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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Monday, May 2, 2011

Sandmonkey Comments on Egyptian Journalism

John's early morning exercise here, from the Twitter stream beginning here...



Reading the egyptian newspapers confirms to me daily the crisis that we have in the media sector in Egypt. In short: we have no journalism! 


We have two kinds of newspapers in Egypt: 1) Newspapers that defined themselves as opposition to the regime & only work on that, and 2) Newspapers that tried to act as intermediaries between the regime & the people , whether state-owned or independent. But, in both cases, these are not journalistic institutions. They were defined by the regime, & since its gone they dunno what to do!


So, they try to suck on the Mubarak regime's tit till the last possible drop, first by running nuttin but Mubarak corruption stories. Which is fine, but more than political pornography, we need focus on economy, political rights, social changes, etc, they don't have that  And because that gets boring, they instead focus more on the Mubarak family, turning the whole thing into a fucking soap opera. So u end up with the characters, all of them human & tragic: The clueless aging King surrounded by a corrupt court : Hosny! #layalyelorouba


The-of course-evil queen, whose power-hungry ruthless ways & complete control over her son destroys the kingdom!  The older Prince, who goes evil at first, but finds god, & gets punished by him, & can't escape his family or their fate!  The Younger Prince, the loser, the ex-addict, he who can't get it up, the mama's boy, groomed by her to extend her rule!  And the Future Queen, the young, beautiful & clueless princess, who brings down her entire family with her by her marriage


And then you have the supporting characters, all of them more stupid, the 3 stooges, the ruthless head of security,  The greedy adviser who made his wealth and power by becoming indespensible to the future King, & his womanizing  & they regal u with dumbest stories about them, about how Gamal won't eat, how Alaa prays every night, how mubarak is sick  & u buy into it, & u love it, & tell it to everyone, & discuss it ,providing analysis, favorite characters & spoilers


All the while u r ignoring a simply truth: THIS IS NOT A SOAP OPERA. U HAVE ALLOWED THOSE CLOWNS TO RULE U FOR 30 YEARS! 30!



In other news, Gady Epstein passes on this revealing piece of everyday political awareness.  It's easy to forget that today's teens were just past the toddler stage when the World Trade Center was attacked.  



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And from Wael Ghonim...


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