This is a "blogger inside baseball" story, so if you think such things are trivial, feel free to skip.
Long time progressive writer Al Giordano ended up writing a new blog this year, quickly building traffic based on his astute coverage of the Democratic primary battle. He parked this blog at the site of a fledgling organization called Rural Votes run by Deb Kozikowski, a vice chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
Al built his blog into a mini little powerhouse, worked his way up the Technorati rankings and was able to score a blogger pass for the DNC convention. In addition, his readers raised several thousand dollars to help get him there.
Then one day Al wrote a piece that cited Saul Alinsky (the inspiration for my forthcoming book, in fact), and Kozikowski freaked out.
From: DebbySKoz@cs.com
To: narconews@gmail.com
Date: Wed, June 11, 2008 at 8:00 p.m.
Subject: What Are You Doing?
Rules for radicals? Give me a break. We have a meeting with Farm Aid and other interested parties in the next two weeks -- what do you think you are doing? This is not helpful -- do you WANT Barack Obama to lose? Talk about creating the petrii dish for beautiful loser syndrome. I am including Matt in this conversation b/c w/o an understanding The Field goes fallow. I mean it, Al. I cannot allow you to rule this roost to the detriment of the overall mission. I'll take the hit if you refuse to be a team player and quit. An Obama funder I have been courting is horrified. That makes three -- two in the last week. You are wrong headed. This has NOTHING to do with rural at all and this particular hero of yours according to Time Magazine in 1970 -- "SAUL ALINSKY has possibly antagonized more people—regardless of race, color or creed—than any other living American."
This is pretty funny, if a tad pathetic. Alinsky is a true American hero, and like I said, my forthcoming book pays homage to him. But that should give you a taste of this sordid affair. (I won't get into the details, you can get them at Al's site if you want them).
Bottom line, she thought Al was harming her site, so she didn't just pull the plug, but she purged all of his past writings from the site. That's fine, it's her site. Kind of short sighted, since Al's blog was the best marketing possible for her obscure little organization. (Should I ban Saturday Morning Garden Blogging on Daily Kos because it doesn't directly relate to the mission of the site?) But whatever, no one cared much about that.
What was a problem is that Kozikowski essentially stole the money his community had raised to send him to Denver and kept the blogger credential Al earned for herself. When I asked her about it via email, she came up with a bizarre rationalization that she had used her apparently boundless clout within the DNC to pull strings and get those credentials. Total delusions of grandeur, and completely contradicted by emails from her Al posted on his blog.
Whatever. This post isn't designed to run Kozikowski or her lame organization through the mud. I think they're pretty irrelevant and will stay that way.
This is all to explain and promote an effort by some of Al's readers to get the DNC to issue him a new credential. So if you value Al's work and think he should get credentialed (like me), sign the petition.