over the line. Some on the Right, notably Captain Ed, have been very sensible about this. Others, however, are a little too eager to turn Frisch into some kind of crusade and have wasted way too much time on her. And I see from Memeorandum that a whole new Frisch blogswarm is in progress today in the Right Blogosphere.

    Make of that what you will.

16. maha  •  Jul 10, 2006 @4:25 pm
    

    Also — See Retardo Montalban at firedoglake.

17. Brian  •  Jul 10, 2006 @4:25 pm
    

    Barbara – Thank you for your thoughtful and spot-on post over at Inside Higher Ed. As you know, none of us lefty professors rushed to Frisch’s defense, however much rightwing bloggers and posters wished (or imagined) we had. You and Greenwald are outposts of sanity in the bizzarro blogosphere.

18. RW  •  Jul 10, 2006 @7:47 pm
    

    maha,
    The ‘blogswarm’ is primarily due to the pointing of her comments (which almost everyone derides) and the sudden non-stop DOS attacks on Goldstein’s site. Like him or no, Jeff is rather popular and so when people see the comments that Frisch put forth it would stand to reason that people would be interested in posting. See: Coulter, Ann, and the left.

    It’s continuing because she has obviously decided that her role as chief moonbat is somewhat celebritorious (don’t ask me why she chose that) and has taken the mantle to carry it even further. Gasoline on the fire & all that. Noticable to some is that the left has decided to make their own blogswarm by attacking the right on this whole matter and playing the “well, no matter, we’re still better than those rightwingers”, further evidenced by your link to firedoglake.

    I can imagine if a Republican were to kill someone and the right decided to say “well, what about Ted Kennedy? We’re still better”, which is tatamount to what is happening now. Suddenly, the ‘right’ is the target instead of a loathsome woman. Because, you know, no matter what: they’re worse. It isn’t Frish’s comments because (fill in the blank) is surely worse, so therefore…..the subject should be the terrible right.

    After all, they’re always saying terrible things about the left and blindly generalizing in order to smear is bad.

19. maha  •  Jul 10, 2006 @9:44 pm
    

    The ‘blogswarm’ is primarily due to the pointing of her comments (which almost everyone derides) and the sudden non-stop DOS attacks on Goldstein’s site.

    I’d like to know how much bandwidth Goldstein is paying for. If he’s getting his site shut down frequently for going over his bandwidth, he needs to either switch web hosts, or perhaps switch from a shared server to a dedicated server account. I really doubt these “attacks” are anything more than normal traffic spikes that we all get from time to time. When I was first blogging I had frequent DOS disruptions until I got smart about how much bandwidth I really needed.

    It’s continuing because she has obviously decided that her role as chief moonbat is somewhat celebritorious (don’t ask me why she chose that) and has taken the mantle to carry it even further.

    She’s not a chief anything. Did you not see the comment from Ugly American, above, acknowleding that before Thursday Frisch was getting 16 – 35 visits per day? I can’t zero in on an exact number, but based on site meter it’s safe to say she was getting fewer than 100 visits per day.

    Frisch strikes me as someone who isn’t wired too tightly. She may be suffering some mental or personality disorder. Either that or she’s figured out that by being outrageous she can really crank up her site traffic.

    But she’s only getting this attention because the Right is giving it to her. As far as the Left is concerned, she’s an anomaly who runs a very marginal personal blog. A blog that is not part of the liberal political blog community, please note.

    Noticable to some is that the left has decided to make their own blogswarm by attacking the right on this whole matter and playing the “well, no matter, we’re still better than those rightwingers”, further evidenced by your link to firedoglake.

    What blogswarm? One link is not a blogswarm. Only a few leftie bloggers have commented at all. We’re just standing aside and pointing fingers at the Right because you’re being such horses asses for giving Frisch attention.

    I can imagine if a Republican were to kill someone and the right decided to say “well, what about Ted Kennedy? We’re still better”,

    Frisch killed someone? When was that? Oh, you’re equating her alleged threats (which I haven’t read for myself) with actual murder.

    Look, if some Republican were to kill someone, I would not assume that all Republicans are homocidal. Every group has its outliers and deviants. Mature people understand this.

    What pissed ME off about the Frisch affair is the way some rightie bloggers insisted that everyone on the Left apologize for Frisch. To me, this makes as much sense as demanding we apologize for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. She’s not one of us. As I said here, when some blogger on my blogroll says something uncivilized, you can legitimately ask me to apologize. When some blogger I do not blogroll, have never linked to, and have never heard of, says something outrageous, how come she’s my responsibility all of a sudden?

    What Frisch said was terrible, but I’ve gotten just as bad from Righties more than once. I’ve even gotten obscene phone calls from righties who disagreed with something I said. Yet I have never demanded that everyone on the Right Blogosphere apologize for this. I don’t assume that because one idiot gets my phone number and makes obscene calls that everyone on the Right is an obscene phone caller.

    Once I had to shut down comments here because I was getting swarmed with traffic from Little Green Footballs, and several hundred people tried to leave obscene and threatening comments on Mahablog, but I didn’t throw a fit and demand that the entire Right blogosphere apologize for that, either.

    It’s the nature of the Blogosphere that some percentage of people on both sides are going to be miswired and will behave inappropriately. Welcome to my world. I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, but it pisses me off to no end when righties pretend that ONLY lefties behave this way.

    The other thing that pissed me off is the fact that, recently, some rightie bloggers were calling for New York Times editors and reporters to be hunted down, and the whereabouts of their children should be made public. I don’t know if anyone specifically said what should be done with these children if caught, but the implication was pretty damn cold. Yet no one on the Right apologized for that.

    Yet let one demented whackjob insult Jeff Goldstein, and it’s a federal case.

    Sir: Grow up.

20. RW  •  Jul 10, 2006 @10:25 pm
    

    Actually, I didn’t think that we really disagreed all that much and went out of my way to say that she was NOT representative of the left. Yet, I get a “grow up” response and even further “yeah, but what about the right, they’re so much worse” attempts (see: record, broken).

    That’s what I get for attempting a substantive dialogue, I suppose. Sorry, it won’t happen again. Have a nice life. I tried.

21. maha  •  Jul 10, 2006 @10:48 pm
    

    RW — Don’t flatter yourself, cupcake. Your “substantive dialogue” was just flame bait; you came here to insult lefties and explain to us how awful we are. Sorry; I’m not playing your game.