Pseudonymous Bloggers Unmasked as Wingnut Operatives

[UTUSN]

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9292

.... On the right, a number of these bloggers were already political operatives or worked at long-standing movement institutions before taking up residence online. They are, at best, the intellectual heirs of L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center and Reed Irvine, who founded the ultraconservative, media-hounding nonprofit organization Accuracy In Media (AIM) in 1969 as part of the first generation of post–Barry Goldwater right-wing institutions. At worst, they're the protégés of conservative fund-raiser Richard Viguerie and dirty-tricks master Morton Blackwell, who has tutored conservative activists since 1965, most recently mocking John Kerry at the Republican national convention by distributing Band-Aids with purple hearts on them.

Which brings us back to Jordan. He was brought down not by outraged citizen-bloggers but by a mix of GOP operatives and military conservatives. Easongate.com, the blog that served as the clearinghouse for the attack on CNN, was helped along by Virginia-based Republican operative Mike Krempasky. From May 1999 through August 2003, Krempasky worked for Blackwell as the graduate development director of the Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Virginia–based school for conservative leaders founded by Blackwell in 1979. The institute is the organization that had provided “Gannon” with his sole media credential before he became a White House correspondent. It also now operates “Internet Activist Schools” designed to teach conservatives how to engage in “guerilla Internet activism.” ....


Unraveling L’Affair Gannon

While conservatives have created an online echo chamber in part to further their decades-long assault on the mainstream media, liberals have begun using the new medium to pursue and unravel these conservative connections. “When you read in the mainstream press stories about the blogosphere, there are some things that come up over and over,” says Kevin Drum, who writes the Political Animal blog for the liberal Washington Monthly magazine. “It’s about hounding someone out of their jobs.”

The Gannon scalping is different from the Jordan and Rather controversies in two very important ways. First, whereas the conservative bloggers were out to destroy journalists with distinguished careers who’d made serious missteps, the liberal bloggers on Gannon’s trail were seeking to expose an out-and-out fraud. Second, while some of the conservative bloggers going after Jordan and Rather were mistaken for regular citizens by the mainstream media, the liberal bloggers were very much out in the open.

********UNQUOTE*******

[Warpy]

1. Well, this just brings us back to a few facts

First, conservatives are the cohort who are likeliest to have cheated their way through school on purchased papers. Second, most of them are incapable of articulating their own thoughts, and have long preferred to get them handed out whole from conservative pundits. And third, because of the first two points, the number of right wing movers and shakers who are able to form those opinions for their followers is shockingly small.

It's no wonder that the multitude of conservative "bloggers" will eventually turn out to be mostly established right wing talking heads and GOP dirty tricksters. Because of the docility of their followers, that's about all they've got to choose from out there.

The way the left was totally shut out of the media until AAR got started last year actually did us a favor. We have learned to think for ourselves and to articulate our own positions in the complete absence of any official body of thought. The miracle is that we're not more scattered and factionalized than we are.

The seeds to the right's destruction always lie within themselves. It's up to us to figure out how to exploit this, and so far, we seem to be doing a fairly decent job of it. There are hundreds of us. There are only a handful of them, and they're all getting overworked.

[Tigress DEM]

6. Ah, good reminder. To the Battle of Wits, they come unarmed.

But it's the every day people who believe their stuff that kills me.

[lostnfound]

2. kick for a good column nt

[HootieMcBoob]

3. kick n/t

:kick:

[applegrove]

4. No Surprise n/t

:kick:

[Tigress DEM]

5. When liars win and honest people start picking up stones.

I don't know what to say. This stuff brings me close to tears.

[nedbal]

7. mistaken for regular citizens..... is the scary part

The article ended with.......

“The way I look at this,” says Daily Kos’ Gardner, “ is just one more piece to a bigger puzzle that we’ve seen for the past couple months -- attempts by the Republican media complex not necessarily to fight the media but to become the media.”

But unlike traditional news outlets, right-wing blogs openly shill, fund raise, plot, and organize massive activist campaigns on behalf of partisan institutions and constituencies; they also increasingly provide cover for professional operatives to conduct traditional politics by other means -- including campaigning against the established media. And instead of taking these bloggers for the political activists they are, all too often the established press has accepted their claims of being a new form of journalism. This will have to change -- or it will prove serious journalism’s undoing.
>>>>>>>>>

they openly shill,, yet they are just regular citizens scary

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. Here's a John Stuart Mills quote that seems relevant.

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

He never met the neocons, but the herds of metaphorical Kool-Aid drinkers have been around since before actual Kool-Aid was invented. A few smart, cynical ones lead all the dumb ones by the nose-ring like cattle to the slaughterhouse.

[intheflow]

9. The difference between bringing down established journalists and

Gannon is very important. Nightline just did a piece on bloggers and they put taking down Gannon right up there with taking out Rather. It's BS entirely--the RW took out Rather because he wasn't playing by the adminstration's rules and the left took out Gannon b/c he was playing exclusively by the administrations's rules. Which is the greater threat? How can we get this message out to more people?

:kick:

[Rockholm]

10. The media is not reporting on Gannon because

that would give legitimacy to Gannon. This of course is bull, but a local reporter I know told me this. Today's talking heads are destroying this country.

[intheflow]

11. It is BS.

I think they're not reporting it because they're too afraid of being labeled anti-gay hypocrites, even though to report this story they don't even have to mention his sexual preferences. Just reporting he was a prostitute would be sufficient. :grr: