Legal Commentary

The Blogosphere's Big Mistake In Campaign '08

By Big Tent Democrat

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Via commenter white n az, a report from the Eschacon Media criticism forum (see also Susie Madrak's own report, she was the moderator):

Media Matters' Eric Boehlert. . . . [T]here's a new phenomenon ... it goes back to Gore's press in 1999 which was "really unfair and really weird." What's happening online now is potentially dangerous: HRC has gotten dreadful press, not fair, "gotcha," and so on -- there's a portion of the blogosphere that has ignored that and there's a portion that has encouraged that. It's dangerous because the media criticism has to be consistent and relentless, and we can't very well say, "You can't go after our candidates ... except this one." I get nervous about pushback regarding disingenuous coverage - our response needs to be, "You can't treat Democrats this way." When people in the left blogosphere are quoting an anonymous Matt Drudge source, it makes me nervous.

[Susie] Madrak: the rule of thumb is that if you read or hear something that makes you hate another Democrat, you need to dig down further because there's more to the story. The real enemy is the media, and they see themselves as the only superdelegates.

(Emphasis supplied.) BTW, Eschacon sounds great, Krugman will be discussing DFH economics with Duncan. MORE . . .

Susie adds:

I’d been chatting with Eric the night before, and he told me he’d been interviewing Clinton bloggers for a book about how bloggers are affecting the 2008 presidential campaign, and was “shocked” to hear again and again that people felt they could no longer speak freely in the blogosphere.

“I’m not,” I said. I told him most of the bloggers I know are appalled at the present state of affairs, and that they’d basically been bullied into silence. (Which I find ironic - white working class Clinton voters are called “Archie Bunker types” by Obama supporters, and yet the Clinton supporters are the ones being told to “Stifle yourself!”)

He said he was astounded at the venom those bloggers described, and had already collected so much material, he was thinking of making it a separate book.

Later, for the evening’s entertainment, Rude Pundit performed his crowd-pleaser “Why I Won’t F[---] Ann Coulter.” (He’d originally planned to perform “Why I Won’t F[---] Hillary Clinton,” but in light of the day’s conversations, he decided not to.)

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 30, 2008 (boomark / email).