Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, June 7, 2009

Douchebag of the Week: Ed Whelan

By Fester:


It is only Sunday night but Ed Whelan has won by acclamation the prestigous award: Douchebag of the Week.


Ed in a very mature manner responded to criticism of his legal argument by outing the previously pseudonomousPublius at Obsidian Wings. 


When one can not respond to an argument, it is always time to throw monkey poo.


Douchebag.


As a pseudonomous blogger as well, I am pissed off, as there are some legitimate reasons for me to remain unnamed but known with attendant reputational costs.  I wear my pseudonym very thinly as it is a useful pretext to divide my real life and my blogging life but anyone in Pittsburgh who wants to know either knows who I am in real life or could figure out who Fester is in a couple of hours and depending on whom they talk to, two cups of coffee or three beers.  I greatly appreciate the wide array of people who know who I am in person and know that I am Fester and respect my decision to keep those two aspects of my identity seperate. 


I greatly appreciate my friends, allies, and occassional political opponenents for not being douchebags and engaging me on my ideas and not on cheap, douchebag stunts such as the one that Ed Whelan pulled this weekend. 



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3 comments:

  1. Russ WellenJune 8, 2009 at 1:05 AM

    Thin-skinned to a fault, the hard right tends to fight dirty at the drop of a hat.

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  2. Justin SlotmanJune 8, 2009 at 6:44 AM

    This reminds me of the one unsolved part of this debacle--who outed publius to Whelan? Whelan said someone told him who publius was. Was that action malicious, or did Whelan talk to a friend of publius who happened to drop in who he was, not imagining that Whelan would do what he did?

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  3. festerJune 8, 2009 at 9:19 AM

    Could of have been anyone. There are very few deeply held pseudonomous bloggers out there. As I alluded to in my post, Fester is a fig leaf that is respected by dozens if not hundreds of people who can associate Fester with Real Life Me for one reason or another.
    Given that Publius has been politically active and has taken part in network building and creation, the suspect list is probably very large.

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