It’s, like, you don’t have to read the whole boring story
I’ve been checking in with the Daily Beast, the new Salon/HuffPo/TPM-type website from Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.
Brown, who has refined the art of self-promotion to the degree that she’s become completely oblivious to her own obnoxiousness, is a buddy of John McCain. The new site’s political writing is suffused with a whiff of neo-con apologetics. Check out this piece by the over-exposed McCain lover, Ana Marie Cox. Or read Tina’s own paean to Hillary Clinton.
You can almost hear the sigh of relief that Obama is appointing longtime Washington insiders to his cabinet. That means that Ana Marie and Tina won’t lose their own power base. (The Obama presidency is going to be much more business-as-usual than lefties want to admit.)
Last summer, Tina was interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Besides confessing her long friendship with John McCain, she gushes repeatedly about how her new site can make people feel well informed, even if they’re not. It’s another argument for telegraphic writing that blends news and entertainment. Of course, Tina has long been famous for her abbreviation of New Yorker pieces.