More of this, please! From all of us.
This silly affair of the little girl being used by her father has proven something great. Our side, while never sinking to the lowest depths like Freepers and les Footballs verts, CAN break through to the media very quickly.
Why do I say this?
Well, what is the current result of the Phil Parlock probably-staged incident?
(see this diary, if you haven't - and who hasn't?):
Well, do a
google news search and you'll see a bunch of articles from today that essentially lay a lot of doubt to the claims of Mr. Parlock.
Two of them are in major local papers in WV (here and here) written by their own staff writers and also in the AP, which spreads all over the place. One of the WV articles, IMHO, is overall massively nagative towards Mr. Parlock.
These things that we all - at Kos, Atrios, DU, Rising Hegemon, etc. - did helped to intermix doubt into the story. (For my small bit, I did what many did: I emailed the Herald-Dispatch AND the Union that offered the apology, alerting them to the growing doubt.) We helped alert the general public to a probable fraud.
Sound familiar?
Exactly!
This is just how the GOP side muddied the Bush AWOL issue - by massing an assault on the news media, with letters and "evidence", to say "that's not right!" In the memo case, only much later did our side get through to any print media.
This time is so much better. I don't know why, myself. Maybe because the ancient font-and-superscript evidence took time to gather (due to excellent work here at Kos), while this time, the proof was short and sweet.
You may think this incident is a small issue. But it's an excellent example of the power we have in presenting our side of the overall debate to the world.
We, as a group, by spreading the story from one blog to the next and then to the NEXT, can ALL send a storm of emails flying to newspaper editors, etc.
You may think, "we all knew this!" but I'm not so sure. Well, I didn't know, anyway. To me this, along with the "you own it!" quote, is proof of fast massive action at the blogs-of-the-left having quick results.
It is a revelation, or a proof-of-concept.
Especially if the conflict involves Right blogs vs. Left blogs - do not doubt it - we, as a union of weblogs, have power to overcome the right-wing ranting-rabble and have our own strong voice penetrate the media.
Maybe I'm just looking for good news. But I'm serious. I want to see more of this. And I'll help any way I can!