It's not that Corrente never has anything worth reading. For example, Monday morning they offered up Helen Thomas questioning the White House about single payer health care. That March 9th post was topical and news . . . when Rebecca offered "helen thomas asks why the war on single-payer?" . . . March 5th. Never worry, anything worth saying online will make it to Corrente a few days or weeks later. And never fear or fret about credit because Corrente never gives any. Hell, these days they don't even offer a blogroll.
They don't offer much of anything. You can read Sarah's right-wing rants from Texas, where Sarah rushes in to wipe drool from Barack's mouth -- when she's not attacking Arabs (most especially Palestinians). Or maybe you'll get the freak show from Canada, the one trying to rip off our own Stan. From across the northern border, the freak show shares his crazed fantasies about what really happens in America and what Americans are really like.
Leah left the building along time ago. Farmer resurrected Corrente's original site. There is no Corrente anymore. It's like Axel and a group of strangers trying to tour as Guns N Roses.
You can pin the blame for the split on Barack Obama. Lambert saw him as a phony (we agree with that take) and others disagreed. And so began the Long Walk Away which continues to this day.
So these days Corrente never knows what to do but Lambert feels like he has to do something and apparently do it repeatedly. So last Sunday, he wrote at least 17 posts. Well 'wrote.' Lengthy excerpt of someone else's writing with a wraparound sentence or two by Lambert.
For someone so anti-Barack, Lambert feels the need from time to time to decide what's acceptable and what's not. It's led to the banning of MyIQ2xu because there must be NO speaking of Bill Ayers decreed Lambert. And it's led to his repeated attacks on The New York Times and others for raising the issue of socialism with Barack.
Barack asked if he's a Socialist for good reason. He's not one. He's a Corporatist War Hawk. But the press has begun to notice (and the White House is responding with huge barricades) how Barack's treated by certain Communist and Socialist publications. It's not the way your normal Democrat or Republican president would be treated. It's a fawning, it's a worship. And speeches keep leaking out to the press -- recordings of speeches keep leaking out to the press -- where various Socialists and Communists are explaining that it is the Party's job to help Barack.
When that happens, you damn well better believe the press is going to ask about it. And when Barack can't answer a question -- and he's never been able to answer a direct question -- the press is going to repeat the question.
Barack brings it on himself by always trying to weasel out of a concrete answers. Concrete answers don't allow the changeling to be the blank slate that everyone else projects their hopes and dreams on.
Getting mad at The New York Times for asking a question is a bit childish. Getting mad at the press for continuing to ask a question when it's not answered is being opposed to actual journalism which is supposed to get an answer.
Talk about biting the hand that feeds -- were it not for actual journalism, Corrente would have nothing but the one and two sentence wrap arounds . . . with nothing to wrap them around.
Unable to do a media critique, unable to do any sort of a critique, they just keep throwing stuff up, hoping something hits. They'll praise, for example, Barack for his attempt to "normalize gender" (their words, we'd never right such an offensive phrase) and they'll forget to note that the committee in question has no budget, no meeting schedule and no staff. In other words, it's for-show, not unlike Nouri al-Maliki's Women's Affairs Ministry.
Which is why Corrente becomes less and less worth reading. If you actually follow the news, you're generally a day or two ahead of Corrente.
They have little to offer these days. For example, last week they finally 'covered' the Iraq War. This was their 'coverage' in full: "Pay 'em off. I mean, that was what the Anbar awakening was all about, right? Funding the Sunnis?" Thank you, Lambert for your hard, hard work keeping Iraq on the map,, keeping the issue of the illegal war front and center!
This month two studies on Iraq were released [PDF format warning on both], Amnesty International's "Trapped By Violence: Women In Iraq" and Oxfam International's "In Her Own Words: Iraqi women talka bout their greatest concerns and challenges." Guess reading those would have been too much work. Better to offer your single-source excerpts and pretend you did something, right?
Boston Boomer (The Confluence) managed to say more about the economy in one post last week than all the posts at Corrente did. That's apparently more work than Lambert and the gang are up to.
Over the summer, Corrente's biggest problem appeared to be Lambert's refusal to allow new people a password which would allow them to comment. Currently, the problem is no one's interested in commenting anymore. It's Week Old News. No real work. No real thought. "I just read this! And that makes it a post!"
In other words here's how you write a Corrente post:
1) Find the topic everyone can't shut up about.
2) Select one news outlet -- the more obvious, the better!
3) Grab several paragraphs.
4) Write quick one (two if you're a hard worker!) sentence into.
5) Post!
6) Take a deep breath and wipe down the sweat. Do some yoga, possibly morning star, you've certainly strained and then some.
Corrente gets the Bronze Boobs because it's become the blog about less-than-nothing.
