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Vanity press

Posted by Ron Coleman on August 7, 2008

Instapundit links to a Drudge report that no one is buying Nancy Pelosi’s book. That’s hardly surprising; most congressional “leaders” are uninspiring and uninspired. The support of their respective caucuses is in fact a counter-indication of originality or boldness, which are just about the only thing anyone reading a book by a politician can hope for. (Unless he’s really skinny, I guess.)

The sad part for Pelosi is that the practice by which publishers bestow massive donations on their favored politicians via utterly unrecoverable publishing “advances” was barred by the House of Representatives. Therefore she could not get even a fraction of the phenomenal sweetheart advance paid to then Senator-elect Hillary Clinton for her various scribblings — which, while they were bought by many, still did not come close to earning out the advance paid by a publishing industry supposedly beset by economic crisis.

That means Pelosi must have really thought people would want to buy her book.

Chilling. That’s what enough time in Congress does to people.

UPDATE: Left-wing “media monitor” Media Matters insists that the Hillary Clinton book did, in fact, earn out its advance — making it the exception that proves the rule, but an exception nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Gelt, Narcissus Rex, Politics and Poker | 7 Comments »

Pony baloney

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 23, 2008

Some lines are too good to waste.

Having heard that one: How much more can John Edwards go away than he is now?

Posted in Jocularity, Narcissus Rex, O Mores!, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »

When “I don’t know” is heresy… and when it’s not

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 6, 2008

The brilliant Penn Jillette makes a living from being a skeptic. Skepticism, he reports in the LA Times, isn’t good enough for the “reality based community, however — not on matters central to the canon:Personification of Knowledge, Newark historic courthouse

[S]omeone asked us about global warming, or climate change, or however they’re branding it now. Teller and I were both silent on stage for a bit too long, and then I said I didn’t know.

I elaborated on “I don’t know” quite a bit. I said that Al Gore was so annoying (that’s scientifically provable, right?) that I really wanted to doubt anything he was hyping, but I just didn’t know. I also emphasized that really smart friends, who knew a lot more than me, were convinced of global warming. I ended my long-winded rambling (I most often have a silent partner) very clearly with “I don’t know.” I did that because … I don’t know. . . .

The next day, I heard that one of the non-famous, non-groovy, non-scientist speakers had used me as an example of someone who let his emotions make him believe things that are wrong. . . . Later, I was asked about a Newsweek blog she wrote. . . . She ends with: “But here was Penn, a great friend to the skeptic community, basically saying, ‘Don’t bother me with scientific evidence, I’m going to make up my mind about global warming based on my disdain for Al Gore.’ … Which just goes to show, not even the most hard-nosed empiricists and skeptics are immune from the power of emotion to make us believe stupid things.”

Is there no ignorance allowed on this one subject? . . . You can’t turn on the TV without seeing someone hating ourselves for what we’ve done to the planet and preaching the end of the world. Maybe they’re right, but is there no room for “maybe”? There’s a lot of evidence, but global warming encompasses a lot of complicated points: Is it happening? Did we cause it? Is it bad? Can we fix it? Is government-forced conservation the only way to fix it? . . .

[T]he climate of the whole world is . . . complicated. I’m not a scientist, and I haven’t spent my life studying weather. I’m trying to learn what I can, and while I’m working on it, isn’t it OK to say “I don’t know”?

Skepticism has been turned on its head; doubt becomes a thought crime. What is it called when that happens, exactly? I have always liked this guy.

I can’t give Jillette all the credit in the world for this thinking, however. His skeptical principles of knowing when not to know only go so far. Perhaps it really does matter whose ox is being Gored, because when it comes to other important matters arguably at least as complicated as global warming, Jillette is bold in his ignorance when in, fact, being so makes him feel good. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Narcissus Rex | 17 Comments »

Martindale and me. Ok, well, mostly me.

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 3, 2008

I only mention this here because we can talk. It’s just a few of us who read the blog, and by now we’re mostly pretty good friends and no one here is going to take this wrong way. I mean, the premise of most blogs, including this one, is some aspect of self-promotion, yeah, but that’s not my point here, right? By now it’s pretty much just us guys and we all know where we stand vis-à-vis each other. The post is pretty self indulgent, though, even for a blog, even for one of my blogs, but if you’re interested in kind of higher-end lawyer marketing thingies you might find it instructive.

A little while ago I kicked up a little lawyer-directory dust by axing the musical question, Why does upstart lawyer – ranking – promotion – and – directory service Avvo.com rank me so super high and all? This was meant as an entirely honest question in light of the fact that I know who the real killers are in this profession and I in all unsimulated modesty I wasn’t so so sure I was one of them.

Fine, I was sufficiently… humbled… on that point.

Now it turns out that (somewhat embattled) Martindale-Hubbell, the definitive (and remarkably costly, to firms) old-line law directory rapidly catching up to the Internet age, is showing me some cyber – law – marketin’ – lovin’ too. Tell me this isn’t kind of cool:

Ronald D. Coleman Lawyer Profile on Martindale.com
Visibility Rankings
#68 out of 53,913 lawyers in New York, New York
#862 out of 892,508 total lawyers Overall

Number 68 out of the whole New York City? Really? I must be very successful!

At something. Like getting people to look me up.

Isn’t attention useful when paying your electric bill? I know in Heaven that is one of the first question they ask at the pearly gates: “Coleman, Ronald, eh? Jewish name, Henech ben Yankiv. Hmmm…. mixed bag here I see but — hey, nice page view stats!”

I suppose 862 out of 892,508 nationwide is cool, too. Top one-tenth of 1%, right? But, er, you know how we New York types are. So, yeah, of course, that’s nice. But 68 out of almost 54,000 is such an incredible achievement….

Of getting looked up. Do I maybe get, I dunno, some coupons or something?

I also like how they’ve integrated LinkedIn.com, which is improving phenomenally as a grownup networking tool, into Martindale, though I don’t quite understand how they did that. I just see that my profile has a LinkedIn icon.

Whoa — ok! I just clicked the icon and it said, hey, you want to connect your LinkedIn profile to Martindale? Of course, natch, that’s the idea, right? Okay, so somehow it knew it was me in both places, but it didn’t know it was me reading the profile. Okay, that I like. So, fine, what happens now when you click the icon is it tells you how, once you’re identifed as a LinkedIn user yourself, how you’re already connected to the profile on Martindale you’re reading. Which in my case was easy, okay, but… wow. Pretty cool.

Another pleasant surprise: My AV rating kind of got upgraded, too. That’s a gooood rating. I actually was “awarded” this rating when I was an associate at the old Pitney Hardin law firm in New Jersey. I haven’t met anyone else who was rated AV as an associate (i.e., means of production) in a big firm, though I am sure there are other such people. But —

Humility break, kind of: That ranking didn’t mean Pitney Hardin even remotely considered me for partnership. In a firm where virtually no one without government service tries cases to juries, I had just tried and won a jury trial, got a “no judgment” verdict where the exposure was in the seven figures, on behalf of a fairly important firm client — Volvo Cars of North America. The firm’s response? They offered to transfer me to the corporate department!! Nice touch.

— my listing in New York always had this kind of asterisk on it next to the AV, because, really, I had “earned” it while practicing out of state. It was a way for Martindale to say, on the New York listing, “this guy is really good! For New Jersey, that is.” Evidently they’ve changed that somewhat; according to their FAQ, it now goes like this:

Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings are generally transferable within state boundaries. If a lawyer moves to a different state, his or her rating will appear in the Law Directory with the state abbreviation, indicating that it was established in another state or province.

Well, guess what? No abbreviation, dude! Looks like by virtue of the last few years having my mail sent to this side of the river, I is … legitimated!

They like me! They really, really like me!

If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere!

You… you could look it up!

UPDATE:  Maybe this is even easier than I thought — Monday, July 7th:

Visibility Rankings
#18 out of 53,806 lawyers in New York, New York
#344 out of 892,089 total lawyers Overall

Posted in Lex scripta, Narcissus Rex, Social networking | 1 Comment »

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