So, I’m just getting around to checking out Ricochet (featuring, of course, the estimable James Poulos). I have to say that I’m absolutely in love with the layout, which I think is wonderfully conducive to the sorts of blogging to which the League has always aspired (though others may differ as to whether we’ve achieved those aspirations).
Mark of New Jersey
Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.
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on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandHrm. I always felt like the experience was an epiphenomenon of the deeper quest for a dinner jacket… on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandYou did good.
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on Paper: Inflation and the 2024 US Presidential ElectionEdward Bennett Williams, probably the greatest trial lawyer of the generation before mine, said that… on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandWe have seen the lava. My buddy's eyes are better than mine, he claims to have seen the spouts from… on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandThe last time I got a sport coat ("It's not a blazer, sir"), I was blessed to have a chubby tailor e… on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024Withdrawing from the treaty wouldn't prohibit other countries from taking actions; the treaty is sel… on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandYeah, it turns out that the dark green suit I was interested in was 'last year's' style and all they…
on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024I am relatively hawkish on Ukraine since they proved their willingness to fight for their independen… on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & OthersOn the government, no... I'm more wondering about the citizens.
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on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024 on Paper: Inflation and the 2024 US Presidential Election on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & Others
on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & Others on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & Others
on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to Iceland on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to Iceland
on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to Iceland
on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024 on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & Others
on All the President’s Nominees: The Legion of Groom
on Paper: Inflation and the 2024 US Presidential Election on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024 on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & Others
on The Mandate That Wasn’t
Does Mark Steyn really need another fucking platform? I mean, really?Report
@Will, Mark Steyn, at least, can be entertaining.
I saw John Yoo and went apoplectic.Report
@Jaybird, Believe it or not, this is actually one of the things I like about the site – yeah it has Yoo and Steyn, both of whom I hold in extraordinarily low esteem. But the fact is that they are both very not only very much representative of the conservative mainstream, they are effectively point men for the conservative mainstream on their specialty issues. What Ricochet does is to put them in a forum where their views can be readily challenged and subjected to scrutiny and where there is a strong incentive for them to respond without hiding behind a bunch of straw men.
This kind of a forum is thus one of the best ways of which I can think where one can ever hope to actually persuade mainstream conservatives to move in a different direction. Of course, the price of that is the risk that the mainstream conservatives will simply wind up moving their conservative leaning critics back towards the conservative mainstream. I view that as a risk entirely worth taking.Report
@Mark Thompson, and now I’m asking myself if it’s worth $3.50 to me to make a somewhat oblique comparison of Yoo to Goebbels to his face.
“What else would you use the $3.50 for?”
The answers that come are spectacularly unsatisfying…Report
@Jaybird, Heh.Report
@Jaybird, Jaybird, listen to your heart, let that be your guide… … … unless Maribou says something different. In that case listen to her.Report
Nevermind the politics for a second. I’m confused about Ricochet’s design and purpose. I understood it was meant to be some new-fangled new media contraption, but from what I can tell it is simply a blog that grants commenting privileges only to subscribers. Correct? If so, this is probably better than any more complicated scheme would have been.Report
@Matthew Schmitz, I think what I like about the site’s format is the way in which it seemingly (I haven’t decided yet whether I’m ready to invest the $3.47 a month) makes it easy to follow individual conversations and really puts an emphasis on dialogue. We tried to make conversations easy to follow in the early in the days of this site, but we lacked the technical resources to make it work out the way we hoped and the “conversations” features wound up functioning little different from a standard tag/categorization system.
I think we’ve accomplished our goals with that in any event (thanks primarily to the quality of our commenters), but we’re also the League of “Ordinary” Gents for a reason. If the goal is to promote dialogue between actual opinion-makers, then creating a hurdle to participation by commenters makes a certain amount of sense, as does simultaneously deriving revenue from the use of the site’s unique features.
I just don’t understand why they haven’t created a trial option that at least provides some sort of limited access.Report
@Mark Thompson, I just don’t understand why they haven’t created a trial option that at least provides some sort of limited access.
See Jaybird’s 10:30 comment above.Report
@Jaybird, Double heh.Report
@Jaybird, Also – by “limited access,” I was hoping to suggest that they at least provide access to the non-commenting features.Report
@Mark Thompson,
Thanks Mark. That helps.Report