Eye on Winer

After announcing its closure last week, Dave Winer changed his mind and kept running NewsJunk — his latest overhyped product. A look at the traffic stats on Alexa and Compete shows that he needn’t have bothered.

The site’s a dud. The latest Compete stats show that NewsJunk fell to 2,300 users in the entire month of October, even though it was the height of the presidential campaign when most political news sites were shattering traffic records.

The site’s traffic peak was 32,000 users after it got some press from Mashable and other easy marks in the Web 2.0 world who think everything Winer shits out is worth sifting through for corn. But if you compare NewsJunk’s traffic to Memeorandum, which Winer claimed as his competition, his site got killed. (And Memeorandum spiked towards Election Day, while NewsJunk entered into a death spiral.)

Winer bitched last week on Mashable about how they didn’t get the appeal of his site (them and just about everybody else on the planet):

This is a work of fiction. You should put a big disclaimer on it up front — you’re wrong on so many fronts, and you missed what was interesting technically about the product and you’re supposed to be a tech pub.

It’s amazing that Winer thinks there’s anything technically novel about the site, which is just a human-selected list of RSS items from media feeds that counts clicks. The programming and concept are both trivial. You could code it in an afternoon and still have time left over to walk the dog.

As NewsJunk suffers the same fate as Flickrfan and Share Your OPML, even with all of Winer’s pimping on Scripting News, is he completely washed up? It’s been a long time since he was involved in anything that could even charitably be described as a success.

Dear Dave,
Get real. I suspect that there isn’t a single Republican on the planet who gives so much as half a damn what you think. For starters, this paragraph is pretty blatant ass-kissing:

I know some of you are honorable people, good Americans, taxpayers, people who love your families, pay your taxes, do your best to live by the Golden Rule. People who try to do the right thing, whatever that is. It’s to those Republicans that I wish to have a few words.

After all of the screeds we’ve read about your disdan for Republicans, how they’re stupid and evil, to then turn around and try to butter them up is just absurd. If you believe what you wrote, you owe those Honorable Republicans a gigantic apology for the way you’ve maligned them for simply having a (R) next to their names in the past. I suspect, though, that you don’t mean it, and that’s fine, because someone has to off-set the crazy Republican partisans, and that job falls to crazy Democratic partisans.

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Dave’s pieces get more out-there and bizarre every day and the election is still a month away. How much longer can the descent into complete lunacy take?

Dave wrote a novel today. Let me give you the executive summary:

I have a bunch of prejudices against conservatives and republicans. Allow me to explicate them in great detail. Except, instead of calling it “prejudice” I’m going to call it “truth”. Now do you see how terrible Republicans are? (Not that I’m a Democrat, no sir!)

Republicans hate me because I’m so awesome. I’m such an incredible American and they’re all just jealous of all of my knowledge and wisdom and worldliness. They’re stupid because they don’t want to go to Europe.

In summary, I am great, and the reason that the discourse in this country is so terrible is because so many people are too stupid to know they should just listen to me. But fuck them, because they’re stupid and I’m not.

That was the gist of the article. I still don’t understand what the point of it was, if not to stroke his own ego a little bit and reassure himself that he is, in fact, superior to everyone who thinks differently than he does.

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First off, to respond to this comment from the comments: “Eye, didn’t you once say you don’t live in the US and are not an American?” I’ve never said such a thing, and I have no idea where you’d have gotten that.

Okay. From the links: Winer for CTO of the United States?

Dear Mr. Riley,

Have you lost your fucking mind?

Signed,

People with more than seven braincells

Despite all of the press he gets for “inventing” RSS and Blogging, relative to people with real CTO capacity and experience, Dave knows zero about technology. A golden retriever would be a better fit — at least they’re likable.

Then there’s this laughable piece of logic:if Paulson’s plan is for real, Bush and Cheney should quit to prove how serious they are about it.

Pardon?

In what world does that make sense? I will say, though, that the post seems to employ so many logical and rhetorical fallacies that he may have just created a new one.

…for some insightful, intelligent, or just not completely insane political commentary out of Dave. I suspect I’ll have to wait a while. Probably forever. Substituting for those:

• Calling Palin a Stepford Wife is not at all sexist, right?
• Likening a female VP candidate to a chick-flick plot: also not sexist.
• Republicans shouldn’t get air time. Why do they get air time? Because if they didn’t it would invite some pretty serious legislation. To say nothing of the fact that, whether Dave likes Republicans or not, the goal of the media is not to promote a party, but to inform. Getting into a petty pissing contest with a political party is not exactly “journalism”.
• Dave writes: “He assumes, like royalty, that Republicans always know what’s right”. This from a post titled Frum’s annoying wrong idiotic argument. Sad he could put that all together and not notice the delicious juxtaposition. Probably because he thinks he’s always right.

I guess, at the end of the day, we’ve not learned anything new. Like many partisans, Dave will stretch logic, consistency, and integrity to their absolute breaking point — and then some — in order to defend his party and their politicians.

I think “citizen journalism” has a long way to go.

One of Dave’s oft-used canards is that he’s an Independent, not a Democrat. He claims this whenever it’s convenient — basically when he thinks it makes him more credible on a particular issue. After all, a Democrat might skew or exaggerate, but he’s an independent, right?

Yeah, right. Nobody really buys it, except maybe Dave himself. He clamors for respectful debate, but that seems to only apply to people who aren’t Republicans, which should really tell you everything you need to know about his alleged independence, but today’s post about McCain’s potential Vice-presidential pick really does away with any pretense (emphasis supplied):

I hope he chooses Lieberman — I think he’d be the easiest to run against. I don’t see too many Republicans going for him, and no one wants a traitor a heartbeat from the Presidency . . .

A traitor to whom, exactly? A true independent welcomes the idea of politicians who make their decisions based on ideas and ideals rather than party affiliation. I think both Democrats and Republicans can agree that there’s not a huge gap, practically speaking, between McCain and Lieberman… so, really, who’s being betrayed?

Simple: partisan Democrats and nobody else. No wonder Dave feels the way he does.

WE’RE HAPPY, DAMNIT! Who’s he trying to convince, us or himself? Actually, because Dave projects his every emotion onto the world, all this really means is that he’s happy and at the DNC. There could be fist-fights in the street and he’d still be saying everyone is happy.

In other news, via anonymous tip, Dave claims, in the comments to this post to have donated $1,000 to Obama’s campaign but neither OpenSecrets nor the FEC has heard of him. The reporting minimum is $200 in aggregate (2 U.S.C. 434), so even though Dave claims to have made ten $100 donations, he should still be showing up on these lists.

That is, if he’s actually donated anything. It would be a silly thing to lie about, but what’s the reasonable explanation?

Dave’s about 25% right in his post today about our progress in Iraq. He writes:

There is no such thing as winning an occupation. You either continue to occupy or withdraw. It’s semantic nonsense to apply the verb “win” to the noun “occupation.”

Winning in war or sport is not vague or ill-defined. When the clock runs out in football the team that’s ahead wins. When two runners are in a race the first to cross the finish line wins. When you fight a war, when you take the other guys’ capital and disband their government and army, that’s winning.

The words are correct, but they don’t mean what he thinks they mean. Just because you can’t “win” an occupation doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between withdrawing now or withdrawing later. There are plenty of differences. All other things being equal, for example, you’d rather withdraw now than later. I’m sure Dave would agree with that.

The problem, though, is that all other things aren’t equal. You can even talk about what those things might be without having to debate time-tables. For example, when deciding whether to stay or go, you’d want to know whether the current government is viable. Will it sink or will it swim? Does it matter to us one way or another?

You might be careful to consider who is going to fill any power-vacuums that might arise when the most potent military in the world heads back home. Not just on the national scale, but in that region of the world as well as the various provinces and cities within that country.

When people talk about “winning” in Iraq, they’re being lazy with their English, but the sentiment is not as bizarre as the words are. There are places along the time-line at which withdrawal would be disastrous. The debate isn’t how soon we want to come home — this isn’t vacation — the debate is about when would be the optimal time to withdraw.

Dave seems to be implying, as many on the left are wont to do, that we should get out right now, no questions asked. It’s a debate for another time and place, but one there’s one thing that’s indisputable: that you can’t “win” an occupation does not mean that one time to leave is as good as any other.

Dave Winer’s declaration that no one has the right to judge Rev. Wright provoked this exchange in his comments with a blogger named Marco:

Marco 18 hours ago

It will be hard to believe but this is not meant to be a shrill attack.

Posts like these are jarring in their inconsistency. I fully understand your point on Rev Wright and even sympathize with your position.

What I don’t understand is why you can’t see the hypocrisy in wanting to extend individuals like Rev Wright every possible explanation for their words or actions (”He was alienated”, “He was caught in a position non of us have ever been in”) but when someone you disagree with politically is automatically an evil person and each misstatement is borne of the most nefarious motives.

Its insulting to see you constantly deride others for sweeping generalizations and oversimplification of issues only to have you follow up with a string of posts casting sweeping dispersions and attacks based on 3 seconds sound bites addressing unbelievably complex topics.

I appreciate the perspective you bring which is why I haven’t yet unplugged from your feed but it would be great to see just a little of the balance you want to see in our political process displayed in your posts.

dave 17 hours ago

It’s pretty simple, I say what I have to say and it’s a function of what happens in the world. So when things change, my point of view may change too. If you disagree, go ahead and disagree. But all these charged words, hypocrisy, insulting, deride, attacks, etc — sorry, that’s your mind playing tricks on you. I’m none of those things. Usually I don’t let comments that require defensive responses (or else I admit to all the BS you accuse me of) through, but this time I wanted to restate this, that I’ve said many times before. My blog is my space to say what I think. You don’t have to agree, and if you want to, start your own blog to say what you have to say. That’s where comments like yours (above) belong, not here.

dave 17 hours ago

See how much space it takes to clear up your mess. But now that it’s clear I can answer your question.

BECAUSE MY MIND WORKS DIFFERENTLY FROM YOURS.

Which is so obvious it doesn’t even need to be said. All our minds work differently, we were all raised in different environments with different values. To say basically that I should see everything the same way you do is a waste of bandwidth. It’s ridiculous. It’ll never happen nor should it ever happen.

Marco 17 hours ago

That’s not even remotely my point.

Do you really think I would be interested in engaging you or anyone else who did not agree with my world view if that was what I believed? Of course not.

Your response is a wonderful defense of your desire to remain ideologically isolated. “I see things the way I see things and I have no need to try and understand your position” is a great way to stifle true debate and a horrible way to effectively change the way we approach issues in this country. As I said before - it wouldn’t matter to me if you wouldn’t insist on standing on your soapbox and donning sackcloth and ashes to mourn the death of honest debate.

dave 17 hours ago

Okay you get the last word, the rest of it, if there is more — in your space.

Marco, like every well-intentioned person who responds to Winer, hasn’t learned yet that he can’t handle criticism. Winer’s statement, “Usually I don’t let comments that require defensive responses (or else I admit to all the BS you accuse me of),” is one of the clearest explanations he’s ever given that explains why: He thinks that if he doesn’t delete critical comments, it means they are true.

Open and honest dialogue is not possible on any forum that Winer controls.

Today Dave compared the media’s handling of the Karla Faye Tucker case to their handling of Rev. Wright. In so many ways, the comparison could not be any more appropriate.

Dave’s logic on Rev. Wright goes like this: people were attacking Obama with clips from this pastor. Because Obama is “good”, Wright must also be good. Because he’s good, those clips must be “taken out of context” and the reports about them misleading. Because Wright was kind and human during a TV interview (that he did specifically to try to help Obama), that proves he’s good.

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