The Den Beste Era

Over the weekend, I cited former hawkish warblogger Steven Den Beste as clearly the most wingnutty blogger of all time and expressed some concern that people who are relatively new to blogging might be unfamiliar with the Seven Den Beste Experience. And, indeed, it seems that some folks are out there who were previously unfamiliar with his work. Unfortunately, following links from my blog won't let you read his posts so you'll have to copy-and-paste URLs into your browser (http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/03/Itsthewaiting.shtml) if you want to avoid this fate:



At any rate, the main point I would make about SDB is that while he was never quite an MSM superstar on the order of Blog of the Year Powerline or something, SDB was taken rather seriously in conservative circles. He was writing opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal and upon his retirement from political blogging he was feted as one of the "great shining lights" of the genre by his fellow wingnuts.

And what's he been doing since his retirement? Well, he has a new blog where he sneers at people who watch TV or go to the movies, preferring to focus on more substantive cultural commentary like "If you're looking for a fan service romp, apparently this year's choice was Umisho. It's a sports show about a girls' swim team. How can you go wrong?" According to Wikipedia "fan service" seems to be a term of art for "soft-core cartoon porn." Just remember that "Before Den Beste, it was extremely difficult to find well written and thought out pieces anywhere on the web . . . Den Beste was a master synthesizer." At any rate, click over here (or, rather, copy and paste this link: http://denbeste.nu/bestof.shtml) to get the "best of" SDB. It's a not-to-be-missed experience.