Ron Paul and the naked Pajamas Media

I was not asked to be a part of Pajamas Media. That was just as well, as I would have declined to participate for three reasons. The first was that I regarded it as a stupid business plan, about as well-conceived as the idea of selling dog food over the Internet. While there is some genuine demand for news and opinion, the supply approaches that post-scarcity vision of which neo-Marxian economists happily dream.

The second reason was the much-publicized involvement of various individuals I neither like nor respect. That's completely subjective, of course, but is closely connected to the third reason, which is not. This third reason was that it was clear from the start that many of those involved with Pajamas Media saw the mainstream media as a club to which they hoped to be admitted, not an unnecessary evil better disrupted and left for dead on the roadside of technological advancement.

Vox Day

This is one of those interesting articles Vox puts out every once in a while. It's in a style I think of as "front and back." The real meat of the article is on the back:

What the headline fails to mention is that in the Feb. 19 Pajamas Media poll, Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and now a declared candidate for the Republican nomination, roundly defeated Rudy Giuliani, 43.1 percent to 20.1 percent. Moreover, he did so by winning more votes, 1,769, than Giuliani subsequently did in winning the Mar. 4 (1,431) and Mar. 11 polls (1,158).

The innocent observer might wonder how Ron Paul could slip so much in three weeks that Giuliani could surpass him with fewer votes, or that a disgraced adulterer and non-candidate for president like Newt Gingrich could claim second place. Did his actual declaration of his candidacy on Mar. 11somehow inspire a backlash against him? No, the truth is much more simple.

Because they didn't like the results, Pajamas Media simply dropped Ron Paul from the poll, while retaining the likes of George Pataki, Tommy Thompson and other no-hopers who aren't even running for president! (emphasis original)

On the front, Vox develops a thesis that sometimes seems almost meandering. Occasionally, the relationship of the front and back parts of the article is so obscure, the article seems to be founded on two unrelated ideas. In this case, though, he pastes the old media on the Pajamas Media with impressive accuracy.

The real reason Vox didn't get asked to be in the Pajamas Media is that he is a member of the weirdest fringe of all in American Politics: a Christian Libertarian. In truth, I suspect Christians with strong libertarian leanings make up the majority of the American electorate. However, the herd mentality of both the left and the right doesn't allow for such a thing, so their respective propaganda arms will reject the idea outright.