Much of what I've written below originally appeared in comments to a post on Gribbit's blog that was also posted to StopTheACLU.com, material which Gribbit -- as if it must be noted again -- has, in large part, deleted. (I won't bother posting the screen shot of the page as it appeared before my observations were nixed.)That different earthlings inhabit different realities is nowhere more evident than in the output of, you guessed it, the bloggers at StopTheACLU.com. The latest but of fuckery is
Gribbit's complaint that the sinistriberal New York
Times had given righty bloggers the short shrift in stating that "blogging is nowhere near the force among Republicans as it is among Democrats."
Gribbit listed the top ten blogs as ranked by
The Truth Laid Bear, along with his own brief editorial comments:
1. Instapundit.com (4850) details - somewhat right when he wants to be.
2. Michelle Malkin (4595) details - right.
3. Daily Kos: State of the Nation (3827) details - far left.
4. lgf: put your foot on the rock (3206) details - right.
5. Captain’s Quarters (2977) details - right.
6. Power Line (2902) details - right.
7. Stop The ACLU (2289) details - right (better be I write there).
8. Mudville Gazette (2249) details - right.
9. Hugh Hewitt (2242) details - right.
10. ScienceBlogs (2164) details - I’m not familiar with this one.
He then opines:
"Seems to me that I’ve identified 8 out of the top 10 blogs in the ecosphere as being Conservative in nature. So where does Nagourney get his information? From the pitiful turn out of 1,000 bloggers at Yearly POS, I mean KOS. The conference of leftist bloggers gathering in Las Vegas."
Gribbit's talking about
this conference, held in Las Vegas this weekend. As for the accuracy of the Times reporter's info, I'll get to that below.
Gribbit continues:
"Oh, and in case you are wondering, I rank #178 out of 56,081 bloggers being tracked by TTLB. Yearly POS, I mean KOS, has attracted 1,000 bloggers out of 56,081. Seems kind of lame numbers to be claiming dominance huh?"
At this point we can safely assume that math (unlike English) is not one of Gribbit's strong suits. Combine poor math skills with a penchant for lying and you have the potential for serious insults to reality.
First, Gribbit's assuming that his ranking of 178 is correct; I doubt he ranks that high among even the independent voices in his own head, but again, more on these numbers below. Second, he's also assuming that the folks at
Daily Kos used TTLB rankings in order to determine whom to invite. (Please hold your fucking snickering until the end of the post, CaptainRational.)
Before I rip Gribbit all to shit and back, I offer this non-statistical aside. One of the many ways in which Gribbit exhibits cognitive impairment is his equating “influence” with “site traffic.” Just because some right-wing blogs may get a lot of hits doesn’t mean anything when it comes to what goes on in the brick-and-mortar world, just as the garbage written in the Bible about humankind springing from dirt seems important to some but is meaningless in the context of actual biology.
The typical person who frequents blogs like Malkin’s and StopTheACLU.com is plainly uneducated (this is far from a subjective judgment; just look at their comments and their own personal blogs) and is in no position to make a difference in terms of public policy; moreover, these impediments to accomplishment are rendered more insurmountable by a seeming inability on the part of self-professed right-wingers to resist reckless dishonesty. A lot of the premier left-side bloggers, on the other hand, are
college professors,
journalists, and
businesspeople with track records of not only reporting closely on but participating in proceedings like the
Kitzmiller v. Dover "Intelligent Design" case. They are literate and honest, and people listen to them. They are not infallible but they admit their mistakes when they make them. Gribbitian sorts, absent from meaningful proceedings, exchange fabrications, virtual backslaps, "blogbursts," and links, and that’s about it. (Lefties do these things as well, but my point is that they do more than just yammer and fucker-futz around with source code.)
But getting back to numbers, Gribbit’s triumphantly vacuous contention that "the right dominates the blogosphere" is founded on blog rankings that fall several levels shy of being pulled out of his or anyone’s ass. To suggest that they are is an affront to unwiped assholes everywhere. TTLB computes its rankings in a way that ensures that they’re not even close to being comprehensive or even meaningful (see its
FAQ for details). If a blog doesn’t have a Sitemeter.com hit counter, it’s fuck out of luck when it comes to rankings on a traffic basis, which is obviously the money stat, but one Gribbit ignores (and
wrongly claims doesn't exist -- see
this page, a single "view by traffic" click away from the page from which Gribbit took his above data) when touting his and other righty rankings. You see, TTLB scores blogs based on the numbers of incoming links they have –- and, if that isn't nutty enough,
only includes links to and from blogs registered with TTLB. Any moron, regardless of how widely read his blog is, can stock his blogroll with links to sites he knows are registered with this outfit. The whole thing is obviously set up beautifully for people whose main mission is to improve a noncontributory ranking score to take advantage of these various limiting conditions.
So how many bloggers register with TTLB? Well, the site claims to track 56,000 blogs. Technorati, the gold standard of blog traffic tracks 43.9
million blogs along with 2.5
billion links. That’s
782 times as many sites as TTLB tracks. And lo and behold, how many of the conservative blogs in TTLB’s top ten appeared in the top 10 on June 10th at
Technorati? Zero. Malkin washed up at 14th, Instapundit (not exactly a right-wing blog) at 17th, IGF at 60sth, Power Line at 63rd, and Captain’s Quarters at 95th.
And oops –- what’s this shit? According to the same Technorati listing (which those on the right may now confidently assert is controlled by Zionist wetbacks), on June 10th, Daily Kos was 4th, the Huffington Post 6th, and Crooks and Liars 18th. So the top three righty blogs together have an average ranking of around 30th, the top three lefty blogs about 9th.
Then there are
Alexa’s rankings. Over the past three months, Daily Kos has had a "daily reach" (number of Web surfers out of every million who visit the site) of
around 700. The Huffington post hovers right around 1,000; Crooks and Liars, 600. Malkin, the nutjob flagship, sits at about 370, and StopTheACLU.com itself barely cracks double digits. And Gribbit himself? Ummm...break out the abacus and wait a while, folks.
“Damn those facts!” Gribbit mutters to himself at this point. “Why the fuck can’t I make them go away by deleting comments and calling people moonbats? What kind of shit world is this?”
The point here isn’t whether either righties or lefties "control" the blogosphere –- that’s moot on numerous levels. The point is that right-wingers like Gribbit rely exclusively on lies and distortions every time they set about making a “moonbat-bashing” point. These fucks are as trustworthy as a starving pit bull alone in a room full of game hens.
But nope —- pointing out that the TTLB rankings are baseless is just a sign of left-wing brain rot, right, Gribbirino?