Saturday, June 30, 2007

Boys & Girls

Meet the new bosses. Last June, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga … proprietor of the wildly successful liberal blog Daily Kos, sent an email to an invitation-only listserv known as Townhouse. Consisting of some 300 liberal bloggers, journalists, activists, and consultants, the list was an outgrowth of weekly strategy sessions held at a D.C. bar—a forum for brainstorming on issues and tactics, and a means of creating a "unified message," as Moulitsas later put it.

In the message … Moulitsas asked list members to "ignore" a blog item by the New York Times' Chris Suellentrop that revealed that Jerome Armstrong—founder of the popular liberal blog MyDD and a close friend and business associate of Moulitsas—had once been implicated in a stock-touting scheme. Suellentrop noted parallels between stock-hyping and bloggers' touting of candidates such as Howard Dean, who had hired both Armstrong and Moulitsas as consultants during his 2004 presidential campaign. Moulitsas … told Townhouse members that these revelations were "a nonstory." "So far," he wrote, "this story isn't making the jump to the traditional media, and we shouldn't do anything to help make that happen." He urged participants to "starve it of oxygen."

The irony is this: Moulitsas' reaction echoes the very control-the-message philosophy the blogosphere once rose up to fight. Indeed, challenging the methods of an entrenched political elite was the subject of Crashing the Gate."

--- Harumpf. Honest bloggers have been warning and pointing at Markos (including yours truly), and his crew and followers for at least a couple of years now. But, according to Alexa, more trafficked than DK is the Huffingtonpost.

Like DK, Ms. Huff is a former republican, and commentator, who rose up to become a progressive. Her ex-hubby, an oil and banking heir, announced he was gay in 1998, after the couple split. Not that her ex, or their oil and banking portfolio have anything to do with whether Ms. Huff is a genuine progressive...

… psssst, wanna buy a genuine Rolex …

But the above brand of liberal/progressive blogger sites are leading the pack (or herd), with a large collection of little pipsters longing to belong to the dailies and diaries, part of the clique of being linked. Pitiful.

On the way to the bank and flogging BushCo they rally for DemCo. Crashing the gates to let the other cheek on the corporate ass rule for a while. Hooyah.

2 comments:

umkahlil said...

I and another Palestinian blogger, Haithem Sabbah, were banned at the "progressive" DailyKos (on Nakba Day, too).

Kate-A said...

The word progressive has new meaning - "all inclusive - as long as you spout the party line."

The game is rigged.

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