18 Responses to “Paleo Vlogging”

1. Paul McLeod, on October 19th, 2008 at 11:11 pm Said:

   With a tiny, tinny little mic like that and clearly a lot of higher-register reverberations being picked up, I can guess with some confidence that your voice sounds much lower than that in person. That’s typically the case unless you’re using a pro-quality recording device.

2. Indya, on October 20th, 2008 at 12:04 am Said:

   It doesn’t sound bad, Daniel, but it’s probably the acoustics that makes it sound a little weird to you.

3. Indya, on October 20th, 2008 at 12:12 am Said:

   I don’t know if you are getting feedback from your voice through your speakers, why you stop and pause as much as you do… might need to work on that, maybe need a new mic? Not sure what you’re using that might cause that kind of feedback.

4. kranza, on October 20th, 2008 at 2:58 am Said:

   Whatevs, you finally got the talkingheads glory you always deserved! Andcoughcoughcravedcoughed but 100% deserved, in lieu of watching now I’ll just say you were definitely awesome and it’s about time, and nice of you to go easy on that neocon putz from this “New York Sun” that doesnt seem to actually exist in physical newsstand form. Also, I’m assuming this was your BH debut, if not never mind.

5. James_Nostack, on October 20th, 2008 at 6:38 am Said:

   Congratulations on defending the Ph.D.!

6. John Schwenkler, on October 20th, 2008 at 7:49 am Said:

   I was going to say the same thing as James N. – are you applying for academic jobs this year?

   I’m watching the exchange on TAC and Israel right now – Lake’s demeanor is simply maddening …

7. Grumpy Old Man, on October 20th, 2008 at 7:51 am Said:

   I didn’t know you finished your doctorate. Congratulations.

   You are ready for prime time. We peasants will bring our torches and pitchforks to your debut.

8. Daniel Larison, on October 20th, 2008 at 7:58 am Said:

   Thanks to everyone for the kind words. Yes, John, I’m applying for jobs.

   I wasn’t all that pleased with my responses in the Israel/Iraq section, as I had difficulty getting a word in edgewise without just talking over him. I wound up making points that end up seeming a bit generic.

   What I found so strange about my voice is that it sounds much lower than I thought it was.

9. ncbrian, on October 20th, 2008 at 11:20 am Said:

   I couldn’t make it through the whole thing, because Lake’s gum chewing was driving me insane.

   I have to disagree with your shared criticism of the conflation of race and the Paris Hilton ad. First, I think Obama was sounding an alarm that the ad was the jumping off point for a descent into ridiculous accusations by the Republicans. In fact, he has been proven entirely prescient in foreseeing attempts to present him as non-American. Just imagine the Republican response to an ad that compared Sarah Palin to Paris Hilton (the outragous sexism of Obama would be shouted from the rooftops).

   I have always been curious about the Neocon perspective on Ollie North. This is a man who I consider to be a traitor in every sense of the word. Unlike Ayers, he was an actual government employee who used his position to further his own beliefs and causes. He sold arms to our enemies. He or his associates assisted the importation of cocaine into our country. He sent money to nihilists in Central America. He leaked classified information as a justification for not testifying to Congress. He even lied to investigators in a recent investigation into the killing of civilians in Afghanistan. I understand the outrage against Ayers, but I can’t fathom the respect given to Ollie North.

   During the ‘anti-Israel paranoia’ portion of the debate, I was shocked that you seemed to allow him to use mainstream dems to justify his anti-Iraq stance. However, you repeatedly demonstrate the collusion between mainstream dems and repubs in regard to foreign policy on your blog. Also, it is far easier to point out the hypocrisy of the neocons in light of their assertions about the ease of overseeing post-war Iraq. If they were so cataclysmically wrong about the response to the American occupation, how can we possibly believe their justifications about going to Iraq in the first place? Given the fact that Neocons were catastrophically wrong in every single claim made about Iraq, the onus is on them to persuade us to believe they acted in good faith. The facts are on our side.

   Anyways, just my $0.02 as an admirer of your blog who was a bit disappointed in what I saw.

10. James Kabala, on October 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am Said:

    Good luck in your job search. How are you marketing yourself? I assume there must be few (if any) jobs specifically for a Byzantinist, so you probably have to apply for jobs for in the Middle Ages, Eastern Europe, or even the Middle East. Which are you aiming for? (I suppose it depends in part on what your minor fields were in and in part on what jobs are available this year.)

11. Daniel Larison, on October 20th, 2008 at 11:36 am Said:

    I don’t think the “Celeb” ad, for instance, anticipated what has happened in the last couple of months. Back then there were not “coded” messages that Obama was foreign or un-American, but explicit messages that he lacked substance. When the campaign opted for declaring him un-American, they became quite explicit with the Ayers rhetoric. The “coded” message criticism gives the McCain campaign credit for messaging subtlety and coherence that they simply don’t have.

    As I said just above, I did not break in enough during that section and didn’t push back enough on a number of his claims about Iraq, and I would do it differently if I could do it over again. On the question of good faith/bad faith, I was more interested in getting at how fundamentally wrong their policy prescriptions were even if the intel had been right. Despite the length of the conversation, we did not get to a couple of points that needed to be made and which I would make if I were doing it again: war supporters routinely accused opponents of bad faith in that they declared our position to be essentially collaborationist and so were accusing us of providing some kind of aid to enemies; the case of Pakistan pretty decisively refutes the idea that nuclear-armed states that sponsor terrorists are going to hand off their most powerful weapons to third parties. Pakistan has the most incentive to employ this tactic, since they could not prevail in a conventional or nuclear war with India, but there is no plausible deniability if Pakistan-backed jihadis use a nuke to destroy an Indian city. This scenario is simply fantasy, and so I am sorry that I did not stress this enough.

12. marc200, on October 20th, 2008 at 3:05 pm Said:

    Wow, you look really nervous, uncomfortable and hesitant defending your own positions. Natural enough for a thoughtful person dealing with the idiocy of instant punditry, but it makes you less effective. Get some media training if you plan to appear on TV more.

13. marc200, on October 20th, 2008 at 3:18 pm Said:

    Jesus, Larison, he ambushed you and absolutely cleaned your clock with his torrent of BS on Iraq. Hadn’t you seen the Pentagon report earlier this year showing no evidence whatsoever for a Hussein/Al Qaeda connection? Study up if you’re going to do this kind of thing again. My advice, don’t do it again unless you want to strengthen your skills in this area.

    I love your writing, just hate to hear Eli Lake getting away with all this stuff.

14. Daniel Larison, on October 20th, 2008 at 3:31 pm Said:

    This was the first time I’ve done anything of the kind in any format, so I would expect not to have done it very well. It’s helpful to know that I did as badly as I thought I had, and I probably won’t do it again. When the other person speaks more or less continuously, one can either try to shout objections or be patient, and I made the mistake of not interrupting him. Of course I know that there was no evidence of a Hussein/Al Qaeda connection, as I have been saying here for years.

    I’m also not sure how much he’s “getting away with” if no one outside die-hard war supporters still believes these things. 

15. Mark, on October 20th, 2008 at 7:46 pm Said:

    I don’t think you did badly, for the frustrations I had with this diavlog I blame Eli Lake, who went on forever and constantly interrupted you. I hope you give it another shot, I’ve long wished that you were in the bloggingheads mix.

16. ncbrian, on October 20th, 2008 at 10:14 pm Said:

    I also didn’t mean to be overly critical. I think you are a great writer and I can recall what it is like to go through the PHD process. However, Lake is not interested in a Socratic dialogue of mutual learning. Rather, he sets up straw man arguments that he has thought about in advance. It is frustrating to argue with people that constantly attack straw-man positions that have little to do with your own beliefs. You are stuck between refuting the straw man or expressing your own opinions. The Pakistan section was indeed better than the Iraq section.

    As far as my assertion that the celebrity ad was the beginning of the vote against ‘the other’ campaign, you have to remember that the ad criticized Obama for being popular in Germany, as if that were an automatic disqualifier. It was an extension of Bush’s repulsive ‘for us or against us’ rhetoric. If Germany liked Obama better than Bush, it was evidence that Obama was against ‘us’. Hilton and Spears are two celebrities who are famous for loose values that run counter to traditional American values and for a lack of any discernable talent. I would guess that their favorability ratings would fall around the 25% Bush gets. Why else would two females be chosen as an anology to Obama? Certainly there are many male celebrities that could have been chosen. Anyways, I might be paranoid, but the constant assertions that ‘real Americans’ support McCain-Palin is really starting to grate on me, and that theme seemed to start with the celebrity ad.

17. otto, on October 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm Said:

    “It’s helpful to know that I did as badly as I thought I had, and I probably won’t do it again”

    You did fine for a newbie in such company, and you should definitely do it again. There are lots of bh.tv-ers who are worth your, and the audience’s, while. Get a slot with Matt Yglesias or Ezra or Bill Scher or Jim Pinkerton.

    How can I put it? If you’re run off bh.tv by Eli Lake, the terrorists will have won.

18. Charlie, on October 22nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm Said:

    It would be a real shame if you let this deter you from doing more BHTV. First of all, I thought you did fine, especially for your first go-around at this sort of thing. Second of all, all of the criticism of your performance (from yourself and others) can be summarized as, “You let Eli Lake talk over you and score cheap points with debating tricks, because you were too polite to call him out.”

    Seems like the easy solution to that problem is to do the next BHTV appearance with someone other than Eli Lake. He’s a smart and well-informed person. But, to the extent that he’s a strong partisan who treats BHTV as an opportunity to spew a party line and score rhetorical points, he’s not really representative of BHTV as a whole.

    There’s a reason you see so many more mild-mannered academics on BHTV than on regular TV: it’s generally a venue that prizes thoughtful discussion over BS. You certainly seem capable of having an illuminating and respectful dialogue with a liberal, neoconservative or establishmentarian thinker/writer. Find an interlocutor with a similar approach and you’ll probably a) Have more fun; b) Be more pleased with your performance.

    I don’t know how the decision was made to pair you up with Lake. Maybe it seemed natural to arrange a neo-con/paleo-con steel-cage match. But, really, your views on foreign policy and many other issues are sufficiently dissimilar from most other pundits’ that you could have an interesting discussion with almost anyone in the regular BHTV rotation.

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