Mickey Mouse Kaus

Slate's snarky and pointless Mickey Kaus has become obsessed with Times Select, the new program by the New York Times to make money off of the web. I counted at least two dozen mentions of the new plan currently listed on his blog. Ultimately, I hope that they do away with the Select, since I like to get things for free. I hope, however that it doesn't fail for the reason that Kaus is predicting, as this illustrative comment suggests:

Times columnists are so privileged they must be made second class citizens in the blogosphere! There's some populism for you. ... Haven't the poor NYT pundits been punished enough? I don't see why the Times can't let Krugman (or a designated acolyte) maintain an archive that posts his columns 30 days or 60 days or 90 days after the Times (exclusively) publishes them. Would that really be such a revenue drain?

I don't assume that the only opinions that matter are those discussed and linked to on blogs. If that is true, then there is little future for the type of writing that appears in publications such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers or the New Yorker; or even the generally shorter articles and reviews that appear in the American Conservative and like publications. Much of the best and most informative journalism and opinion is of a length that is difficult to comprehend when read on a computer screen, at least for me. The longest articles I regularly read are from Justin Raimondo, and I tend to scan those.

One would think that Kaus, who once wrote for the New Republic and pubished a book before he started thinking in soundbites and blurbs, would know that.