Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and one of them is Lambert’s long-running and invaluable tenure at Naked Capitalism. He is retiring from Naked Capitalism to pursue new literary and artistic endeavors, and has graciously offered us a two-month runway plus some wriggle room if needed as we try to fill his very big yellow waders.1 So this is a long goodbye. I hope you enjoy these remaining days.
Many of you over the years have made clear how much you’ve appreciated Lambert’s wide-ranging, analytically keen pieces, with their mordant wit and acute phase-making. Who can forget:
Everything’s going according to plan!
Authoritarian followership
Because markets. Go die!
Well done, all
It would be irresponsible not to speculate
Overly dynamic situation
Those coinages helped leaven his relentless coverage of Covid and public health malpractice, class warfare in its many forms (such as “code is law,” the original Obamacare site train wreck, and other tech-implemented schemes to erode rights and social safety nets), Obama’s, Trump’s and Biden’s manipulative messaging, Democratic party machinations (including the not-trivial matter of what the party actually amounts to), the TransPacific Partnership, the slow motion Boeing crash, election dynamics, and his many personal interests, both intellectual and practical, such as gardening and permaculture. And let us not forget Lambert’s regular stiletto work in comments!
Some of you had the chance to meet Lambert at meetups he hosted, such as in London, Montreal, Burlington, and New York, and ones we both participated in (New York and Portland). I know Lambert very much enjoyed these sessions and the enthusiastic reader feedback indicates the feeling was mutual.
Neither Lambert nor I can recall exactly how he came to join Naked Capitalism. Lambert likes to call himself an old-school, as in political, blogger; he cut his teeth on the fight to debunk the WMDs in Iraq story. He had his own site, Corrente. Our first mention of it was in a daily Links in 2009:2
Day 3 of the “Why Won’t #Krugman Post On Bill Black?” Lambert. The MSM, and Krugman appears to be falling in line, is treating Black like radioactive waste.
We linked to his site from our then much shorter daily Links feature, and then got permission to cross post some of his pieces. My recollection is he started interacting with readers on the Naked Capitalism comments section. He then started posting at both his Corrente site and Naked Capitalism.
Lambert graciously sent a list of his favorite posts:
2012
Occupy the Garden
2013
Imminent Death of the Blogs Predicted, Except Not
2014
Neo-liberalism Expressed as Simple Rules
2015
Notes for an Elite Playbook: The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
2016
The History of ObamaCare, 2013-2016
2017
Political Misfortune: Anatomy of Democratic Party Failure in Clinton’s Campaign 2016, Part I. Part II.
The Peripheral: William Gibson’s Reactionary Fable
2018
What Is The Democratic Party? (and WILDING et al. v. DNC SERVICES CORPORATION et al. Gets a New Lease on Life)
2019
Soil Science, Climate Change, and Property
2020
#COVID19: New Practical Results on Airborne Transmission Indoors
2021
The Class Composition of the Capitol Rioters (First Cut)
The Organizational Capacity and Behavioral Characteristics of the Capitol Rioters (First Cut)
2022
How Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky of Newton, MA Protect Their Children from Covid (But not Yours)
2023
New, Buzzy Cochrane Study Sets the “Fools Gold” Standard for Anti-Maskers
CDC’s HICPAC to Gut Hospital Masking Protection for Patients Based on Shoddy “Evidence Review” (and in Further Violation of FACA)
2024
Biden Slips a Cog: Second Time as Tragedy, Second Time as Farce, or Both?
As Dima of Military Summary Channel is wont to say, “That’s a lot!”
Lambert also played an indispensable administrative role. He’d also been a computer consultant, with his clients including some big names with very big databases. He had set up Corrente in Drupal. The result of that was that during our many years of effort to get a good tech support team, Lambert would sometimes wind up being a backup trouble-shooter, as well as being a key player in vetting new tech support people (both software and site hosting due to the state of WordPress then).
In addition, Lambert has been a key sounding board and sometimes active player in other “business of the business” matters, particularly the increasingly hostile environment for independent sites (coping with Google search downgrades, and censorship attempts, notably PropOrNot and the recent Google AI fiasco).
So this turning of the year is more Janus-like than usual, looking back on Lambert’s many substantial contributions, and looking forward to how we bring on new talent, with an eye of continuing some of Lambert’s established beats and opening fresh ones.
When Dave Dayen and later Jerri-Lynn Scofield departed, it seemed daunting to fill the voids they left. But each time, the site continued punching above its weight and keeping reader informational and intellectual needs well-fed via bringing on new writers. So wish Lambert the best in his upcoming struggle to avoid golf and shuffleboard, and to those of us who carry on, a smooth and successful transition. I know we will all miss him deeply.
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1 Our current team can probably fill Lambert’s void in regular posts but with some strain, but more voices and more capacity would be better. Sadly, unless a new contributor is keen to create a Water Cooler analogue, say a “2:00 PM Coffee Break” afternoon news wrap, that slot will probably retire with him.
2 Actually there is an even earlier but indirect earlier link to Corrente, where Krugman in remarking how quickly ideas once seen as crazypants became orthodox, with pretty much no one admitting to the cognitive shift, linked to a glossary on Corrente for a definition of DFH. So in times immemoriam, before the Obama Administration somehow addled Krugman, Lambert and your humble blogger were in good standing with him.