Hilzoy Retires from Blogging
Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings is retiring from blogging. I learned this from James Joyner, who says:
You can read her lengthy explanation for yourself but the short version is that she was motivated to start because of what she thought was the insanity of the Bush era and that Obama’s taking over the White House means she can devote her time to other things.
. . . .
She’s been one of a handful of bloggers from the Loyal Opposition that I’ve read regularly because she thinks and writes well and mostly lives up to this:
And that was what I really wanted to do: to listen to people I disagreed with, to engage with them, and to try to show that it was possible to care deeply about politics without hating your opponents. Being civil doesn’t mean you’re lukewarm, and being committed to your principles doesn’t mean you have to be hateful.
That’s not the way to maximize pageviews, alas, but it is the proper attitude if your goal is to persuade and engage rather than vent.
I barely have time to read blogs, period — right- or left-leaning. But, while I always found Hilzoy to be almost 100% wrong on virtually every issue — and I’m sure she would say the same about me — I respected her as intellectually honest, if misguided. Her retirement, if it sticks, means further surrender to polarization and unhinged screaming in the blogosphere. Too bad.
Sorry, but Hilzoy often jointed the looney left. I could cite many examples, but there isn’t much point.
She did so many posts on corruption when the Republicans were in office, but then did nearly none when Democrats took over.
She’s a hypocrite in so many ways. An intelligent one, but still a huge hypocrite.
Blue (fbdc83) — 7/14/2009 @ 6:35 amI agree with the assessment of Hilzoy. Drum and Yglesias used to be interesting, but became shills once they started blogging “professionally”.
Pseuss (2d12d8) — 7/14/2009 @ 6:48 amPseuss, please add Kos to that list. On the other hand, I never thought they were interesting much more than watching a spider catch a fly and wrap it up in spidey silk.
GM Roper (85dcd7) — 7/14/2009 @ 6:58 amI don’t share your view that Hilzoy was intellectually honest, Patterico. I think she was a Kosian, no-enemies-to-the-left hack, and I won’t mourn her disappearance from the ‘sphere.
BC (cefcea) — 7/14/2009 @ 10:31 amI never though Wings was any more balanced or informed than the DU or Kos Kiddies.
I will shed no tears. She is probably realizing she got what she wanted and can’t stand the “told you so” comments.
Thomas Jackson (8ffd46) — 7/14/2009 @ 11:44 amKevin Drum used to be one of my favorites even though I disagreed with him about almost everything. He did a better job researching the Bush TANG story than CBS did and concluded there was nothing there well before the Dan Rather fiasco. I used to participate in his comments and many of the commenters were well informed even though I disagreed. When he went to Washington Monthly, the comments became far more nasty and content free. Mostly screaming in print. Then they began to delete my comments, often leaving the responses attacking me in place. When he left for Mother Jones, WM got worse and I rarely look anymore. At Mother Jones, I tried commenting a couple of times and they never appeared.
One small irony at WM was, if I included links in my comment to support an argument point, the comment was deleted more quickly.
I was not impressed with Hilzoy who appears to be taking a vacation to Rwanda. Sounds like a good place for her.
Mike K (2cf494) — 7/14/2009 @ 11:54 amIf she was intellectually honest, she’d be quite upset with Obama.
Apogee (e2dc9b) — 7/14/2009 @ 6:04 pmBye.
Jim Treacher (796deb) — 7/14/2009 @ 9:54 pm