Hail Hitler — Ted Hitler, that is

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had a piece on bloggers by Stephen Colbert Ted Hitler last night. Click here to see the full clip — and to understand the title of this post. Best line: “They have no credibility — all they have is facts.” Actually, I’d restate things a bit. Blogs have a ...

By Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

February 18, 2005, 5:51 PM

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had a piece on bloggers by Stephen Colbert Ted Hitler last night. Click here to see the full clip -- and to understand the title of this post. Best line: "They have no credibility -- all they have is facts." Actually, I'd restate things a bit. Blogs have a desire to highlight neglected facts, and a willingness to acknowledge when they've posted factual mistakes. [UPDATE: to clarify, most bloggers including myself aren't thrilled to post corrections -- but the norm of admitting error as quickly as possible might be more entrenched in the blogosphere than in the mediasphere.] The eerie thing is that Colbert's closing statement is precisely the point that Henry Farrell and I make in our predictions for the future of the blogosphere. To quote Colbert:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had a piece on bloggers by ~~Stephen Colbert~~ Ted Hitler last night. Click here to see the full clip — and to understand the title of this post. Best line: “They have no credibility — all they have is facts.” Actually, I’d restate things a bit. Blogs have a desire to highlight neglected facts, and a willingness to acknowledge when they’ve posted factual mistakes. [UPDATE: to clarify, most bloggers including myself aren’t thrilled to post corrections — but the norm of admitting error as quickly as possible might be more entrenched in the blogosphere than in the mediasphere.] The eerie thing is that Colbert’s closing statement is precisely the point that Henry Farrell and I make in our predictions for the future of the blogosphere. To quote Colbert:

With legitimacy, the bloggers get a seat at the table, and with that comes access, status, money, and power — and iif there’s anything we’ve learned about the mainstream media, that breeds complacency.

We wrote:

We predict that as blogs become a more established feature on the political landscape, politicians and other interested parties will become more adept at responding to them, and, where they believe it necessary, co-opting them. To the extent that blogs become more politically influential, we may expect them to become more directly integrated into ‘politics as usual,’ losing some of their flavor of novelty and immediacy in the process.

It’s really depressing that The Daily Show is not just funnier that I am — they are better at stating the more substantive point about bloggers.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner