But imagine living your life under an Internet microscope, where total strangers are invited to criticize your life, your work, your romantic choices, and your psychology in front of a jeering audience of commenters. Gessen-bashing briefly replaced alcohol abuse as the favorite sport of NYC blog commenters, and in his zeal to respond, Keith did everything wrong...

The smarter you are, the less likely you are to respond appropriately when you are attacked on the Internet... Writers, academics, executives— successful people are more likely to handle this wrong because they have been trained, more or less, to expect rational behavior from their peers. [Lubbock Online]

Even though it's hard—so hard—and we don't always follow our own advice, the only way to deal with a blog-avalanche is to ignore blog commenters, bloggers, and blogs in general. Try avoiding the entire Internet if you have a book coming out, actually—the last thing you need to be wasting your time with is obsessively checking your Amazon rankings. Work on your next book, but don't be tempted for one second to make it include more than a cursory reference to Internet culture, Candace Bushnell.

Ohai, Ben! You have been fearing this day for a while, haven't you?

How does an auto-overexposed fameball gal go from being relationship kryptonite to having an actual relationship that has literally gone three complete months without being blogged? We're sure Leventhal came up with a long list of rules about them dating. Like, no being seen in public together, no being photographed in public together, no mentioning him on her all-inclusive Nonsociety blog, etc. That is so romantic.

Sadly, all this hush-hush secrecy and behaving like real celebs will only further inflate the self-importance of everybody involved. And thus, life will mimic art.

[Photo: Nick McGlynn for Random Night Out]

The latest (and well-researched) anti-snark missile comes from Geekcentric:

"Somewhere along the line we stopped using snark on the people who “deserved it” and started snarking at normal people. In fact, with the advent of email and open comment sections, many bloggers have discovered that the line between celebrities who are worthy of scorn and normal people who are just doing their jobs is a very thin line indeed.

I remember tearing into Ken Levine when he mocked my favorite television show on his blog. Ken is an Emmy-winning writer/producer/director — the creator of some of the most popular shows on television. Exactly the kind of elitist celebrity jerk that it’s safe to make fun of — until he shows up in your comment section and turns into a real human being.

Suddenly this Hollywood luminary, so famous I couldn’t really conceive him as a person, was addressing my comments and taking me seriously. He tried to be polite and respect my opinion, and it’s very hard to snark at somebody after that."

That's a good defensive strategy for the snarked-upon, actually!

NYU Local, on the other hand, is more of the opinion that some websites such as this one just aren't snarky enough anymore and have in fact "lost [their] edge":

"These days, it’s tough to imagine a world where Gawker, current media gossip mega-site and “flagship” of the Gawker Empire, had enough chutzpah to really piss people off."

You should see my inbox, sweetie!

"The internet was the happy place where smart people could finally scream “FUCK EVERY1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”—a sentiment I never thought I’d miss. But with Gawker now adding “Well, I guess some people are actually okay,” the sardonic are alone again in their silence."

The writer has an adorably overinflated idea of this and other snarky websites' importance. Let's take that down a notch: we'll begin by oversharing that some of us are working from home today and not wearing any pants. (It's hard to be sophisticated while not wearing pants—but it's so much easier to be snarky!)

If there was less snark, the world would maybe, possibly be a better place. But it would be way less fun. Snark is an essential social release mechanism, like blowing off steam at the bar and talking shit about everyone in your industry after work. Gossip is necessary as a way of exchanging vital social information.

Perhaps we'll begin by putting on some pants.

Update:

Goop.com. I know, sounds gross, right? Which bodily fluid does it remind you of? (Tagline: "Nourish the inner aspect.")

"While still minimal, the website includes a newsletter signup and a first person essay from Paltrow, a married mother of two, about what matters to her. It also features yet-to-be-filled sections called "Make," "Go," "Get," "Do," "Be," and "See."

[HuffPo]

In the end TNR retracted Beauchamp's columns in a hand-wringy 7,000-word piece called Fog Of War describing in painstaking (and also, gratuitous) detail their efforts to corroborate Beauchamp's claims of which Beauchamp's fact-checker-turned-wife Elspeth Reeve says: "That piece says, 'Pity me. I'm a victim of these two crazy kids.'" (She no longer works for them, duh!) (But Beauchamp is still in the Army!)

The big takeaway of the piece is that Beauchamp is an eminently decent, credible young who made a few mistakes — the infamous "mess hall incident" happened in Kuwait, for instance, not Iraq — in the execution of some of this war's most truly courageous journalism, only to get thrown under the bus (Bradley!) that rightfully ran over the careers of young TNR fabricator Stephen Glass and young TNR plagiarist Ruth Shalit. Because: conservatives are evil people with no interest in truth and TNR editor Frank Foer is fundamentally a pussy.

To be sure, that is the angle one would expect from Spencer "Attackerman" Ackerman who has not exactly been grinding his axe against the magazine that fired him in private. To be also sure, Beauchamp did a lot of caving under all the fact-checking pressure. (He was assigned backbreaking labor in 120-degree heat and Ackerman tells us he was hospitalized for a viral infection and the Army put a gag order on him but in any case, he disappeared.)

But motives aside the piece rings true. Because it most certainly has gotten to the point where internet skirmishes are as pointlessly vicious and traumatizing as real ones. I am not being melodramatic! You read that Times Magazine story about the internet trolls who wouldn't stop making fun of that poor sweet-faced 13-year-old kid who had already killed himself. (Also, if I am not mistaken you are reading Gawker!) Why would it surprise you that over in Iraq this same generation kicks around the corpses of Iraqi children or whatever? That is the cruel radiance of what is, friends, and laying it bare is the only purpose journalists can possibly serve.

But there's a dramatic disconnect — has been for awhile, but it's widening — between the guys who run lofty cash-strapped journalism outlets and the actual world they profess to strive to portray. For years those guys have lived in the world of prestige and peer esteem and talking points and ASME applications and panel discussions and correspondents dinners. But once there was a time when they didn't have that whole scene going on all day long on Bloggingheads and Memeorandum.

As long as this disconnect deepens amidst this backdrop of tightening news budgets, a nagging insecurity about the future of journalism combined with a hardening certainty among its younger generation of practitioners that success within it requires above all else a commitment to one's personal "brand"…well, guys like Frank Foer are going to take chances on hot young "voices." And those voices will invariably get silenced by mobs of angry haters in protracted, embarrassing sagas ending in tortured lamentations that "those young folks, all they care about is their personal brands!" but in the end only serve to expose how little anyone really gives a shit about the truth at this point.

Notes On A Scandal

It was found while some people were cleaning the beach, and they tracked him down. (No, he didn't find it on E-bay!) "Now aged 33, Mr Wylie said his mother had encouraged him to throw bottles into the sea as a child - something which he continues to do with his own children."

[BBC]

Quoth the FBI,

"But because of the overwhelming size of the collection and the complex and time-consuming nature of provenance investigations, we decided the best and most expeditious course of action was to publicize the art work to the general public... If you have information on the provenance, acquisition, or ownership of any work of art from the Kingsland collection shown here—or if you want to make a claim—please contact Agent Wynne at (718) 286-7302 or by e-mail at James.Wynne@ic.fbi.gov."

FBI

So this video is pretty dorky, and if you couldn't already tell from the bad acting, they weren't really there to witness it. It got over 500,000 views on YouTube, though, and that's what's important.

But when I was shooting heroin every day for seven years the last thing I wanted was a girlfriend in addition to my all-consuming vice. Junkies had expensive habits, rarely wanted to have sex and were an all-around reminder of why I hated myself. So I had a string of flings with straight girls that would last until my behaviors added up to something that—even if they couldn’t place—were impossible for them to ignore. The last of these relationships was with a tiny 19-year-old brunette who made me desperately want to kick dope...

We're sincerely glad he's clean now. The lesson here has nothing to do with drugs, however. The lesson is the "who?" you thought after "Matt Harvey." (Nothing against Matt—you're just the example here, dude.) Internet microfame is short and fleeting. But oh, how fun it is to elevate people to miniceleb status until it becomes theater of the absurd.

(It's not that absurd if you think about it, however—if the many blogs of the world are gonna insist on churning out content 24-7, we're going to all need some entertainers to provide us with freaking content. Microcelebs serve this purpose.)

Enjoy your fifteen minutes while it lasts, folks.

It's not really that riveting or particularly clever, but that's not the point: fake sex diaries are how you know you've made it as a micro-celeb (for a couple minutes.) Fake anything (Steve Jobs, Nick Denton) being created in your name is simply one of the Internet's strange customs.

[Fake Sex Diaries]

That's not to say that online commenters are any more or less accurate than their real live predecessors—civilians during previous wars often didn't have any insight or even eyewitness accounts of the situation they were escaping. Rumors, propaganda, and paranoia abounds in both the in-person and digital retelling of these stories, only now journalists don't even have to leave the house to get their quotes. Columbia Journalism Review calls the Russian blogosphere a "lively debate," but it reads more like a clusterfuck, much like the actual war itself.

On the other hand, who would've imagined that online-diary website LiveJournal would become the front lines for disseminating information for journalists and citizens blogging from the actual front lines? CJR also reports that while Georgia's access to Russian websites is getting shut down, LiveJournal—popular amongst young Russians—is "accessible because of its .com suffix, rather than the suddenly problematic .ru suffix."

"Hello! I'm Julia's intern and we're currently working on compiling some emails from readers. Julia loves part of your email (below), and we'd like to include your last name, age and where you live (city and state) along with it.

The email has only been read by Julia and myself. Currently, Julia is just using your email for her own personal collection, but I will update you if anything should change.

Thanks so much,

Samantha"

One more bit from Jules for the prospective new intern(s): "PS. Please let us know if you would be comfortable on camera. It’s TOTALLY okay if you’re not, we just need that info for planning purposes." Oh, right, for that imaginary TV show!

2) I got so fucking drunk at this concert that during a real quiet part of that song “Tears In Heaven”, I start screaming at the top of my lungs, “WINDOW BARS! YOU SHOULDA PUT UP WINDOW BARS!” And apparently I insulted enough people that they were able to conspire with security and get me thrown the fuck out of the place.

Now for the younger generation who is not repulsed by that second bullet point, I should tell you that Clapton had a kid who tragically died by falling out of his apartment window. And you see, I always wondered why that prick wasn’t crucified more for not having the proper window bars in place to protect the child. But in retrospect, I shouldn’t have aired my grievance in a drunken stupor, front row center at his concert… You live and you learn, I guess. Still the fact remains, if any of us makes the same mistake (God forbid), then we are going to jail for negligence… That prick got a slap on the wrist, another fucking Grammy Award, and the opportunity to write the closing song to Goodfellas… It’s just not right.

No, you sure ain't. Happy job-hunting though!

They'd like to think that they're Sex and the City, but it's simply another version of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the surrealist cartoon starring a self-aggrandizing, loud milkshake, a stupid-funny childlike meatball, and a semi-intelligent box of french fries. (You wonder, though, why Frylock wastes his time hanging out with the other two.)

I'm just saying: match them up. Just match them up. (And keep guessing re: Carl.)

It's true. Deep down, we all disappointed ourselves last night.

Whose nose knows best? How good are you at smelling the things? Ok wait I don’t want your answer, just play this indoor board game and you are going to prove yourself. It carries various smells including peppermint, burnt rubber, cut grass, and the dreaded doggie doo doo. Aren’t that fun? ‘Big Kids’ too can enjoy and test their smelling power. For the first time, such a cool smell loving site comes up to you to drive you out with more creative indoor games, Entertain & Amuse!

[Zoomdoggle, via Boing Boing]

This was the age of Taurus, the bull. The cow was sacred to everyone in the age of Taurus. This prohibition upon the slaughter of cattle came out of necessity. A farmer would have his cow, and in times of crop disease or drought, he may out of desperation butcher his cow to feed his family. Next year, he would have no cow to work his fields or to butcher, and thus his family would starve. However, the philosophy of Taurus was not sustainable with the temporary population growth it enabled. This civilization that spawned in the fertile crescent eventually left vast deserts as its legacy, the direct result of this aggressive agrarian expansion. In response came rigid hierarchies, lack of upward mobility, prostitution and slavery.

So Moses saw the long-term destructive nature of the cow worshippers and came down from the mountain to kill them all, blowing the Ram's horn. Thus came the age of Aries, the age of the trader slash herder, the age of the Jews, and the dominant philosophy (pantheistic animal totemism) disappears everywhere but India, where unique environmental conditions (monsoons, heavy phosphorus deposits) make the old agrarian philosophy sustainable. What else can you do in a vast desert for food, except herd? So after the massive killing spree spurred by Moses, the population of civilization explodes yet again to strain its limits, causing prostitution, slavery, famine and chaos. Along comes Jesus, with yet another moral basis for humanity to live on. The dominant philosophy (Judaism) loses most of its market share to Christianity. So what was the solution to this resource crisis? What's the astrological sign you see Christians advertising on the backs of their cars?

That's right, the nordic invention of the fishing net saved humanity from the wrath of the apocalypse. Thus came the age of Pisces.

So we're at a new resource shortage. Global peak phosphorus happened in 1989. Phosphorus can be recovered though, so it isn't too critical, but it is definitely bad for growing grain. We consistently as a planet consume more grain every year than we produce. Eventually those fat stockpiles are gonna hit bottom, and then shit hits the fan. We have already seen tortilla riots in Mexico, and commodities shortages and export controls in nearly half the world. Oil is going to become a little scarcer, but isn't going to run out anytime soon. The Saudi fields have peaked and Kuwait's are about to do so, but it doesn't matter. There was a strategic decision to bleed the middle east dry of oil long ago. We still have plenty of shit we can drill elsewhere. America's deserts have plenty of light sweet crude, I assure you.

So what resource are we going to run out of? There's a very important one, one that is required to grow things. One that is required for human beings to survive. T Boone Pickens just put 200mil of his own money into securing rights to this resource. The first ETF for this resource appeared a couple years ago, and Sydney is opening the first futures market for this resource. My hedge fund heavily speculates in this resource.

What resource is this? What age are we coming into? Fill in the blank!

[weev loves you]

Since blogs and social network profiles traffic in banality, it's hardly revealing that most trollish shenanigans are motivated by same. One tells the author he was molested by his grandfather and tears up when he thinks of how he's helping his family by hurting everyone else. Those to whom evil is done do evil in return, or at least that's the going press release.

It's an admirable piece on the whole, though I think Schwartz is too dismissive of how technology erodes whatever thin layer of decency keeps offline human behavior — at least in normal social conditions — in check:

[W]hile technology reduces the social barriers that keep us from bedeviling strangers, it does not explain the initial trolling impulse. This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.

Not many feel the urge to phone up a stranger and threaten her with rape, but even with the guarantee of anonymity and impunity, fewer still would attempt it. The Internet is a playground for sociopaths; the worst it ever does to those with consciences is make them seem feverish or silly (yeah, I'm looking at you, Dushkufan3000).

But not for nothing did Alexander Herzen say that his worst nightmare was Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Are we really surprised to discover that many trolls are racist and anti-Semitic?

I first met Weev in an online chat room that I visited while staying at Fortuny’s house. “I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money,” he boasted. “I make people afraid for their lives.” On the phone that night, Weev displayed a misanthropy far harsher than Fortuny’s. “Trolling is basically Internet eugenics,” he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!”

I listened for a few more minutes as Weev held forth on the Federal Reserve and about Jews. Unlike Fortuny, he made no attempt to reconcile his trolling with conventional social norms. Two days later, I flew to Los Angeles and met Weev at a train station in Fullerton, a sleepy bungalow town folded into the vast Orange County grid. He is in his early 20s with full lips, darting eyes and a nest of hair falling back from his temples. He has a way of leaning in as he makes a point, inviting you to share what might or might not be a joke.

Weev told me about his day — he’d lost $10,000 on the commodities market, he claimed — and summarized his philosophy of “global ruin.” “We are headed for a Malthusian crisis,” he said, with professorial confidence. “Plankton levels are dropping. Bees are dying. There are tortilla riots in Mexico, the highest wheat prices in 30-odd years.” He paused. “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?” He seemed excited to have said this aloud.

It's like a bad parody of Don DeLillo dialogue.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare for waking up tomorrow with Pareene's social security number and one of my kidneys missing.

[NYTM]

"At most law schools, course exams are routinely administered on laptops. Most students are familiar with exam software and accustomed to taking all their notes and outlining on laptops.

“I was kind of scared to do the handwriting,” said Katie Brandes, a recent graduate of Columbia Law School."

How have students, forced to hand-write these last couple hundred years, even survived, much less become lawyers?

Update from a lawyer:

"In 1975 I asked for special permission to type my bar exam, as it was simply not done. I wasn't handicapped, simply knew that I could type 5 times as fast as anyone could write, and if I wrote down everything I knew, enough of it would be right to permit me to pass! Did real well. However, we all were a little miffed by the guy with two and a half fingers who was allowed two extra hours on the exam to make up for his handicap. The real unfairness was my Smith Corona."

"NO ONE SHOULD BE WRITING FOR FREE except for interns and people looking to get a start in the field. I have written for HuffPo on special occasions but I received press passes that made it worthwhile, as well as exposure and clips that showcased a different side to my writing. However, I can't make a habit out of it because I have to make a living."

Bloggers have to stop thinking of themselves as white-collar creatives and more like rank-and-file workers. After all—that's how they're paid!

Some bloggers get paid per-post, like pieceworkers in a 19th-century factory. Some get paid for pageviews, which is even more idiotic from a worker's perspective. It means you're not paid for your labor (except your monthly minimum) but paid instead on a sort of gamble—how well your product will perform when it's thrown into the open marketplace.

(The pros and cons of that system have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere. There are definitely flaws, but hey, at least I'm receiving money for my blogging.)

It's easy and idealistic to say, but seriously: stop writing for free. This means you, if you're one of the many Huffington Post bloggers who don't get paid. Have something to say? Write an op-ed or a letter to the editor. There are some times in a young writer's career where you have to make the decision to write for free. I've done it; you've done it. The trick is knowing when to stop.

Just about anyone can argue with my line of reasoning—"it's more complicated than that," etc., and on some level it probably is. But on the actual working-to-live level it's not. It's not more complicated than that. If you're blogging for someone other than yourself (not as a commenter, not as a personal blogger; those are labors of love and don't count) you deserve to be paid.

If you're an employee or an independent contractor or a freelancer and some entity or website is making money off your labor, you deserve to be paid. It doesn't matter how solvent the company is—they're still selling ads and making revenue.

It's not only for your own good that you should demand to be paid, either. People working for free (or for depressed wages) drive down the pay for bloggers who do get paid for their work.

Blogging for free, no matter what the circumstances, is not being a good, loyal employee. It isn't a way to hang on to your job. It isn't some sort of heroic act.

Remember, free-bloggers: someone is making money off your work and your content. It's just isn't you.

"At the seminar 'How to Take Names and Be Taken Seriously as a Political Blogger,' many women said that their male colleagues and major media groups tended to ignore them, and to link to them less often (unless they are Arianna Huffington). They pointed to the Netroots Nation gathering (formerly known as Yearly Kos) for politically progressive bloggers, occurring that same weekend in Austin, Tex.

"[Lisa] Stone, one of the BlogHer founders and a former journalist who has produced blog networks for HBO and E! television, said that like other women at the conference, she was disappointed at the scheduling conflict [...]

"Other prominent female bloggers who did not attend the BlogHer conference agreed that there are unique challenges that women in the blogosphere face.

“'Women get dismissed in ways that men don’t,' said Megan McArdle, an associate editor at The Atlantic Monthly who writes a blog about economic issues. She added that women are taught not to be aggressive and analytical in the way that the political blogosphere demands, and are more likely to receive blog comments on how they look, rather than what they say.

"A few months before last year’s conference, Kathy Sierra, a technology blogger, received death threats from commenters on a variety of blogs. It prompted a flurry of discussion at BlogHer about whether women were the targets of particularly vituperative online attacks." [NYT]

So it's official. The world of blogs is garbage. But, at least it's gonna die.

My Mood Is Litigious. Mathew Firsht was awarded 22,000 pounds after suing former school chum Grant Raphael, who had created a bogus Facebook profile of Firsht listing his location, activities and lying about his politics and sexual orientation as well as a profile of his company titled "Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?" The two men were at one point business partners, and according to the judge who presided over the civil case, Raphael was bitter and envious of Firsht's success. The BBC quotes media lawyer Jo Sanders: "Sat at home or school or in the office, it's easy to think of social networking sites as harmless fun, that it's like chatting with friends, and that things posted there are either a joke or just a mischievous way of causing embarrassment. This ruling puts an end to that."

Clearly Raphael had low motives and he really was his own worst enemy — Firsht would have accepted an apology and the removal of the profiles, but Raphael was defiant and decided to try his luck in Britain's notorious libel courts. However, the case raises the question of how social networking sites have failed to self-regulate. Even Blogger has "terms of use" that are routinely violated whenever someone posts another person's home address and incites violence against him. Why couldn't Firsht, having spotted his effigy, simply ask Facebook to yank the page by offering the easy proof that it wasn't his own?

Touchy Terrorists. David T at the popular British blog Harry's Place was threatened with a libel suit recently by Mohammad Sawalha, a man the BBC has identified as the mastermind behind "much of Hamas’ political and military strategy." Sawalha heads a Hamas front organization known as the British Muslim Initiative and was gravely offended when David posted a translated Al Jazeera script of a speech Sawalha had given at an anti-Israel rally in Trafalgar Square. In the original version, Sawalha referred in Arabic to "Jewish evil." But then he must have realized that was no way to dupe multiculturalists in London, and asked an obliging Al Jazeera to alter its record and reprint the term "Jewish Lobby." (HP posted the Google cached page of the relevant Al Jazeera website, so there was really no arguing with its evidence).

Once Sawalha got lawyers involved, the blogosphere retaliated — I believe "blogburst" is the technical term — with a massive show of solidarity with Harry's Place. Again, this proved the so-called "Streisand effect": If you sue people on the Internet, you draw more attention to yourself than you would by keeping quiet. And after all, was it really going to do more harm to an agent of Hamas to be thought of as anti-Semitic?

(This wasn't the first time David T has had subpoenas sent to him for something he posted at HP. Then, as now, the would-be litigant's measures backfired.)

The Lawyer, the Book, and the WIPO. Libel isn't the only preserve for the web's pettifogging game wardens. Copyright is, too. An 11-year-old Scottish boy, Comrie Saville-Smith, was sued by the estate of C.S. Lewis after his father gave him the present of a Narnia-themed website — www.narnia.mobi — and guess who had jurisdiction? The U.N. Its World Intellectual Property Organisation, which grunge anarchists in Seattle would hurl rocks at if they took their lazy asses to Geneva, decided that the young Comrie might use the site for commercial purposes and recoup ad revenue on the Lewis brand just as Prince Caspian was hitting international theatres. The Saville-Smiths weren't fined any financial damages (save, I guess, the cost of counsel), but they did have to give up the URL.

The case became a wee cause celebre in Scotland, and you'll never guess which Manichean novel series was invoked to distinguish the big bad literary estate from the devoted but plagued innocent. Feel even sorrier for Comrie. His mom goes around talking like this: "We put up a spirited fight because we wanted to prove that you do not have to hand something over just because someone richer and more powerful tells you to do so."

Bill Harnsberger, who writes the Cheers & Jeers column for the site, started off as a commenter. Encouraged by other commenters’ responses to his missives, he began occasionally writing diaries for the site, which does not pay contributors or limit who can contribute. He attracted a following so large that when he lost his job as a copy writer at a marketing company last September, readers got together and within one week collected enough money to pay him to write for Kos full time.

Good on him, but he's the exception on which scores of pseudononymous hopes depend. With the proliferation of comments comes the inattention the average reader of blogs can afford to pay to them. Huffington Post has 30 people on staff to weed through racist and conspiratorial lunacy around-the-clock. What happens when more are needed and it becomes a real budgetary issue? Commenters never police each other well (except you guys down below, you're like Athenians), and some bloggers like Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic have done away with feedback altogether because they're tetchy about "censoring" anyone.

One of the more interesting things to happen in the great Future of the Web debate is at Andrew Sullivan's place. He asked his readers a while back whether or not they wanted comments. The majority said n'uh-uh, too distracting. Know hope, Erick Erickson.

[Politico]