I can hardly stop laughing. John at Power Line must have written this post in the middle of happy hour. Guess what TPC readers? The White House is a scandal free zone.
The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free. Not a single instance of corruption has been unearthed. Only one significant member of the executive branch, Scooter Libby, has been convicted of anything. Whether the jury’s verdict was right or wrong, that case was an individual tragedy unrelated to any underlying wrongdoing by Libby or anyone else.
This is all about creating a reality based on what they want to believe. Furthermore, it is a huge reflection on the absence of credibility of Power Line’s blog. Commentary is one thing; distorting the facts, to put it nicely, is another.
About six weeks ago, I was less than enthused with the Bush administration’s track record and made this statement, which is in stark contrast to Power Line’s reality.
Every single day, something is revealed about how this administration breaks the law and demonstrates gross incompetence. The exception to revelations may be Saturday or Sunday, but the only reason for the negligible amount of exceptions is obvious. The government does not work on the weekend.
Statements like Power Line’s are exactly what the mainstream media use repeatedly to discredit bloggers. Not only does Power Line make themselves look like idiots, but they taint the blogging world in general.
I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, but I want to make a point. I had not read or revised TPC’s About page in a long time, and just decided to review it earlier today and make a few minor changes. I firmly believe this paragraph from that page says a lot.
The Political Chase seeks to expose the truth and differentiate it from diversionary rhetoric; adheres to an objective focus, but expresses opinions without altering the facts; and draws conclusions on what it believes to be accurate and proper. Those elements combined form the foundation, the infrastructure of its content. (Emphasis added.)
You know the expression, “don’t drink and drive”? I submit a few bloggers might consider a spinoff of that slogan - don’t drink and blog.
Shortly after her swearing-in as the first female House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi took time to field questions from a few dozen Internet bloggers on a conference call that was off limits to mainstream media.
Last week, Pelosi’s aides arranged for bloggers to question two Democratic House leaders on another conference call shortly before President Bush’s State of the Union speech.
Pelosi also hired a full-time staff member this month dedicated to blogger outreach, and is making plans to launch a blog of her own.
Where does the strength of the liberal blogosphere emanate?
It takes root from two things - one internal, one external. Externally, it had the behind the scenes efforts of, and coordination with important new organizations like the Phoenix Group, which I blogged upon here.
The internal strength of the Liberal blogosphere itself is probably over-rated, though it is certainly much stronger than the Conservative blogosphere. It flows from a high degree of passion partly driven from a sense of being out of power.
Entries by bloggers mentioned in my article
– Julie Fanselow of Red State Rebels: “Unfortunately, the story … made it sound like Larry Grant paid me to flack for him here on Red State Rebels. … In fact, as most of you know, Larry paid me to write his Grassroots for Grant blog (on which I made nearly 500 posts) and to reach out to the national netroots. I also did some writing and media relations work on the Jerry Brady for Governor campaign early in 2006.”
– Jon Henke of QandO: “Sure, bloggers vigorously criticize politicians; after all, they have strong opinions about politics. But those are exactly the kind of people likely to get involved in politics. Voters criticize politicians too, but they still manage to vote for them. I also reject the idea that blogs’ “outsider” status is really relevant. Any emerging field will necessarily consist of “outsiders” to the political establishment. “Objective” and “intellectually honest” may be selling points for bloggers, but I don’t think “outsider” is a big one.”
– Aaron Silverstein of SquareNet (and Heading Left): “When politicians hire bloggers, they are not buying positive coverage from a seemingly unbiased source. Look at my writing about Bill Winter from before he and I had even met. I was a highly opinionated and partisan source, and made no secret of it. Bill didn’t have to pay me if he wanted good coverage. He already had that from me …. Bill hired me to help him better hear our community, not to better speak to it.”
Other entries
– Daily Kos: “Your piece is shallow, you’re reaching (badly), and making a Herculean stretch to find ‘evidence’ of some kind of malfeasance, when in fact what is happening is that people who write for and are enjoyed by large communities are getting (gasp) attention and in some cases support (monetary, infrastructural or other) for their efforts and for their communities. Horrors!”
– Writes Like She Talks: “The generalizations are overused and if anything, bloggers should be working hard to dispell them — by the blogging they do as well as calling others out on it.”
After MSNBC republished my piece on paid campaign bloggers, an editior at The New York Times asked me to write a follow-up piece for an op-ed chart.
That article and accompanying chart were published this morning.
The names and numbers in the piece are the same as in my previous piece, but the Times asked me to highlight some of the praiseworthy posts that the bloggers wrote about their employers or their critical comments about opponents. Check it out.
UPDATE: Lots of bloggers are peeved about my Times article. I wanted to make sure their voices are heard here, too, so here are the links: Eschaton, MyDD and Pandagon.
Others don’t deserve to be heard because they don’t know how to debate an issue with civility and dignity. But for the sake of being complete, I’ll link to them as well: Roger Ailes, The News Blog and Whiskey Fire.
Ann Althouse had a different reaction: “Politicians: If you’re worried a blogger might undercut your campaign, know that about $2,000 a month will not only cut off the criticism; it will buy you a stream of free ads, written by a free ad writer. What a bargain!”
UPDATE II: Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum has a thoughtful response to my piece, including my answers to his questions. Though I disagree with Sifry, I commend his entry as the best rebuttal to date I’ve seen to my Times piece.
For the record, and as I stated in a comment below, I also agree with this point by InstapunditGlenn Reynolds: “I think this is fine if there’s full disclosure, but you can form your own opinions.”
UPDATE III: I’ll link to more responses here as I find them. The latest is at Blue Jersey.
UPDATE IV: This comment at TalkLeft is worth highlighting: “I think that this information is important. I want to know who is behind these new political powerbrokers. … Transparency as a political principle doesn’t stop at the gates of the blogosphere. Especially since established bloggers are now taking in and spending seven-figured sums of political money, meeting former presidents and being interviewed on CNN on Election Night. If I were a blogger, I wouldn’t attack the messenger here but rather ask some serious questions about credibility.”
In the same vein Jeff Jarvis said this at BuzzMachine: “We, of all people, must be very transparent about our roles and relationships, especially as we demand such transparency of media and politicians.
“It’s not just about appearances. It’s also about loyalties: Bloggers … are taking on roles of leadership, and those who choose to follow deserve to know whether the bloggers to whom they link are more loyal to a cause or to a candidate and whether their loyalty stems from payment. So the Times charting these paid relationships is doing to us as we would do unto others. Golden Rule, I’d say.”
Glover has received many comments on this post, most of which are not complimentary to Glover. Time permitting, I may post a few that are representative and/or duly notable.
Need information about Hillary Clinton? TPC reader GB sent an email saying he has plenty at his new site, justhillary.com.
GB’s description:
Comprehensive and regularly updated, JustHillary.com has all the latest news and commentary, as well as the new polls, her statements and votes, and the popular “HillaryTracker” that let’s you know where she is and what she’s doing each day. And don’t miss the entertaining blog section!
I almost don’t want to post this piece because of the irony timing of this post and the one immediately preceding it. However, that would be nothing short of an act of duplicity. Furthermore, it would be contrary to the mission and core principles of this blog and many others like it.
With the prelude to this post stated, I’ll get to the point. Daniel Glover, of the National Journal’s Technology Daily, is an op-ed contributor to The New York Times today. Glover’s piece is an egregious statement against bloggers and the Times is complicit by publishing it.
New on the Web: Politics as Usual
“THE Netroots.” “People Power.” “Crashing the Gate.” The lingo of liberal Web bloggers bespeaks contempt for the political establishment. The same disdain is apparent among many bloggers on the right, who argued passionately for a change in the slate of House Republican leaders - and who wallowed in woe-is-the-party pity when the establishment ignored them.
You might think that with the kind of rhetoric bloggers regularly muster against politicians, they would never work for them. But you would be wrong…[T]his year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research.
Here is a listing of some of the most influential bloggers who went to work for campaigns this year, what they were paid according to campaign disclosure documents, and praiseworthy posts about their employers or critical ones of their employers’ opponents.
Glover, obviously with his head up the posterior end of his anatomy, has made serious and harmful implications of bloggers selling out. I hope Mr. Glover has his posterior end covered quite well, because his statements may be deemed libelous.
If bloggers are selling out, then Glover is selling out on a considerably grander scale. The National Journal, which Glover’s Technology Daily is part of, is a very expensive political periodical - hundreds of dollars for an annual subscription. Where does Glover think he gets his paycheck from? Politicians and the political environment are the subscribers.
I subscribe to the National Journal because it is a substantial reference tool and source of inside-the-Beltway information. That notwithstanding, Glover’s nasty implications taint the integrity of the Journal. After today, I’m not so sure I need to pay hundreds of dollars annually to an organization that purposefully insults its subscribers, which includes other bloggers and myself.
Even if there is credibility to Glover’s allegations, can he not find something more productive and revealing to focus on in that plethora of corruption in and around Washington? The total amount of slush fund money Glover references is a gnat’s derriere compared to the shenanigans in the Capital and the White House.
What Glover fails to note is that bloggers are dependent upon advertising and contributions for any income. The funds received at the sites he references are the sole or primary source of income for the owners/editors and contributors. But more important than that, people start and maintain blogs to serve a hobby or a passion, and the passion is always more important than any potential revenue. The only corrupt blogger I am aware of is the blogger President Bush hired to publish his deceitful propaganda and pose stupid, distractive questions in the White House Press Briefing Room. Bush always had a person with an easy or topic-changing question he could call on when the real questions became too stressful or embarrassing. But, that blogger was caught with his pants down and doesn’t go to the White House anymore.
[J]ust after the 2004 elections, in the ornate Lyndon B. Johnson room of the capitol where he’d been invited to give Senate Democrats a post mortem on what went wrong. The party had just lost its third election in a row, and his audience, a self-flagellatory group at the best of times, was feeling glum and a little bit desperate. Moulitsas told the assembled crowd that they, the establishment, had mismanaged party strategy for too long and that he, Markos, had a better plan. He can be so intense and high-strung, so full of kinetic energy, that the sheer performance of his speeches—he never writes them out, just talks off-the-cuff—can be distracting, like watching snakes fighting in a bag.
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