No, it is because you LIEberals are all spittle-flecked radical insane commies!

It certainly has nothing to do with The Establishment protecting themselves at all costs. Well, maybe you LIEberals are all CYA, but we Manly Men are only concerned about Truth and Freedom! And making sure anyone who says Global Warming doesn't exist is given equal airtime to the hundreds of sell-out pinko scientists!

Rabid, venemous lambs?

Jesus. I need another cup of coffee.

The uprising among MSM pundits is, I think, a kind of controlled panic that they are being gradually found wanting and replaced. See, for example, Richard Morin's strange reading of Jon Stewart's Daily Show (and Morin's misreporting of the study). What drives some of it is that the blogs (and Stewart) are pointing out lies and contradictions, something the MSM has, for the most part, assiduously avoided. Now they're being upstaged in that area, and they catch a whiff of obsolescence arising from their reportage.

I have to believe the old guard pundits are feeling like little naked emperors on parade. It's no wonder they're lashing out. Best thing to do is just to keep pointing and laughing; all of this vituperation toward blogs simply proves that they have become marginal to the point of no longer having three dimensions. If we get mad, we just give credence to their arguments.

So I say: Ha ha and ho hum.

I'm not sure how that's going to play out in the long term, but in the short term I have a feeling it's nothing but bad news.

Kevin, you couldn't be more right. Kos is right now the kingpin of the blogsphere. Through his control of the Advertising Liberally BlogAds network and his massive fundraising network, he (and his ally at MyDD Jerome Armstrong) sits at his keyboard doling out money to bloggers who support his extremist views and crushes those who don't. This allows him unparalled control of the blogosphere. Kos wants to do to the Democratic Party what he has done to liberal bloggers. He wants to control the purse strings of the Democratic Party so that he can force his extremist views on all Democrats, even moderate/conservative Democrats like Joe Lieberman. He'll send his loyal band of rabble rousers to attack anyone who doesn't agree with him. If moderate/conservative Democrats like Joe Lieberman don't agree with him, he'll kick them out of the party. Reporters are wising up to his fascistic ways and his desire for despotic control of the Democratic Party.

The SCLM and the politicians are losing control of the "debate" and they know it.

.

Kevin wrote: ... it turns out the mainstream press doesn't like that much either.

The members of the mainstream press are well-payed to "not like" liberals. The "mainstream press" is a wholly-owned subsidiary of America's ultra-rich hereditary corporate ruling class, just like the Republican Party and the Bush administration.

The commentariat is terrified at being held accountable for its sins. The response of the blog community should be an even more heaping helping of contempt on their heads. It isn't Kos that's losing circulation and money hand over fist. That'd be the Washington Post. THEY are the ones losing right now. Don't forget it.

My reaction is... so what? It's not like the blogosphere is running for anything. It's not like it needs the approval of the mainstream media. A lot of people think right-wing religious fanatics are cooky but that doesn't make them any less effective politically.

Kevin,

I think I feel most sorry for you in all this (not so much Matt whathisname, who I view as an unequivocal striver). As a true blogger for a true magazine you are caught between two worlds, and it looks like you are going to have to choose sides in this (I can't imagine that not happening the way this thing is going). If you side with the reporters at Washington Monthly, who let's face it have based their entire career on following the rules of the old guard then you will be widely heckled in the blogosphere and lose the credibility you have built up (even as a moderate), to the point where what you have accomplished and the audience you have accomplished it for actually becomes your enemy. If you side with the blogosphere then you are going to catch hell from the people at Washington Monthly and honestly, probably won't last that long (this is getting very ugly very quickly). My advice, go have a cup of coffee and figure out your next career move.

David Brooks characterizes LIBERAL bloggers as "small-minded" "lambs [who unleash their venom on those who stand in the way." ???? And the conservative blogosphere??? Sure, THAT is full of reasonable, calm, respectful voices of bigotry and Bushworship.

I think leisureguy has got it right: "... blogs (and Stewart) are pointing out lies and contradictions, something the MSM has, for the most part, assiduously avoided."

The comfy, smug corporatism of the MSM is being challenged, and they don't like it. Like all threatened entities, they lash out at the threat rather than considering how their behavior has made this inevitable.

KEVIN DRUM: Mainstream reporters, despite their generally liberal temperaments,

It's all about discreditting MoveOn.org.

If you guys were willing to step back and objectively read Kos and other lefty sites, you would see the obvious. The content is mostly juvenile and mostly devoid of any serious thinking.

The liberal MSM sees this and reaches the obvious conclusion that the left being captured by Kos and company is not a good thing for liberal politics. So they are trying to marginalize them. The problem is that Kos and company are probably still going to gain enough power to screw things up for the democrats.

I don't think Kos is a fascist or even seeking any great power or wealth. He is just still a kid at heart who is now having fun with politics and the internet. You can't read what he has to say, or listen to him speak, and conclude that he ultimately will be a person of significant power, only enough of a gadfly to hurt the democrats.

One thing that strikes me about all this anti-blog stuff is that the pundits who are articulating it don't seem to think there's a legitimate reason to be "vituperative" toward Bush and his policies. Or if they do think there is, they aren't mentioning it, not even in passing.

AS I wrote elsewhere, the paper media especially are losing their subscriber base, which is predominantly older (read baby boomer) well educated middle class people who at one in time used to read the papers and the news mags. Baby boomers are turning in increasing numbers to online editions and the blogs in combination to find out what the paper media aren't telling us. The punditocracy is increasingly made up of the shallower, more well heeled journalists of the baby boomer generation, those who sat at their desks while the rest of us protested the war. These soft-handed nincompoops are those baby boomers who became dinks and yuppies, in other words people whose belief systems are as shallow as their brainpans. Who needs a pundit who can't reason his/her way out of a paper bag? Leave that sort of nincompoopery to the right wing, the rest of us want the real scoop.

Poor little blacksmiths (the MSM), worried about the arrival of cars (blogs).

If I were to step back and objectively read columns by these so-called liberal honchos, you would see the obvisou. They are all under trance of Republican crack. Devouring press releases and reasons provided by this Republican crack and spew it forward.

Kos's sometime silliness may not help, but this stuff seems mostly like the symptoms of fear of competition.

They're reacting like the RIAA did in 1999 or so, when Napster showed up on the scene*, which was the beginning of the end for old-school content gatekeepers like the cozy record company/radio station symbiosis. It's the "panic/smear/pass new laws to keep our outdated business model in place" phase.

The entrenched powers-that-be and their mouthpieces in the pundit class are beginning to realize that what they think about affairs of the day (and their ability to shape the narrative) will, in the very near term, dramatically wane. But, as in the filesharing wars, the model is broken, the masses are starting to figure out how broken it is, and they don't want to go back.

*Not advocating filesharing, it's just a metaphor.

Hear, hear. Agree with JB.

If the entrenched powers-that-be would have already done its job, i.e. talking about issues that matters to the public, rather than talking about issues that are printed on the Republican talking points, KOS wouldn't even have existed.

Those horrid spittle-flecked loons, eating all those poor vermicious knids!

I don't think it's a bad thing for liberal blogs to get noticed. Many people hearing about them for the first time via the MSM will check them out, thinking they can't possibly be as outrageous as they're painted to be (or hoping they are), and they'll find that we aren't, and they'll stick around and be informed and entertained and such. In the short term this might look bad for us; in the long term it'll more likely serve as a gateway drug toward more online citizen democracy.

Remember, a lot of these journalists started their own "blogs", either as their own idea or their editor's.

Basically, their blogs ended up as public suggestion boxes as to how to fix their publications and become real journalists (e.g., WaPo).

I think WaMo did it right - you don't need to find another career - you have a model that works (not the only model, but I bet it's been very successful for WaMo).

It's these other guys floundering around that have tried and failed, so I guess it must be the blogs fault.

I love how frightened conservatives like Al, Brian, etc. are of the progressive blogosphere. They realize we're getting rid of their planted moles like Joe Lieberman, and turning the Democratic party back to it's socially progressive roots.

Ahhh....nothing tastes better in the morning than conservative fear and hatred.

Brian, your anger fuels me...

The main stream press and conservatives will never recognize the legitimacy of liberal or Democratic blogs because it is not in their self interest to do so.

The only way you win power in business and politics is to take power. When you have power,then you have influence.

So, if you want influence, first get power.

Upstart media channels can either be bought up or beaten down.

Too bad we let those peasants learn to read in the first place.

Brooksie needs to figure out who Kos is. Is he a Quaker who bowls or Sherri Lewis? Or is he Dr. Moroeu(sp?) combining lambs with king cobras so the lambs can spit venom?

These questions, and others, must be answered.

Elayne Riggs, I love it...

"...a gateway drug toward more online citizen democracy."

My only hope is that it is addictive.

Perhaps it's just the msm treating the internet the way it covers presidential election races -- as horse races and celebrity profiles -- so they have to pick out a frontrunner (Kos) and tear him down. The amorphous, fluid nature of internet posting and reading is something that doesn't make for such focussed stories. The fact that Dailykos decided to have its own version of a Kevin Drum lunch gathering provided the msm with that focus. The fact that they have annointed Kos as the spokesman for all things bloggy and largely ignore Firedoglake, for example, is to miss the point.

There is something that the blog world does better than the daily newspapers, namely to take the hard facts and connect them in coherent stories complete with logical conclusions and editorial comments. The dailies have this century-long fetish about separating reporting from editorializing; it is a defensible position, but results in incomplete coverage. The blogs are equivalent to having a thousand-page letters-to-the-editor section every day (and lacking the usual editing out of profanity, illogic, and slander).

The other issue for the msm is that blogs provide content free of charge, and it is generally more entertaining than newspapers' editorial sections. Meanwhile, the hard news is already available to people on the radio and the internet half a day before we see it in the papers. No wonder newspapers feel the squeeze.

Kos (in his physical space) is surrounded by the activist culture of the San Francisco Bay Area -- as much as loved it and loved living there -- it certainly doesn't trust much, even itself. Kos seems positively centrist compared to some of the people that I engaged with on a regular basis in San Francisco's East Bay. But frankly, he's also this is the voice that left who are under 40 (even nationally) seem to agree with most. There is a feeling, among young liberals, that the democratic party does not speak for them. That the media is all controlled by right wing hacks -- despite evidence to controrary. And that anything that isn't communist-lite is not liberal. Like their far right religious cousins, they have hijacked the debate and turned off their peers to politics in general. Kos is a system of a larger problem.

Whores do not like to be reminded of the ugly truth. That's why those in the mainstream press responsible for crafting the CW act like they do.

Kos is the most visible figure in a movement that threatens the livelihoods of the power players. I'm suprised that it took this long for the swiftboating to begin.

It would be a good idea for everyone who is publicly challenging the standing order to look into their own backgrounds for handles that might be used to pull them down and take pre-emptive steps to mitigate that.

The success of the blog movement would mean jail time for some very powerful people, and they don't fuck around.

What is it with these people? Did they all get together and decide to converge on Kos this week? The Newsweek story isn't pretty. It's actually quite vile:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13531726/site/newsweek/

Brian, your anger fuels me...
Posted by: Dys Cent

Glad I can help, DC. I must admit I don't feel much anger toward liberal blogs, however. Bemusement at some, like Kos, would be more accurate.

By the way, let me recommend a liberal blog that most of you probably haven't visited. I'm being a bit of a homer, but I really like Commonwealth Commonsense.

"What on earth is going on here? What's fueling all this anti-blog rage?"

This is half true. There is no anti-blog rage. There is anti-liberal-blog rage.

The reason is pretty clear. Liberal bloggers are populists and the Media Elite does not approve of liberal populism.

Once upon a time progressives used to be populists. That changed in the 60s and 70s. The Democratic establishment and its mouthpieces like TNR became overtly hostile to populism. Around the same time the GOP started building a broad based populist movement. The GOP embraced talk radio. And then cable scream shows all of which lean right.

David Broders and David Brooks of the mdia don't have a problem with Rush, O'Reilly, NY Post and dozens of right wing blogs. They have a problem with liberal blogs. They are not used to populist voices from the left. They like it that way.

What they don't understand is that liberal blogs exist because liberal populists exists, not the other way round. If Markos closed shop tomorrow the traffic would move to other liberal blogs. It would not move to David Broders columns.

I love lefty blogs. They push the Democrat base to the left and make it easier to hang the loser liberal tag on lefty politicians. So more power to Kos, MoveOn and all you rabid lefties. You are why the Republicans will hang on to the House and Senate. I love it!

JEEZZZZZUS DON'T YOU PEOPLE RECOGNIZE F E A R WHEN YOU SEE IT?

First they ignore you CHECK
Then they laugh at you CHECK
then they fight you IN PROGRESS (SEE ABOVE)
then you win (SOON)

they are AFRAID. A well informed independent minded electorate is the LAST thing on EARTH they want to see

I wouldn't underestimate the ability of the entrenched corporate media to fight back. How's the napster doing these days, anyways?

I doubt they can kill the internet, but it is not far-fetched to see a corporate-government alliance to radically restrict what (and who) gets on it.

A little regulation, a little monopoly power, a few exclusive distribution deals and the internet could end up looking radically different to those of us that care, but still not different enough for joe sixpack AOL subscriber to care enough to make the politicians pay a price for trying to tame it.

I'm not sure how that's going to play out in the long term, but in the short term I have a feeling it's nothing but bad news.

I really dont understand why this is short term/bad news for the lefty blogosphere. Could you expand on this Kevin?

The pushback from traditional media seems to be coming because of several reasons. 1) Pundits are losing their relevancy because blogs are holding them to account and just anyone can give their opinion on the internet. Brooks, Broder, TNR, etc. are no longer alone on their soapbox. 2) Liberal Blogs are holding news reporters to account for their mischaracterizations, inaccuracies, and toeing the conservative story lines. Only thing they can do is marginalize the liburul noise machine. 3) YearlyKos showed most of the traditional media that the blog readers are not the rabid young whippersnappers they thought and they have to change public perception because it strikes to the heart of the narrative they have been pushing with the Democrats. Disengaged, lack of ideas, etc. They have to turn the blogosphere back into something that fits their previous narratives.

Ultimately you have to look at who Broder, Brooks, TNR, and others are actually talking to. It is not readers of this blog, DK, or any of the lefty blogosphere, nor any of the public at large. They are addressing directly those within the Wash DC establishment and so called Dem Consultants trying to marginalize any type of influence the lefty blogosphere can muster. Readers of the lefty sites will not be swayed, because they can see through the attempts to vilify the lefty blogs. The right will never change their opinion of the lefty blogosphere either. I'm on the side where that any type of publicity for the lefty blogosphere is good since it brings more eyes, and the public will realize through reading that the traditional media narrative does not hold.

Dys Cent,

I love how frightened conservatives like Al, Brian, etc. are of the progressive blogosphere. They realize we're getting rid of their planted moles like Joe Lieberman, and turning the Democratic party back to it's socially progressive roots.

Mm-hmm. Have you actually tried tracing the Democratic Party to "it's" roots? They are perhaps not what you think they are.

I'm a registered Dem and haven't ever been anything else, but, really, there's polite selective forgetfulness, and then there's flat-out convenient amnesia. The latter isn't helpful. To anyone.

Twenty years ago, on Sunday morning, you read David Broder or you read the back of your cereal box.

This morning, I wanted to check something about the Greenland glaciers, so I went to a blog run by climateologists and read what they had to say about some recent scientific papers.

Goodbye, David Broder, and good riddance. Nothing but a pompous rightwing gasbag for my entire life.

The mainstream press doesn't have very much time left to like or dislike anything. They're dead already, they just ain't lied down yet. Their distribution systems that use thousands of trucks to deliver tons of newsprint to widely scattered homes, newsprint that becomes just another chore for the homeowner on the day after it's printed- just a big ball and chain around the paper's ankles.

Naturally, in their death throes, they want to bite someone. They never had any higher value than that to cling to.

Brooks and Broder are obviously not reading blogs with any depth or care.

They're not reading tpm, they're not reading political animal, they're not reading brad delong, they're not reading tyler cowen, they're not reading tapped.

They're reading daily kos and not with a very open-minded view point.

I wish they would. The opinion journalism at these sights are far superior to their columns, especially with the respect to the frequency with which they reference hard data in a non-chauvinistic manner. David Brooks cherry picks. Kevin Drum does not.

I think the heart of the issue is that a lot of blogs make a lot of politicians look bad and the politicians they make look bad are part of the social network to which Brooks and Broder belong.

I didn't know rabid lambs had venom. I guess you learn something new every day.

Thank goodness for the internet and the blogs. I fear where we would be now and where Bush, the republicans and the MSM would lead us. Their track record is beyond sad. Let the people filter the facts and decide for themselves.

Kevin, a word of advice: don't get involved in any of this mess. Generally, you provide thoughtful, interesting analysis that is lacking on many other blogs. I'm with TNR on blog-loathing generally, though they went a little over the top, but blogs like yours break the mold. Learn from Kos' mistake: ignore detractors and continue to hammer away with policy, rational argument, and oodles of charts and graphs.

Blogs don't make politicians "look bad".

They make themselves look bad because they ARE bad.

Blogs, unlike the mainstream corporate advertising and marketing media, DO NOT REPORT THE TRUTH so that people can easily see for themselves that politicians (at least in this congress) are dumber than dog shit and twice and useless. Seriously, if there has EVER been a more useless donothing congress since the Roman Imperial Senate, i would like to know where.

Don't you find Al's concern for Lieberman touching?

It's all about discreditting MoveOn.org.

Why would the GOP want to discredit Moveon.org. They've been a total disaster for the Democratic party. Their candidates are near 0-22 in elections and they created the Dean debacle.

Moveon.org is the best friend Karl Rove ever had.

And that anything that isn't communist-lite is not liberal. Like their far right religious cousins, they have hijacked the debate and turned off their peers to politics in general.

"Truthiness" -- what you wished were true -- is not "truth." Actual facts here:

An analysis of raw data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland indicates that young people voted in bigger numbers in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia in 2005, than they did in 2001.

(via mydd)

A few years ago, Kos pointed out the obvious-- the Democratic party has a power structure made up of various portions of the "base" -- public service sector unions, manufacturing unions, minority groups, etc. This is well and good, as all of those interest groups are in some way are part of the interests that the Democratic party holds. However, what if you're not a union member, not a teacher, not a member of a racial/ethnic minority, etc.? Where's the "place" for those activists who have their own interests and their own views, and how do they get them heard and articulated? Blogs are not that place for them, but they served as an organizing community for those people to suddenly find out what they could do to get involved and make themselves heard.

Many people are stuck in a model articulated by late-stage baby boomers to actually udnerstand this, and their explanations invariably, like DC1974, they misunderstand what's going on.

And that anything that isn't communist-lite is not liberal. Like their far right religious cousins, they have hijacked the debate and turned off their peers to politics in general. Kos is a system of a larger problem.
Posted by: DC1974

I'm not sure if you intended to come accross as a cranky old coot ... but you succeeded admirably.

Brooks' "rabid lambs" oxymoron resulted in a less-than-dry keyboard and monitor here at Radio Free Donia.

YearlyKos showed most of the traditional media that the blog readers are not the rabid young whippersnappers they thought

The yearly Kos did no such thing and even if it did, this nonsense erases any sense of an adult presence. Kos is all anger. He's a sounding board for the moonbat base and has managed only to push the party further left making them even less relevent. The GOP has been toying with Senate Democrats the last two weeks and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it.

Kevins dreams of a coherent left in the blogosphere. The right was able to destroy Dan Rather's 44 year career in about 2 hours. The right side of the blogosphere made Xmas in Cambodia famous and exposed Kerry's heroic war record as something little less heroic than Big John's tried to sell us.

The right side of the blogosphere takes serial exaggerators like Al Gore and John Kerry and exposes them. The left would like to do the same. Kevin recognizes that'll be hard if they're all pissing on each other.

You see an example of it right now with Al Gore and GW. The left is creaming in their pants thinking GW is now 1st in the hearts and minds of Americans. It was just rates as #14 by Gallup as an election issue consistent with prior years. After Gore's movie leaves the scene and the 3 or 4 million who actually saw it are part of the polling pool GW will still be 14th.

The lefty blogs only speak to the choir. The righty blogs, when they have a story like Dan Rather or John Kerry speak to everyone.

I love that- "Where is the voice for white males who inherited money? When do they get their moment in the sun?"

Yes, how tragic it is that the billionaires can only spare hundreds of millions to run fake 'thinktanks' pumping out contrarian propaganda. The oppressed Christians of America demand their freedom! Automobile drivers are livid that one percent of the Federal money for transportation is spent on rail- it's tyranny, and demands a revolution!

Gee, maybe they should start a blog....

serial catowner: "Their distribution systems that use thousands of trucks to deliver tons of newsprint to widely scattered homes, newsprint that becomes just another chore for the homeowner on the day after it's printed..."

I'm sure it is statistical, but my husband and I cancelled our subscriptions to the NYT and our local press, the Minneapolis StarTribune, just last week. We had three reasons: 1) the fact that we can get more news, faster, plus commentary, in the blogosphere; 2) the amount of paper involved. We were recycling a grocery bag a week of newsprint; and 3) the general muffled stupidity of the NYT and an offensive column in the StarTrib written by a right wing political hack. She is supposed to provide "the conservative perspective" on the news but dishes up a daily dose of unchallenged lies and propaganda. (We would not have cancelled the StarTrib for that column alone, but in light of 1 & 2, why not?)

In any case, yes, perhaps the MSM is feeling something gnawing away at their roots.

I don't read Kos, btw, and I'm pretty liberal.

As with most things, the mainstream media is not driven by by any kind of grand ideology. It is driven by money, and to a certain extent, blogs upset the apple cart. Political pundits, in particular, are the most wary. So it's natural for them to lash out at blog sites. I'm not sure what position blogs are supposed to be taking in politics and the media. Anybody who claims to have the answer to that question is selling something. There's a very good chance that the pinnacle of the blog phenomenon will be the candidacy of Howard Dean, which barely got out of the starting gate despite raising a lot of money.

The MSM are nonideological, careerist power following sycophants. The blogs are calling them on their weak bullshit and their throwing little ctybaby tantrums in response.

Fuck the media whores.

In the army of weakling democrats, the champion weakling can be found here. Lord what a weenie.

baa

In the diseased sheep, the average incubation period was 10.0 days and the average morbidity period was 3.25 days. Major clinical signs included muzzle and/or head tremors (80%), aggressiveness, hyperexcitability, and/or hyperaesthesia (80%), trismus (60%), salivation (60%), vocalization (60%) and recumbency (40%). The furious form of rabies manifested in 80% of the sheep.

That Brooks fellow is spot on! Although I'd guess the prevalence of lock jaw is lower and that of vocalization and recumbency might be higher.

There's a very good chance that the pinnacle of the blog phenomenon will be the candidacy of Howard Dean, which barely got out of the starting gate despite raising a lot of money.

That's far from accurate. The blogs determined the last election. In destroying Dan Rather and the TANG story they helped GWB a great deal. In pushing the Xmas in Cambodia story and shedding light on Kerry's superficial wounds they created a groundswell of support for the SBVs and funded the endless ads of Kerry trashing the troops in Vietnam.

The pinnacle of the blog phenomenon is GWBs 62M votes. Dean was a disaster and nothing more. His election performance was pitiful having spent a ton of cash to come in a very distant 3rd. He was just successful enough to force Kerry too far left into his vote against after he voted for debacle.

The blogs will remain powerful. The MSM can no longer write the story alone.

I'm supposed to take David Broder seriously when he claims bloggers have no originality???

Talk about unintended irony!

I don't know anything at all about lambs and their venom, but every wild hawg hunter knows "a cut dog barks and a stuck pig squeals."

ptate,

smart move but you didn't help the liberal cause even a little bit. Both papers are far to the left of center and reliable supporters of liberal politicians and causes. The NYT's is self-destructing with rapidly declining profit margins due to subscription losses and higher expenses. While they continue to reduce headcount they also spend more on legal fees. The Wilson/PLAME case was a very expensive debacle and they're still not done with it.

Bill Clinton could not get elected today. With the rise of talk radio, Fox and the blogs and the collapse of the MSM he'd get torched in 2006. Sixty minutes did a famous whitewash for him in 1992. A candidate would get killed if they tried that today. Ask John kerry.

If you guys were willing to step back and objectively read Kos and other lefty sites, you would see the obvious. The content is mostly juvenile and mostly devoid of any serious thinking.

We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are.

I'm late to this one but... When I first started reading blogs, they had relatively small readership (as measured by number of commentors) and, therefore, little influence. Thus, they were either ignored by the MSM or, more likely, the MSM was unaware of them. However, as blogs grew, they gained influence which forced the MSM to notice. When they finally checked out the blogs, they discovered that much of what was being discussed/riduculed was them and they didn't like it. The sort of immediate and direct accountability to readers provided by blogs is scary to them

Brooks is simply a point man for the truth laundering and one-hour marginalizing crew whose task is to frame, pigeonhole and dismiss opposition power through Rovian marketing techniques, otherwise known as lying through your teeth. From Kerry the phony war hero (and now, Murtha), to Dean the unstable, Gore the liar, Hillary the harridan devil incarnate, ad nauseum, the GOP has been relying on the Brooks geeks to go out there and eat the live chickens for them. No one's going to call them on it, least of all Brooks colleagues in the corporate media.

Aside from that, for the diminutive in soul and stature Brooks to say this:
politics has become the realm of the small-minded
is rich, and to criticize Kos with this:
the new boss is little different from the old boss - only smaller.
is just so typical of the prick.

Broder's pissed because he got slapped upside the head so badly for his obsession with the Clenis.

Newspapers are irrelevant now. Brooks, Broder and TNR fail to realize that liberal blogs grew because they failed to do their jobs, so we had to do it ourselves. I'm much smarter and well-informed since I've been reading blogs.

Come on, Drum -- this just means they're afraid. This is them trying to define the left blogosphere, they're trying to definitively frame it, and the fact that they're so blatantly over-the-top with their cries of "facism" and "kingpin" shows that they're failing.

I say, "Whatever you say, Mr. Brooks -- just spell the name right and incude the URL, please."

Wow, there's more arguing going on in this comment stream than I think I've EVER seen on Kos - and I read it daily.

Regarding pundits like Broder and Brock, Pachacutec over at Firedoglake makes probably the most astute point of all: If Broder and Brock had started blogs 2-4 years ago, would those blogs have any readers today? Could they compete? With Kevin, or Josh, or Atrios, or Brad?

Fat effing chance.

Yeah. Why are we paying attention to Broder and Brooks? They have "loser" seeping out of every paragraph they write. The best reports -- and attitudes -- about this little tempest can be found at Mahablog and Wolcott.

Broder and Brooks, two suckers of republican cock, have spent the last five years making excuses for George Bush, the dumbest, most small-minded election thief in U.S. history. It is litle wonder that the Washington Post and NY TImes have become largely irrelevant. Get used to it boys, you're days are numbered.

It is clear that left to their own devices the Democratic establishment is unable to craft and execute a strategy to win elections. If you believe in democracy, then the blogs represent the popular debate on this vital topic.

Republicans are the party of ideas - bad ideas - but ideas nonetheless. Democrats are the party of programs and politeness. Until the party appeals to the native idealism and optimism of average Americans with rhetoric and ideas that gets them excited, they will continue to lose. Blogs may help fix this.

Prediction: Dems win control of NOTHING in November. Reps remain incompetent and corrupt. 2008 is the year. And no sitting Senator will the election.

hey rdw, please let me know when powerline or lgf or freerepublic decides to hold a conference for a long weekend in Vegas. Good luck getting the national media and the most influential members of the GOP to show up to that diet klan rally.

You are so unintentionally funny rdw.

Pechorin
Broder and Brooks, two suckers of republican cock...

Now there's a fine piece of spittle-flecked discourse. Good job living up to their low expectations.

If David Broder had his way, Bill and Hillary Clinton's sex life would be a major topic during the 2008 campaign. Bloggers would hinder this - so we know what Broder's problem is.

What I can't figure out is what Drum's problem is. I suspect he posts items like this just to get a rise out of people.

"Sixty minutes did a famous whitewash for him in 1992."

Oh, really? Forcing him to discuss adultery was "whitewash"?

Is this the same media that whitewashed Poppy's extramarital affair while in office? The same media that whitewashed W's "youthful indiscretions"? The same media that is whitewashing adultery tales of McCain, Guiliani, Jeb!? The same media that allows closet queens like Lindsay Grahams and Ken Mehlmans engage in gay bashing?

Have you seen the commentary about the "liberal" New York Times and Washington Post on liberal blogs?

Is it any surprise that figures whose marketability is built on the reputation of those two institutions will do anything to get people not to listen to liberal blogs?

It's knee-jerk self defense, Kevin. Nobody knows how the blogs will eventually affect journalism, but we all assume they somehow will. The MSM undoubtedly feels this, too, and their reaction is immediate and negative. It doesn't have to make any sense beyond that, really, which ir probably a good thing, because knee-jerk reactions seldom do. It sounds like psychobabble to say they don't realize they're doing it, but they probably don't.
And we're gonna fling poo right back at 'em, and nobody wins, and aw fuckit...

Thank God KOS and the left-wing crazies are trying to dump a moderate Democrat, Joe Lieberman. Just more proof that the Democratic Party no longer welcomes moderates.

What on earth is going on here?

Fear.

"The content is mostly juvenile and mostly devoid of any serious thinking."

Just like your posts, brian. God, could you make it any easier? You're the Dan Quayle of this discussion thread.

rdw--

I used to be a G-d damned Republican fool like you until I woke up and looked around. You can gloat about Rather and the TANG story all you want, but your hero W is still a fucking coward who deliberately avoided the Vietnam service for which John Kerry volunteered. The ESSENCE of Rather's story was absolutely true. All that the scum in the rightwing blogosphere did was successfully focus on trivia and see it elevated to become the story itself.

The "impotent" Democratic blogosphere helped hold Bush to the lowest "re-election" since 1916. (I say election in quotation marks because of the Republican coup of 2000.) Bush was given his final boost by Osama Bin Laden, who put out his tape the week before the election because he knew it would help Bush--the man he wants to see in the White House. And it is the Democratic blogosphere that has helped sledgehammer Bush's poll ratings down to the lowest level of any second term president at this point in his term.

Kos helped the Democrats win special Congressional elections in Kentucky and South Dakota, helped Barack Obama win the primary in Illinois, among other successes, and has generally taken a centrist, inclusive standpoint.

rdw, it's really too bad at this stage of your life that you really don't give a rat's ass that your country is being killed by the rightwing chickenhawk bastards you worship so much. You think of yourself as a patriot,no doubt. What a fucking laugh. As I said, I stopped being a G-d damned fool. Not sure that you ever will though, pal. I actually care what happens to my kids and grandkids. I actually love this country. I don't know what the fuck you love, but it sure ain't America.

This thread is great for two reasons, one being look at all the usual troll losers, and some new ones, repeating the tired old teenaged virgin GOP talking points, as if we're going to fall apart at the seems when some fat white guy or other bitter cracker mentioned lost elections or howard dean, and two, they are really bitter that Kos has taken off so far so fast, so all the assorted bitter fat white losers have to sit in their own sandbox filled with crap at lgf that doesn't get any attention at all. Imagine a GOP senator posting at LGF? Sure, they wouldn't get within 100 feet of such a cesspool of bitter white man rage.

The MSM have owned the franchise forever, and they can't deal with the challenge that the blogosphere represents. Old media has had the exclusive rights to the manufacture and dispensation of the convential wisdom, and they are freaked out that the unwashed now have a voice of their own in the form of the Internet.

Mainstream reporters, despite their generally liberal temperaments, have an odd sort of contempt for actual liberal politicians, who they widely view as being wimpy, pandering, fence-sitting, poll-driven wonks who are hesitant to really speak their minds and insist on giving lots of boring policy-oriented speeches that don't make good copy.

Well, the blogosphere is anything but that, but it turns out the mainstream press doesn't like that much either.

Of course, one obvious conclusion is that despite the Republicans' three decades of working the refs, and Kevin's own parroting of the "media is liberal" canard, that the media in general and reporters in particular really aren't liberal. Over at the Horse's Mouth, Greg Sargent has several posts about the so-called "liberal media" uniformly commiting blatant journalistic malpractice in order to give the GOP cover on the Iraqi debacle.

I think I used the word bitter too many times in one post. Damn, I'm....sour.

Check out Hugh Hewitt's site today.... Newsweek has a profile on Hewitt in the next issue.

Clearly--and largely unfairly--the press has seized on the likes of DailyKos and Little Green Footballs as exemplars of the blogosphere. And, I agree, that's not doing anyone much good.

Both papers are far to the left of center and reliable supporters of liberal politicians and causes. The NYT's is self-destructing with rapidly declining profit margins due to subscription losses and higher expenses.

You make the NY Times seem like the Manchester Guardian, which is utter nonsense. The Times is the organ of the establishment, the Ivy League elite. Its liberalism is cultural, and nothing more -- certainly not economic. The Times honchos don't want to lessen the gap between rich and poor; it might hurt their demographics.

This liberal boomer is delighted that there are blogs. Political Animal is the first blog I tune into every day. I also hang out at HuffPo and ThinkProgress. I've visited Kos from time to time, but I see less debate and discussion there and more echo chamber; I prefer blogs where people of varying viewpoints post. I'm glad that conservatives and libertarians post here. I rarely agree with them but I like seeing how they think, which helps me to think through how I would rebut them.

As others have said, blogs serve the purpose of ferreting out news which the MSM doesn't regard worthy. And since they cost little, SO FAR, they can counterbalance, to an extent, the MSM's being owned by big business with their biases.

I wish that we on the left could all make a pact to avoid obscenities and personal insults. Leave that to the rightwing. Although criticism of the left leaning blogs which claims that they are nothing but juvenile insults is wide of the mark, there are enough insults flung around to give some credibility to that criticism.

We are fighting an uphill battle here, folks. We are the voice in the wilderness, working against deeply entrenched interests. By all means let's present our viewpoints passionately, and where appropriate, back them up with cites. We are going to be accused of shrillness and vituperation no matter how we present our views, because to some conservatives disagreement is the same as attacking them, and because we do threaten entrenched interests.

If we eschew obscenity and personal insult, and how about let's avoid "tu quoque" arguments also, and present our arguments with all the rationality of which we are capable, then we will win hearts and minds of those who are capable of looking beyond well-known but dysfunctional views which have been "received wisdom", often for many centuries.

Newsweek has a profile on Hewitt in the next issue

Good point, that -- the so-called "liberal media" has also treated the dishonest conservative bloggers -- but I repeat myself -- with enormous deference. Time made PowerLine it's blog of the year, for pity's sake, despite its enormous intellectual dishonesty and blatant advocacy of a tyrranical Executive (as long as it's Republican, of course).

Joe
your hero W is still a fucking coward...

Fucking cowards don't fly single seat supersonic fighter jets. Never have, never will. There were plenty of opportunities for him to avoid military service totally, or take a cush ground job. He didn't. The F-102 had a mishap rate of over 13 losses per 100,000 flight hours, worse even than the Marine's Harrier, which is notorious for killing pilots.

My father didn't serve in Viet Nam although he served during that time period. but he served in the military like Bush. Was he a fucking coward too? was everyone who served in the military but not Viet Nam a fucking coward?

Stop impugning every person who joined the National Guard, or served in a service but did not deploy to Viet Nam in your desperation to get at Bush.

cowards don't fly single seat supersonic fighter jets

They do, however, stop flying them under fishy circumstances long before their obligation is up. Bush's own service record shows that he did just that.

But ol' Mike is on record as, well, not caring about the records of either Bush or Kerry. He likes the myths the GOP serves up much better. Shame on him.

Stop impugning every person who joined the National Guard, or served in a service but did not deploy to Viet Nam in your desperation to get at Bush.

Dishonest as ever, Mike. Joe's comment did no such thing. Bush's cowardice -- as demonstrated by his going AWOL, as his own service record shows -- is Bush's alone. Of course you, Mike, don't hesitate to perpetuate the smears of Kerry, no matter how many times the facts are pointed out to you.

You know what's the most cowardly of all? Republicans, from Nixon to Bush, hiding behind those who serve in order to shield themselves from criticism of their own failed policies. There's no one guiltier of that cowardice than Bush and Cheney, and no one whose honor entitles them less than to hide behind the sacrifice and duty of real soldiers.

"Stop impugning every person who joined the National Guard, or served in a service but did not deploy to Viet Nam in your desperation to get at Bush."

Stop impugning every person who criticizes Bush--who sends other kids to fight and die in a futile war, but refused to fight in a futile war himself--in your desperation to protect Bush.

Gregory
They do, however blah, blah, blah...

Gregory changes the subject when he doesn't like the answer. Shame on him for that grade school tactic of the spittle-flecked.

But ol' Mike is on record as, well, not caring about the records of either Bush or Kerry.

Ol' Mike is on record of considering Kerry a backstabber to his fellow vets for his Winter Soldier "service", and is glad to redirect this thread into a 200+ post-a-thon debating that point, if that's where you want to take it. Why debate the future when we can rehash the 2004 election.

He likes the myths the GOP serves up much better. Shame on him.

Shame on you for thinking someone who would fly a supersonic fighter jet for his military to be a coward because he didn't fly it over Viet Nam. By yours and Joe's standards, we have thousands of military pilots who were cowards, many of them who gave their lives in "acts of cowardice" fighting to overcome failures of equipment and bad weather. Hell, I guess the astronauts that went to the moon were the ultimate cowards, since they weren't even on the same planetary body that Viet Nam is located on.

Joel
Stop impugning every person who criticizes Bush...

stop making up strawmen. I don't impugn every person who criticizes Bush. Just the ones that do it with lies.

"Ol' Mike is on record of considering Kerry a backstabber to his fellow vets for his Winter Soldier "service"

Yes, you much prefer a man who was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War while at Yale and then used Daddy's connections to avoid it. Bush isn't so much a coward as a friggin' hypocrite.

"squadrons of rabid lambs [who] unleash their venom on those who stand in the way."

I read several liberal blogs every day and tend to generally much of what they have to say, but I'd have to admit that's still a pretty apt description of the comments sections on a lot of blogs, left, right or center. In fairness it's also no worse than some of the things I've heard bloggers call MSM opinion columnists and editorial boards -- again, as justified as I may personally feel such criticism may be in many cases.

It is not just the commentariat that is being dinosaur-ed but newspapers as well. Craigslist and Ebay are siphoning off much of their classified ad income. The generation that grew up with email and text messaging and the Net hardly reads newspapers at all.
What is particularly scary for newspapers is that there are caught in the kind of trap that IBM was when personal computers were about to arrive: what they need to do in order to survive long term is the opposite of what they need to do to get a few more years out their current business model. For long-term survival, they need to position themselves as gatekeepers who are absolutely trusted by the population at large. For continuing their current business model as the gatekeepers _selected_ by the powers that be. As part of their current business model, they have been quite complicit in the deceits of the Washington elite that are peaking under Bush. So much so that the only way they could gain the trust they need to survive in a new form would be to expose themselves throughly, but that would discredit them. There is an opening there for some one newspaper to expose the rest, confess its own faults, and get a lead in the contest to be the trusted gatekeeper (if there is to be a broadly trusted gatekeeper at all).
More broadly, we are in a period of intense technological and social change. The rules we play by mean that whoever happens to be rendered obsolete is screwed. Auto workers or IBM, whoever. This encourages everyone who is about to be steamrollered to try to slow down progress. The more powerful sometimes have ways to keep their old ways going at everyone else's expense. A good example is Microsoft, which is a project that finished at least 5 years ago but keeps itself alive by using its copyrights to receive huge income for doing very little productive.
If we could find someway to support each other through these transitions rather than throw each other to the wolves, there would be less hysterical clinging to the old and smoother, more useful introduction of the new. That would, of course, mean a much more fundamental change in society than most of us are talking about.
I won't miss the commentariat when it is gone, but I do miss working class people having plenty of good jobs. And I miss being able to send my daughter off to college and have some reasonable idea of what the real jobs in the United States will be during her career.

smuggler
RSM: "Ol' Mike is on record of considering Kerry a backstabber to his fellow vets for his Winter Soldier "service"

Yes, you much prefer a man who was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War while at Yale and then used Daddy's connections to avoid it.

Smuggler, do you consider everyone who went in the military but did not serve in Viet Nam to be cowards or hypocrites? What about guys who joined the Navy and served in submarines? Simpering cowards? Or guys who served in the air force manning the ballistic missile silos. Craven jello-kneed wimps? How about the Coast Guard? I'm sure you save your most virulent hatred for them, jsut trolling around or local harbors saving lives and stuff.

Oh, really? Forcing him to discuss adultery was "whitewash"?

Absolutely. The serial adultery was already old news. They had to bury the story and CBS worked very closely with them allowing the Thomasons to help direct and write the segment and doing as many re-takes as necessary to it right. After 60 Minutes the Clintons did exactly as they and CBS planned. They said they already discussed it and would not discuss it again. The MSM dropped it.

In 2006 there's no chance it happens that way. Bill in fact got away with quite a bit more than adultry and draft dodging.

My favorite part of that entire campaign series was Carville, Begalla and Clinton himself denying the affair with Gennifer Flowers by consistently saying, there was no 11 1/2 year affair. She claimed an 11 1/2 affair. The Clinton team always made sure they denied an 11 1/2 year affair. They never denied an affair. and the fact the affair was actually only 11 years and 5 months means they are still as honest as Abe.

This is a great country isn't it? Too bad those days are over.

"Smuggler, do you consider everyone who went in the military but did not serve in Viet Nam to be cowards or hypocrites?"

Stop making up straw men. Smuggler doesn't impugn every person who went in the military but did not serve in Viet Nam, Just the ones that supported the Vietnam War while at Yale and then used Daddy's connections to avoid it.

They do, however, stop flying them under fishy circumstances long before their obligation is up. Bush's own service record shows that he did just that.

There was nothing fishy about GWBs service. Ask Dan Rather.

rdw: " blah, blah, blah . . . Carville, Begalla and Clinton . . . blah, blah, blah"

rdw, you posted on the wrong thread. You're looking for the archives.

"Smuggler, do you consider everyone who went in the military but did not serve in Viet Nam to be cowards or hypocrites? What about guys who joined the Navy and served in submarines?"

Try and follow this; it's pretty simple.

I consider an eligible, able-bodied young man who is an outspoken supporter of a war who then takes active steps to avoid participating in that war to be: A HYPOCRITE!

"There was nothing fishy about GWBs service. Ask Dan Rather."

Oops, wrong again, rdw. Rather said nothing about the fishy circumstances under which GWB stopped flying.

But nice try. Do play again sometime.

Blogs present an open and adversarial discussion and interrogation of what the government is doing and whether it is right or wrong. The MSM does not.

Bloggers are not afraid of a phone call from the WH or from a major sponsor in the coal, oil, gas or some other industry. The MSM are afraid. Very afraid.

Blog writing is often witty, pointed, and insightful. Writing and reporting from the msm seems, with some rare exceptions like Dowd and Rich, either insipid or silly (rabid lambs?, spittle-flecked loons?) and always aimed at bashing anyone who doesn't conform to right wing dogma.

mention adultery and rdw gets really hot and bothered. sigh, I wish for those days too, rdw. poking around in someone else's sex life is a hugely important issue for the right wing. it get's us all kinds of randy, and I'm still not sure why.

Is this how you get around your voluntary moratorium on NYT editorials?

Brooks is probably just annoyed you've been ignoring him. If you paid attention to him he'd just go back to his "red staters eat grits and bacon, blue staters eat grape nuts" crap.

Joel
Just the ones that supported the Vietnam War while at Yale and then used Daddy's connections to avoid it.

So all Yale grads went to Viet Nam unless they worked an angle or exercised a connection? Flying supersonic single seat fighters was a way to avoid injury in VietNam? If he used Daddy's connections for anyhting, it was to fly the most dangerous plane in the air guard, instead of taking a less dangerous job.

And of course, if anyone who served in the National Guard happened to have supported the war, you think them a coward, correct? But you probably think that every single person in the National Guard got in there through some connection.

always aimed at bashing anyone who doesn't conform to right wing dogma.

I think that their bashing has a more subtle aim than that. The point is to create the impression that there is active debate by all points of view while at the same time excluding certain points of view. This type of propaganda system has been far more effective than the type that proudly proclaims that it allows only one point of view.
There is also some difference between what the MSM needs to do for the system as a whole and the MSM's own interests as one specific part of that system.

Time made PowerLine it's blog of the year, for pity's sake, despite its enormous intellectual dishonesty and blatant advocacy of a tyrranical Executive

Powerline was totally honest and, as events have proven, totally correct. Dan Rather retired in disgrace last week because Powerline proved he was a disgrace. Even Kevin Drum referred to Rather specifically and CBSnews generally as disgraceful. And Kevin wasn't even addressing the cartoonish mature of the forgery. He was only referring to the 'chain of custody'.

When all is said and done of the 2004 election the two big media events by far, as written by non-partisan historians, will be Dan Rather and the SBVs.

Powerline was in the middle of both with detailed docmentation. The cool thing about both stories is the protagonsist held on to stories that were so ridiculously fraudlent as to be incredible. Rather on his crayon memo's and Kerry on his moronic Xmas in Cambodia tale.

FACT: Dan's memo's were cartoonishly false.

FACT: Xmas in Cambodia could not possibly have happened as Kerry told the story. If only because Nixon was not President in 1968 but also because kerry's own journals prove he wasn't near Cambodia or even on a missionon Xmas Eve in 1968.

Powerline remains a powerful voice on the right

"And of course, if anyone who served in the National Guard happened to have supported the war, you think them a coward, correct? But you probably think that every single person in the National Guard got in there through some connection."

I g