Motherfucking Lieberman On A Motherfucking Blog

McPaper (via Duncan MacWanker of the Clan MacWanker):

On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet.

Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.

But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he'd still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator's fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman's still the man to beat in the general election.
...
Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer's big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes' distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie's rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest.

But all that clapping and yapping couldn't put enough fannies in the seats. Ticket sales for Snakes' debut barely topped those of Talladega Nights, which was already in its third week.

Although Connecticut and Hollywood are a continent apart, the two events speak volumes about the capriciousness of the blog culture.

Uh...our victory was not short-lived.  The point was to get the Democratic party's resources behind Lamont, who decisively won the primary.  We cannot control Lieberman's ego, but as he continues to deride the Democrats and mock the democratic process, he cannot but lose Democratic support.  And to say Lieberman is the man to beat flies in the face of, you know, actual data.

More importantly, I call bullshit on the SOAP claims.  Anybody who uses this movie as an example of the "failure" of the blogosphere is in serious need of being thrown off a jetliner by violent decompression.  It cost $36M to make and only the merest fraction of the marketing budget had actually been brought to bear.  2 weeks into its run the movie's earned $26M.

I suspect that's better than it would have done without viral marketing in the blogosphere.  What's more, cult classic movies must be measured by their overall lifespan, and you're surely going to see great DVD sales and rentals come out of this.  The movie will more than break even in the end.

Declaring that the CT Senate race and a campy movie about snakes shows bloggers are somehow wrong shows just how ignorant and whiny Old Media folks really are.  Time to put them in that crooked home we saw on 60 minutes...

ntodd