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"Why I Denied David Frum?s Website A Spot In The Blogads Conservative Hive."

John Hawkins explains:

Now, as a general rule, I try to be very open minded about who gets into the Blogads Conservative Hive. If they're generally friendly to conservatives and seem to have a mostly conservative audience, I don't mind having them on board. So, aside from conservative blogs, there are Libertarian blogs in the Hive and there are blogs I'd call center-right. It goes without saying that there are plenty of issues where members of the Hive, myself included, don't see eye-to-eye.

I'm in the Blogads Conservative Hive, so I can vouch for that!

Guys like Frum want to have it both ways. Being a "Republican" / "conservative" who tells liberals what they want to hear about the Right is a career niche ?and it can pay big dividends....

[W]hy is David Frum getting a column at CNN? How is it that Time has a guy like this writing for them? What's the purpose of putting a guy like Frum on TV as opposed to all the genuine conservatives who dwarf his traffic and can obviously draw a bigger crowd?...

[T]he mainstream media loves "conservatives" and "Republicans" who will trash whomever the Left hates most. So, if you're willing to talk about how Sarah Palin is a hick, Glenn Beck is a crank, Rush Limbaugh is bad for the country, and the Tea Party is bad for democracy, the mainstream media will reward you and because conservatives pride themselves on being open minded, they'll all too often give you a pass for your atrocious behavior ? especially since the MSM doesn't insist you play their game all the time. As long as you're willing to say what they want about the people they hate the most, they'll reward you with a cover story at Newsweek and then in your off time, you can churn out a few articles to point gullible conservatives towards while you're trying to guilt them into taking you seriously by crying "epistemic closure!"

I Googled "epistemic closure" and got, first, "'Epistemic Closure'? Those Are Fighting Words," a NYT article featuring a photo of Frum. So what's that fight all about?

The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism?s proud intellectual history....

([Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute] said he probably fished ?epistemic closure? out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy, where it has a technical meaning in the realm of logic.)

Blech. What an ugly phrase and what a pointless and irritating explanation for it. It's pretentious, but the usage is actually inaccurate. How off-putting and unhelpful!

Back to Hawkins:

Long story short, everybody has to make a living. But, I'm not interested in helping people like Frum play this little game where they try to cripple conservatives publicly while coming around on the back end to milk us for money. If Frum wants to be a dancing monkey for the Left, let them come up with the money to pay for the tune.

Full post as published by Althouse on June 28, 2010 (boomark / email).