Thanks again to everyone who helped make BMG the best local blog in The Phoenix Best Readers Poll. Thanks also to Red Mass Group for congratulating us for our win, and thus, in fact, alerting us to it, and for provided entertaining commentary in their comments, as noted below by David.
Most entertaining of all, perhaps, is our description by The Phoenix:
So you put down your Sunday New York Times and head out to Whole Foods to buy some organic vegetables and wine for your book club tonight (In Defense of Food – genius!), then you hop back into your Prius with the “1.20.09” sticker and head home to Cambridge; open your MacBook and chat with your friends on BLUE MASS GROUP about why marijuana should be legalized and the evils of Mark Penn, and it’s great, but despite these distractions, you can’t help but wonder if Obama ever got those hemp panties you mailed to him. . .
I found this incredibly amusing because it is such an MSM caricature. It’s as if I wrote that The Phoenix was … well, you can fill in what you think best in the comments. Although it’s true the three Editors have endorsed Obama, for example, my sense is that a big majority, or at least about half of BMG readers support Senator Clinton. I had to Google 1.20.09, to find out what it was. Just shows how out of touch I am. And hemp panties, my goodness: are they edible?
My only question is, can we buy a hemp support girdle for Senator McCain?
I’ve never gotten the sense that a majority, or even plurality, of this community has the cash to shop at Whole Paycheck, supports Obama and thinks marijuana is one of their key issues… or even owns a Mac, never mind a Macbook. Annoying.
According to our StatCounter logs. If that is any guide, the Phoenix profile is exactly 96.2% wrong đŸ˜‰
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p>The MSM and existing journalist community, and many politicians, appear to think that blogs are a fringe phenomenon, and that blog readers are, well, as described in the above profile. I think they are very, very wrong.
It’s an alt-weekly, hardly MSM. I think it was self-caricature as much as anything, given that the results were voted on by, you know, Phoenix readers.
I wonder what the MSM is, exactly.
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p>Anyway, just for the record I am a fan of the Phoenix, not to mention the Globe and newspapers in general đŸ™‚
But you wouldn’t know it sometimes…
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p>Just reading and listening to their columnists and former columnists, I’m quite convinced that even if the Cool Kids Club will never accept them, they’re the type of paper that tries ever so hard to get in. The only difference is they write about local music more, or something…
Consider the source. And their audience.
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p>I don’t see how it was anything but fun hyperbole.
That’s too over the top to be anything but tongue-in-cheek (though I’m not sure it doesn’t miss the mark anyway).
There’s a lot that’s good about the Phoenix, but they’re eminently lampoon-able. I mean, they have a standing arts headline they trot out twice a year on the order of: “PUNK is BACK – and this time it’s POLITICAL!!!” They can’t let go of the Kenmore Square 70s-80s rock scene – where living in Allston while you get your life together in your late-20s entitles you to proletarian rage – even though it has little relation to anything else they do.
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p>Also, the hooker ads are hilarious, if also often sad.
Doesn’t the Phoenix try to be the hip paper for those who want the “straight word” unfiltered by the corporations? The Globe does better than this…heck, the Enterprise does better.
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p>Did the author pay Dad a couple bucks to write this?
a sometimes brilliant, sometimes off-putting mixture of serious journalism, left wing political commentary, and frathouse sleaze.
Next time, though, I’m withholding my students’ grades until they can prove to me that they’ve voted for Media Nation.