May 04, 2008

Nico Pitney helps Huffington Post descend to ThinkProgress level

Nico Pitney is the Huffington Post's "National Editor". Until around August of last year he was Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and the Managing Editor of ThinkProgress. And, yes, those are very strong warning signs considering that CAP seems to screen its hires for childishness and stupidity. Nowadays he's helping drive the HuffPost even further down, and, yes, unbelievable as it might seem, it's possible for them to be even lower than they are now. He's made just 15 posts since December (huffingtonpost.com/the-news/reporting/nico-pitney), with the latest being called "Anti-Immigration Protester Needs A Spell-Check" (huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/04/whoops-anti-immigration-p_n_100043.html). A May Day 2008 anti-illegal immigration protester in Houston held up a sign saying "Make English America's offical Language", with "official" being spelled wrong. It was taken by Johnny Hanson of the Houston Chronicle and considering that it's available in that incorrect form on their site I'm going to assume that it wasn't photoshopped.

The sign is certainly ironic, but the point being made is extremely minor. And, Pitney incorrectly states that the protester is "Anti-Immigration", when in fact she's at a protest for illegal immigration and the sign's directive wouldn't impact those immigrants who learn English. I'll leave it up to someone else to figure out whether "spell-check" is the correct form in this context.

I left the comment in the extended entry, which hasn't been approved and probably won't be considering that comments left after it were approved. However, plenty of other ThinkProgress-style comments have been approved: "All graduates from the Dan Quayle School for Spelling!", "It was good of her to highlight the word with 2 underscores too. Love the busy shirt as well.", "makes one proud to bea an Amerikan ;-)", etc. The jokes just keep coming, but only a couple make - or are allowed to make by the moderator - the point I made.

Arianna has been embarrassed by comments left on her site's posts before, and she might want to reconsider whether having lightweights like Nico Pitney throw out red meat is the direction she wants to go in. It might be good for the traffic, but it's not so good for the reputation.

Here's the comment which wasn't approved:
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Here are some fun pictures from the other side:

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/03/my-immigrant-vagina-is-angry-and-other-militant-may-day-moments/

And, here's a fun question: whose interests do HuffPost posts like this serve? Certainly not the interests of the vast majority of Americans. In fact, those who get a boost from posts like this include the Mexican government, crooked businesses, crooked banks, crooked politicians, racial power groups, and on down the line. Whenever someone tells you something, asking "cui bono?" is a good idea.

Posted to Bloggage at May 4, 2008 01:09 PM