Ok, last week I was riding the metro and reading that free daily with a right-wing lean to its editorial pages, the DC Examiner, on my way home from work. In the opinion pages I found things an article on Daily Kos. Unfortunately, it was a
right-wing smear job of the worst kind:
Those who post at the left-wing Daily Kos Web site, the most visited political blog on the Internet, don't officially speak for Democrats, of course. But if you're a liberal and you want red meat, it's the place to go. Unfortunately for liberals, you can find the worst of liberalism there, too. Consider this excerpt from a post by "dataguy" [note: the diary in question can be found
here] -- not just a "troll" writing something provocative, but a longtime contributor to the site. Saturday morning he posted a rather cold-blooded PR plan for getting the most political mileage out of protester Cindy Sheehan, the mother of fallen Army Specialist Casey Sheehan. Does the authentic voice of the left belong to "dataguy" or is he an outlier? Dozens posted comments at Daily Kos supporting the plan, while only a few condemned it. Does that matter? You be the judge:...
When I read this I figured something smelled fishy. So I went back and found the original diary and found out this guy was essentially talking out of his ass. While the diary did exist, most commenters condemned it. I fired off a letter to the editor, not expecting it to get published. But lucky me, today I picked up the examiner and found my letter there. Score one for the netroots. The letters for today are not yet up on their site but I'll type it out for all of you:
Column misprepresents bloggers
From: Brian Jennings, Bethesda
RE: "Typical liberals?"
Aug 17
Mike Long's column demonstrates either a deliberate attempt to mislead his readers or an appalling incompetence to conduct basic research. In his column, he highlights the post of a Daily Kos diarist known as "dataguy" to imply that the blog "brings out the worst of liberalism."
It is true that "dataguy" did post some offensive material that suggested some cold-blooded ways to politicize Cindy Sheehan's story. However, I should point out that there are more than 60,000 people who have the ability to post on Daily Kos, and "dataguy" is just one of them.
Furthermore, Mr. Long states that "dozens posted comments supporting the plan, while only a few condemned." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the vast majority of the comments on the page strongly disagree with that post.
Plus, of the many people who viewed that post, only four chose to recommend it.
As soon as they post today's "threads" (what they call their letters to the editor) page up, I'll add a link for everyone.
Update: My letter is now available online and can be found here.