Sterling, I admire your attempt to argue that large swaths of this country 'matter'. First your short-lived blog, and then the absurd escalation of moving to an even bigger nowhere.

I put 'matter' in quotes because, of course, wherever one chooses to, or may be forced experience or circumstance, make the most of this futulity of consciousness is of course an location that matters a great deal. But as a matter of aspiration and cultural identity, sorry, they don't all that much.

I don't see how you can try and embrace any version of market economics and then simulatenously argue that somehow a cabal of liberals mandates that America find New York and LA endless fascinating and worhty of visit. Why just not ask them to wear gold stars?

Look, they are great places to live and visit, and people do so in astounding quantity. Our real estate and cost of living is phenomonally expensive, and I thought this would be viewed by the like of you as the robust market at work, scarcity and all that. Just like teevee and talk radio: if you don't like it, turn it off. But with over 40 million tourists (what is that, seven times the population of VA?) last year, sorry, but some folks disagree with your thesis.

And, believe it or not, celebrity opinions on political and social matters are underreported, relative to their cultural status. No reason not to hear more from them. In a country where the two biggest conservative mouthpieces are without any real educational or professional credentials (Limbaugh and O'Rielly) and y'all elected two actors as leaders of the seventh largest economy in the word, I would hazard we should know more about the politics of movie stars, since it looks like buying tickets to blockbusters will devolve into proxy primaries, meaning it's Baldwin and Clooney films for me.

I'm not merely talking about places, 99, but also people. Say what you will about congressmen, but a congressman has to spend time in his district, and canvas it if he wants to win re-election. He meets all classes of citizen and he comes to know their priorities.

On one occasion I argued politics with Nick - and as I recall he rehashed our argument on his blog several times over the following week. My point isn't that Nick is a bad person or an ignorant person - he is neither. But he does lead something of a narrow American existence in Manhattan.

If you walk into a diner in a small town in the U.S., you're likely to find people of various social strata eating together. I think the casual disregard for class division is a critical element of American life, but it is completely absent in most large cities and to some extent their suburbs.

I'm also not saying that Nick has to cater to a lowest common denominator audience with Sploid. But he is handicapped in competition with Drudge, because Drudge moves vertically through American society as well as horizontally. And without the vertical movement, there's no way for someone born overseas to get an accurate impression of American society.

Well, Nick isn't editing Sploid is he? And he's argued (in public at least) more than once that his model for media/publishing is more UK-centric, which, according to the Economist is far more 'egalitarian' than the US, due to competition. The result is, of course, dumber and dumber media.

And look at Gawker Media: Porn, cars, gadgets, celebrity gossip and video games. Once he has a sports title, you tell me that he doesn't have a good sense of what sells in this country. If you read only Gawker, that says more about your interests and prejudices than his.

You can try and spin the church-goers gathering in a diner yarn for us, but even if every NYer watched American Idol and bought an Xbox, it still wouldn't account for the numbers those media get. And I don't know anyone who does. SATC drew something like 12 million viewers and episode. That's a damn big media consipracy, isn't it?

If you tear your eyes away from Fox News long enough to see what's on the Fox Network you'll see that the proverbial cesspool that New York is constantly derided as (even as our divorce rate is lower than Texas) is pretty eagerly consumed.

Let's gather the whole gang and travel to one of those salt of the earth bars -- if you can find one -- and let's see who gets along best. I hazard you'd be surprised.

Well, Nick's always said he didn't start Gawker Media to get rich. I doubt he's making a lot of money off the sites. But Gawker has raised Nick's media profile tremendously, as well as spun off careers for Ana Marie Cox and Elizabeth Spiers. So it's helped several people advance professionally if not financially while in Gawker Media's employ. I wouldn't be surprised if Nick was eventually offered a chief editorial position at a major publication.

I'm not arguing about Gawker Media's succeses and failures. I just don't think Nick can hope to unseat Drudge. Drudge gets about as many daily visitors as the NY Times. No Gawker property comes close to that.

Choire's an exceptional writer - do you think he wants to churn out copy written at a 4th grade comprehension level, as if he's Matt Drudge or Steve Dunleavy? I don't think so.

At bottom, Choire lacks the interest and Nick lacks the understanding of U.S. politics and society to be Drudge-like but with a different political slant.