How cute! The big league media is discussing bloggers again. The new take? We’ve all lost our purity and, therefore, our credibility because Markos hit the bigtime. I’d be angrier with Franklin Foer if his quote actually said what it is supposed to say…but it doesn’t. And Zengerle is still a cry baby.
Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, said he was not impressed with the Daily Kos crowd.
“The liberal blogosphere are a group of people who feel incredibly disenfranchised. They feel their country’s been hijacked and they’re essentially powerless and the only way to stop it is to scream as loudly as you can,” Foer said.
The mainstream media coverage has not produced any definitive proof of the alleged misdeeds of Moulitsas or Armstrong, but [Richard] Bradley, [the former editor of George Magazine], for his part, thinks the idealism of the blogosphere has already vanished.
“I would say the loss of innocence moment probably came before,” he said. “Look, when bloggers start getting hired as consultants at political campaigns and when Mark Warner spends $50,000 on a party for bloggers, the purity is already gone. That’s it, it’s over, it’s history. The second that happens, self-consciousness has arrived. And that image of bloggers sitting at home, pouring out the unadulterated truth, freed from impurities from the outside world, is lost.”
It’s not lost. It’s only lost for those people that have moved on to positions of power and influence. Blogging. Over before it arrived.
Impure sluts!
?????????
This is the kind of crap women grow up learning how to deal with. No fun, but it’s not even worth discussing whether you are indeed pure or ever were. How does it feel to be considered an inferior creature?
Sometimes I read comments like that and really question whether evolution is a valid theory. Who knows, maybe they’re right. There is no survival of the fittest. Because if evolution were to depend on the brain trust of these people coming up with who bloggers are, the fishes never would have made it out of the pond!
i’m sure it’s been mentioned somewhere, but it’s pretty funny (imo) that the article can discuss the “vituperative online battle” between tnr and dkos, without pointing out the fact that zengerle made his allegations about kos controlling the “smoke filled backrooms” of liberal blogtopia* by using fradulent and made-up information, a la his former boss, stephen glass.
but that wouldn’t be fair and balanced, now, would it? it would leave the impression that tnr cheats and is not truthful, but dkos isn’t. and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
*yes! i coined that phrase!
you’ll never tire of reminding us that you coined the phrase 🙂
He missed some important points about inherent purity on (I’d say ‘blogtopia’ here but I don’t know how to make the copyright mark)
The most important role of the blogs is exchange of information/education. People are drawn to blogs for the consumption of information either as givers, takers or both. The illusion of purity is shattered after the first few genuine, intense discussions are experienced. Actually, the diversity of mutually respected opinion is increasing on the better quality blogs. The ones who don’t support that element will only draw less critical thinkers over time as the others grow bored and move on.
The honesty that can be achieved in the exchange of this information is the power the MSM fears.
foer and bradley- really important judges? Cut the crap and don’t waste the time. NR is now a effing joke and the bradley fool was a writer for the defunct George- looks like bradley is also defunkt! The Blog as a relatively honest tool for the presentation of “NEWS” as compared to the NR and the Msm is not worth the energy to discuss. Suffice it to say that the effite snobbery of the nr and others is the direct result of their dropping circulation figures and their embarassing kiss-up philosophy. I say- SCREW THEM!
billjpa
Tell Mr. Foer that the ‘Gurney Joe’ Liebermann campaign is calling him.
They need somebody to calm Ol’ Joe down…
Seems he’s all excited about some folks, jes folks Franklin, who are trying to take his God-Given Senatorial seat from him.
But ya know this is really just fine for me. If the AssClowns of the Corporate Media, The Noise Machine and the DLCC don’t wake up until after we’ve kicked their useless asses it wont bother me.
Not one bit.
Now that Blogdom has opened its doors,
It needs a few standards and mores;
And I’m sure I don’t know,
What’s more appropos,
Than a lecture on ethics from whores.
“It’s not lost. It’s only lost for those people that have moved on to positions of power and influence. Blogging. Over before it arrived.”
So are you saying it is over for Kos and Armstrong?
There is a lot of interesting and worrying reading on this subject on the left wing blogs that are openly discussing this issue. It is a shame that most of the left blogosphere seems to be enacting a code of silence backed up by strong attacks on questioning comments and attempts to laugh it all off. I for one would rather see an open debate on every issue being raised concerning this matter, which of course has developed far further than Warner, Armstrong and Kos innuendo into whole questions being raised of how money raised by big blogs is spent and connections of big blogs to large democratic fundraisers. Clearly these are issues that should be debated rather than hidden. However, maybe that is not the American way anymore. Maybe that is not the way of the Netroots anymore. We are only too happy to use any innuendo, rumor or guilt by associaion against the other side. However, when used against us we cry foul without even a discussion or even a counter. We talk about being new and different but really at the first hurdle show we are not.
As long as we act like this of course the innocence is lost. This is not just about innocence lost by those who move on. It is about innocence lost by failing to live up to a claimed standard, and being exposed as nothing new.