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Blog Bits: Rightroots In-Fighting

To be activists or not to be activists. That is the question that top Republican bloggers are asking themselves this week as RedState challenges the House GOP leadership.

Dean Barnett over at HughHewitt.com said the answer should be a resounding "no" because the last thing bloggers on the right want is to become like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos. He scolded Erick Erickson of RedState for his "needlessly purple and hostile" prose in attacking fellow Republicans for elevating ethically troubled Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., to the Appropriations Committee.

Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation, who blogs at RedState, defended Erickson's activism (if not his in-your-face tactics) and noted that Barnett himself joined an online activist campaign against fellow Republicans just months ago.

Matt Lewis of Townhall.com then reprimanded Bluey. "Rob has always had a bias toward using blogs for activism. My only argument would be that I think we all bring different things to the conservative movement -- and that the movement is big enough for different kinds of bloggers."

GOP new media maven David All just blogged back and took it all in with a "this is an interesting ideological duel to watch" distance from the battlefield, kind of like people watching the Civil War in the 1860s.

I've been soaking it all in myself, and here's what I'm thinking (tongue planted firmly in cheek):

The Bible says "evil companions corrupt good morals." Conservative bloggers think Kos and his online colleagues, like Jerome Armstrong and Matt Stoller of MyDD, are the epitome of evil. Some conservative bloggers have been keeping company with those very same netroots celebrities. So ...

Hey, I'm just thinkin' out loud. And I'm not alone. Just the other day, a writer at RedState asked, "Are We Becoming Them?"

Mull it over while you read the rest of today's blog bits:

-- The presidential campaign of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., "has hired a traveling blogger to write and videblog his campaign trips in real time." Ari Melber praised the choice of Matt Browner Hamlin. "The Dodd campaign was smart to tap a true believer who challenges the conventional wisdom in the blogs and the papers, even if he's never worked on a campaign before."

-- Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is generating some blogospheric buzz as a presidential candidate. Recent praise from Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish downstairs here at the Watergate building may have something to do with that. Of course at last night's GOP presidential debate, the buzz about Paul took an ugly turn, so Sullivan has expended much energy today defending the darkhorse.

-- Fred Thompson, another Republican who has not yet officially entered the presidential race, is creating his own buzz in the blogosphere -- by blogging, in word and video.

-- The early cliche of Campaign 2008: "The YouTube Election." Even Vanity Fair has used that headline now, under the byline of James Wolcott no less.

-- Blogs are blowing the whistle on the pharmaceutical industry, and Congress is responding.

-- Outside the Beltway blogger James Joyner and Jeff Mascott of the Adfero Group public affairs firm offered folks on Capitol Hill some advice in The Politico on how to befriend bloggers. Burt Edwards was less than impressed with the advice and responded in a sarcastic guest post at e.politics.

-- What's wrong with this picture? The U.S. Mission to the United Nations held a briefing to celebrate the world's bloggers (and rightfully so). But the mission reportedly wouldn't let bloggers cover the invitation-only event by new Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. The U.S. Senate Press Gallery, meanwhile, revoked the credentials of a reporter for ConsumerAffairs.com because of questions about the site's "business model."

-- Liberal commentator Eric Alterman (whose work I once edited when I was the associate editor at the opinion e-zine IntellectualCapital.com) defies labels. He said he is neither a part of the netroots nor the mainstream media. "I like to think that my position outside the both of them -- academia, too -- allows me to see each one's limitations more clearly." Although I'm a paycheck-cashing member of the MSM and blogger, his point rings true to my work here at Beltway Blogroll as a media/blog observer and critic.

-- Max Sawicky of the Economic Policy Institute is a liberal but no fan of the netroots. Read his six-point critique of the movement at TPMCafe.

-- Ethics alert: Bloggers are accepting gifts from television networks and film studios to write positive reviews. The Wall Street Journal called it "blogola." Steve Young of The Huffington Post said political campaigns appear to be taking notes from their commercial counterparts, and bloggers are buying Web sites "for purely political reasons."

-- A few days ago, I called attention to some surprisingly thoughtful media criticism from a blogger. Liberal blogger Ezra Klein was impressed by that Daily Kos post, too, though he focused on the expertise that bloggers can add to coverage rather than the limits of journalism.

-- Reporters who attack bloggers and what R.J. Eskow thinks of them: Read it at The Huffington Post. Plus more thoughts from Eschaton and Unclaimed Territory. Back in March, Eschaton griped about the "hackery" of campaign journalism, but I guess attacks by bloggers on the media are perfectly OK.

-- Matthew Sheffield of NewsBusters, a publication of the conservative Media Research Center, argued that blogs produced by mainstream media outlets prove the liberal bias of the MSM. But Eric Boehlert, a blogger at The Huffington Post, said separately that The Washington Post, one of those outlets that Sheffield no doubt considers liberal, is guilty of "heavy-handed indifference to the achievements of liberal bloggers" and pointed readers to his Media Matters for America report to bolster that view.

-- And here's what one critic at the Post thinks of the plague of anonymity wrought by blogs and the online world: "In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of the civic problem-solving process. But on the Internet, Mr. anticrat424 is continually elevated to the podium, where he can have his angriest thoughts amplified through cyberspace as often as he wishes. He can call people the vilest names and that hate-mongering, too, will be amplified for all the world to see."

-- The Mercury News published a story about "hateful discourse on blogs," which has been a hot topic of debate online since talk of a blog code of ethics surfaced a few weeks ago. My thoughts on the subject: Bloggers should be more civil, but no code will make it happen. Seen it, done it, been there, and it was a miserable failure.

-- Does your workplace need a policy for blogs and personal Web sites? If so, you might want to read this.

Posted by Danny | 04:57 PM

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