The point is, she was totally out of line to step in to his blog to mend fences with Third Way. Just because Yglesias agreed to the guest post didn't make it right. It was way overkill.

The post by Palmieri seems more directed at Matt than his readers. It essentially demonstrates that the management can step in and do what it wants, and could just let Matt spend more time with his family and inconvenient opinions the next time he goes off topic.

Does Palmieri even know what a blog is for? If they appear to contain institutional newspeak nobody would read it.

BTW, didn't the Obama campaign allow an bunch of bloggers organize a protest group on their website? Imagine if they had stepped in and shut that down. That group, and their reason for existence was fundamentally against their host on one issue.

I'm sorry, but in what fantasy land can one describe a hack like Yglesias as exercising "editorial independence"? He is a robotically predictable partisan.

It would have been better if Matt Y. had written the post acknowledging the affection that the CAP has for The Third Way by quoting Palmieri's opinion on the subject.

Bun fight.

All she had to say that she agrees that the Third Way is Hyper-- Incremental Bullshit but it is our (CAP's) bullshit.

congratulations, the blogoshpere has turned into high school cafeteria gossip mongering.

It's fairly uncharted territory for a think tank of that prestige -- indeed, of any prestige at all -- to hire a young progressive blogger and let him retain his voice on their site.

And it still is. In what credible way is MY a progressive?

"a young progressive blogger" A young progressive blogger who learned while blogging at The Atlantic how to advance one's career by writing what the big boss wants to hear without the big boss having to say so.

A young progressive blogger who supported the invasion of Iraq. A young progressive pro-Israel blogger-damn the consequences for America.

"and nor does EPI,"

They used to have Max Sawicky, and he's much missed.

Gee, the way she's carrying on you'd think Matt had dissed her boyfriend or something. Cheez laweez!!!

Legal Disclaimer:

A reminder that my views are my own and may or may not represent the views of myself or any other person living or dead.

So there.

Ditto q-mega dittos. It's a sad day when guys like Matt Yglesias and John Cole over at Balloon Juice can be celebrated progressive bloggers after supporting the Iraq war. It's like no one has been killed or maimed or tortured; and the constitution is still whole. That any damage that has occurred due to their support of the war is merely incidental.

Yglesias interruptus

WTF?
This is the sort of stunt you'd expect from the governor of alaska...

when guys like Matt Yglesias and John Cole over at Balloon Juice can be celebrated progressive bloggers after supporting the Iraq war.

Normally blogs and papers etc. just have a standing editorial caveat about independence of specific writers etc., and that's good enough and taken for good enough.

Matt Yglesias is lucky he is not a conservative. If he were he would have become a non-person by now. As it is both his blog and CAPAF are enjoying a considerable number of hits on an otherwise slow late December day.

Sadly the nameless person at Third Way who complained about the post is probably wondering how he can make it all go away.

Bernard HP Gilroy; I certainly do get to banish him. (I have deleted the bookmark)By supporting the Iraq war he supported torture and killing and maiming and suffering. Perhaps that isn't domestic enough to qualify as a progressive issue for you. But I suspect that it is a domestic issue for the families of those Americans who have been killed and maimed and made into torturers and war criminals by the makers and supporters of this war.

I will make my position clear: those who support war in any form other than defensive are amoral. And anyone who was not capable of discerning than the Bushies were lying us into a war are incompetent political pundits.

And I think I'll delete this blog too. It's just too damn uncritical of the Democrats and it's relationship with the name brand conventional wisdom blogger set, (Klein, Yglesias,Sullivan, Drum, etc) so damn incestuous, that there is nothing "outside of the box" here to read at all.

A commenter took Hilzoy to task the other day for expressing that his "thoughts and prayers" were with the war criminal Mucasey after he fainted. I've had a little fun with that in my own comments, but Geeeeez!

"Just because you're mad that he wasn't on your team doesn't mean you get to banish him."

I agree. I don't think I was on board against the war as strongly or as early as I should have been. So now I have to turn in my ACLU membership, join a country club and vote for Palin and the rest of the KKK? I would think that doing something stupid or something one would regret not doing as the threshold for membership would exclude most if not all living human beings. Hard to win elections that way.

I really have to disagree with this assessment. The problem wasn't that Palmieri reiterated the obvious fact that Yglesias' opinion doesn't represent the opinion of the entire organization (which is an absurdity). It was the way she did it: Specifically, by writing a "guest post" on his blog. What should have happened, if anything, is that they had Yglesias write an update to that post stating that it was merely his opinion.

But of course, that wasn't necessary either, as only a fool would assume that Yglesias was speaking for the entire organization. After all, the real purpose of that post was to mollify Third Way, as Palmieri felt it necessary to give an official endorsement of the organization on Yglesias' blog. And seeing as how I know Yglesias much better than I know that organization, I think it was a dumb, dumb decision. Hell, the only reason I even read his initial post is because of the follow-up post and now I have a real reason to think Third Way sucks. And that's what all this is about. It's necessarily that we think Yglesias is compromised, but rather that these two organizations suck for thinking this was a good idea. And that's what people need to be talking about.

One thing I do find funny about this are all the people who insist that Yglesias isn't a progressive. I've always been one of those big tent people who want as many people on my side as possible. These progressives sound just like the far-right conservative purists who continually purge their side of any dissenters...and then wonder why they lose elections. For as much as they want to win elections, they insist on doing it on their terms, or not at all. Better to lose the election than their souls, I guess; but having read Yglesias for many years now, I fail to see how he's a soul sucker.

I really like your thinking on this steve, but something doesn't sit right. Is it his space/blog or not? If its his (under their sponsorship) seems like he gets to say what he wants, and she can email her thoughts and he can quote them or link to them or whatever, but he doesn't hand over the mic if its his mic or he risks giving the appearance that its not his mic. Look at this the other way, does that mean they endorse ever OTHER post he's made, and every single comment offered in response since they didn't object?

If its not his blog, don't pretend.

CAP needs to realize that people aren't reading MY because of them, people are reading them because of MY.

I can't imagine taking anything Think Progress has to say seriously ever again.

This is censorship, regardless of whether they removed this or not. This was an obvious move to intimidate him and other people to their left against saying anything about Third Way. To pretend otherwise is to display a profound lack of understanding of human nature, sociology, and psychology.

And yes, by singling out one post for rebuke, they have essentially claimed ownership of everything else said in that blog.

I'm not saying Yglesias is a bad, bad man. I'm not in favor of banishing him to the wilderness.

I'm just saying, calling Matt Yglesias a progressive is like calling Joe Klein a liberal.

And I do mean that: MY is a part of the new conventional wisdom. He's an inside baseball player, as illustrated by this incident, and in a few years will be railing against the DFHs.

How about this?

Nobody can say who is or isn't a progressive unless they define the term first. And without weasel words.

So if it such a trivial and unimportant matter, why did Third Way call up on a Sunday and demand a retraction? And why did Think Progress comply?

Cranky

The point is, she was totally out of line to step in to his blog to mend fences with Third Way.

Sorry, Wallie-boy; but you're absolutely wrong on this one. This "kerfuffle" is what The First is all about; when you put it in the spotlight of transparency, you find out that the spotlight sometimes moonlights on the graveyard shift as an infrared heat lamp at the local Mickey-D's.

In short: If you want everyone to put their opinions and comments on "your" page---and say only what you want them to say---then you're no damned better than the bunch of maroons we've just kicked to the curb a mere 7 weeks ago.

Coerced niceties to Mr. Yglesias would, indeed, be noting more than "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit...."

Biking the talk

Yglesias's main form of transportation is a bicycle.
If that doesn't make him progressive... nothing does.

Ya know what? If all this shit hadn't happened late on a Sunday, the last one before Christmas, & at least some of the people involved were quite probably kinda liquored up past the point of thinking clearly, none of this would have happened. People make mistakes, especially under these conditions. It seems so many of us commenters here, at MattY's blog, & elsewhere will not allow anyone the slack to be merely human & make a mistake occasionally. It took awhile, but Matt addressed the outrage in a good way & even posted another negative article about Third Way to top it all off nicely.

Does it get more "inside baseball" than this? My standard quote for this sort of ridiculousness: "Lighten up, Francis"