The LA Blogging Tinderbox

Things are a little tense in the Los Angeles blogosphere right now. It feels like the moment right before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, with long-simmering rivalries about to burst. And just like Europe in 1914, untangling who is mad at whom for what is a little hard. But here's my best try: The guys over at Martini Republic are angry at LAVoice and LAObserved for each giving a mention to a blog called 1947Project, which reprints newspaper items from that year, sometimes with the original racial slurs intact. (UPDATE: A reader has pointed out to me that in fact the site also includes original content featuring era-specific racial terms, such as in this post.) (UPDATED UPDATE: In fact, all of the material on 1947Project is original. The pieces with newspaper-like bylines have their sources in period newspaper reports but are written by co-editor Kim Cooper.) In the comments section, Kevin Roderick of LAObserved suggested that the real source of the animosity is that one of the Martini Republic persons is jealous because he thinks Roderick pays too much attention to Cathy Seipp and not enough to Martini Republic. (Which is weird, because over at Cathy Seipp's page, the consensus among her Greek chorus of comment-writers is that Roderick thinks she is 'wingnutty'.) In turn, the Martini Republic guy is further annoyed at Roderick, apparently because the assertion about M.R.'s feelings about being slighted in favor of C.S. was based on a private email exchange between him and Roderick. Meanwhile, Nathan Marsak, one of the creators of 1947Project, has joined in to defend his blog and has been roundly called a racist. And yet more: Over at Cathy Seipp's blog, she and Kevin Roderick (and again, the Seipp Comment-Writing Chorus) recently had a polite but slightly tense exchange in her Comments section about his declining to promote a panel discussion she organized. And she has accused Nikki Finke of posting anonymous taunts on her comments page about her appearance. Still more: Some guy runs a website called Onanism Today which is mostly devoted to making fun of Seipp. To Seipp's credit, she parries his salvos gamely on her own page. Everyone got that? Whew. All of the battling bloggers will be invited to the upcoming FishbowlLA launch party. I'm trying to rent a dunking booth. It will be fun. (I should mention that pretty much everyone mentioned above has been really nice to FishbowlLA, offering warm welcomes, constructive criticism, and, in some cases, social invitations. Sorry I never respond to those but I'm very, very shy in person.)

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The LA Blogging Tinderbox

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