Nate Silver vs. Politico: No Correction Is Safe
The 2012 Political Hunger Games between dazzling number wizard Nate Silver and the tributes <strike>from District 1</strike> at Politico isn't quite finished yet. It seems that Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel has now taken up where fellow tribute Dylan Byers has fallen by — get this — dissing Nate Silver's knowledge of campaign financing! While in the real world this is dorky and completely unimportant, in the brutal world of Political Media Navel-Gazing, this the equivalent of fighting words:
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Here's the <strike>correction</strike> clarification in question:
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No big deal, right? Anyways, in PMNG, when you get challenged like this — someone calling you out on the faceless void of the Internet — you, if you're Nate Silver or any other self-respecting PMNGer, should defend your honor and knowledge of campaign financing:
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Now that's some beef, Byers-approved. We imagine Silver is somewhere hastily preparing a convincing presentation entitled the "Statistical Insignificance of Ken Vogel." But we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that this ongoing and increasingly less substantive feud between Politico foot soldiers and Silver has been brewing since the news organization and its previous tribute, media reporter Dylan Byers, asked if Silver was a "one-term celebrity." It's been rocky for Byers since Silver killed the election the way Beyoncé slays Super Bowl half-time performances. While flossing his shiny teeth with the minty bones of Byers and basking in the afterglow of his successful election prediction, Silver dissed Politico last November on ESPN radio:
Politico is a "who won the day" kind of thing, right? They're trying to cover (politics) it like it's sports but not in an intelligent way at all. They want to create noise, basically. Their whole thing is you have to have a lead story about some gaffe that somebody made on the campaign trail ... In politics, you can have a whole month where nothing of any import- whatsoever happens. But you still have to have Politico produce a paper seven times a week...
After Silver besmirched the whole paper, you could sort of see why reporters like Vogel might want to find some fault in this nerdy number genie, hence the correction call-out. And the war about "super PAC financing" goes on:
With this kind of sparring (and also just like The Hunger Games), there's more here than campaign financing. Vogel, may the odds ever be in your favor.
