The blog LGM (Lawyers Guns and Money) has political scientists among its bloggers but it has a more freewheeling -- for lack of a better word -- view of its role than most academic political science blogs (see Robert Farley's piece "Complicating the Political Scientist as Blogger" which appeared a while ago in the journal PS).
That freewheeling character extends to LGM's comment threads, where name-calling is pretty standard (someone called me a "pious schmuck" there recently in connection with remarks on the op-ed referred to in the previous post). Contrast this with, e.g., The Monkey Cage, where chances of one's being called something nasty are considerably lower (though not zero). However, The Monkey Cage is moving to The Washington Post (with a three-year contract, apparently) and what will happen to its comment sections after the move is anyone's guess. I read the comments on WaPo articles only infrequently, but their general tenor seems to be occasioning some prospective worry on this score among The Monkey Cage's regular readers. (I don't read TMC every day or even every week but I was there not too long ago, quickly catching up on a few weeks' worth of posts.)
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4 comments:
Add Crooked Timber to that description.
My sense is that the comment threads on LGM are in general nastier than CT but that impression cd be wrong; I don't read LGM all that regularly.
There's of course a potential for a descent into name-calling or whatever lurking around a lot of CT threads -- that's true enough.
I've been a little disappointed in CT recently -- or maybe it's just that it's become too predictable for me. I thought Corey Robin wd be an interesting new voice when he was added, and to some extent he has been, but some of his posts are what i think of as kind of parochial -- like the one on Petraeus at CUNY. I just don't care all that much -- yes let him teach w/o too much harassment, yes police brutality is bad. Etc. Or maybe I'm just in a grouchy mood today.
I definitely missed the Robin post where he criticized students' attacking Petraeus in his car, but I didn't see much upside in pointing that out. I dislike double standards. Except when they benefit me.
"I dislike double standards. Except when they benefit me."
:)
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