Pittsburgh Bans Blogs On City Computers
Blog bans on government-owned computers have been a point of controversy for a few years now at the federal level. Now the debate has moved to the local level with a decision by Pittsburgh's mayor to keep city employees from accessing blogs and social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
WTAE in Pittsburgh reports that Mayor Luke Ravenstahl reportedly took the move because of concerns about computer security. "We don't know who's setting up these sites," the city's computer security officer said. "So, we go ahead and block all the unverified sites -- again, in order to prevent any type of spam or viruses, because one virus can bring down the whole city network."
The mayor said he wasn't even aware of the change and doesn't frequent blogs himself.
At the federal level, a blog ban at the Interior Department spurred talk of a conspiracy to silence critics, and a similar ban in Kentucky led to a lawsuit against the administration of former Gov. Ernie Fletcher.
Reports of a ban by a member of Congress from Nebraska late last year proved to be false.
Posted by Danny at 07:06 AM | Comments (0)
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Clinton 'Sock Puppets' Banned From Blog
As reported in this morning's edition of Technology Daily
The editor of a liberal blog in New Hampshire said the site has banned four accounts traced back to the presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The Washington Post reports that the blog Blue Hampshire blocked the users because they failed to disclose their connections to Clinton's campaign in posts directing readers to pro-Clinton areas of the Web.
Clinton aide Kathleen Strand said the "sock-puppeting" was not an orchestrated effort by the campaign but rather the "product of over-eager staffers and volunteers." Dean Barker of Blue Hampshire added, "Team Clinton is the subject of this post, but it is meant to be a warning shot across the bow of all campaigns."
"[P]aid campaign staff are welcome in this community but are asked to disclose their affiliation to a campaign," he said, "either through their signature line, a disclosure statement on a diary, or even in the choosing of a username."
The reaction in the blogosphere:
-- MyDD: "If they do it in New Hampshire I wonder where else they are. Here? There? Everywhere?"
-- TechPresident: "I’m still amazed that anyone with a basic knowledge of computers would think that they operate anonymously from a campaign office."
Posted by Danny at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
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Kos, Ben Domenech And The Quest For 'Balance'
The decision by Newsweek to hire Kingpin Kos as a political commentator and its quest to find the perfect conservative flame-thrower to "balance" him calls to mind the brouhaha that erupted in early 2006 when The Washington Post tapped RedState co-founder Ben Domenech as a blogger.
Before Domenech was exposed as a plagiarist and resigned three days after he started blogging, liberal bloggers spent a good deal of time discussing the issue of "balance."
Kos and plenty of diarists at Daily Kos were among those to comment on Domenech. "I wonder if the Post thought their lame efforts at 'balance' would result in such tragic hilarity," Kos wrote. "I wonder how the paper's staff are feeling about their paper's credibility right now." And I wonder if Kos thinks Newsweek's effort to balance him are equally lame.
Here are more links and pull quotes to help you flashback with me to the Dark Days of Domenech:
-- Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report: "The idea, apparently, is to offer WaPo blog readers -balance' -- with Domenech on the right and Dan Froomkin on the left. This is, of course, patently absurd. Froomkin is a professional journalist who offers hard-hitting analysis of the Bush administration. He is not a partisan, nor a hack, nor an ideologue. ... Domenech has an agenda -- to promote a far-right worldview and defend Republicans against any and all criticism. He is, for lack of a better word, an advocate. ... If this is 'balance,' the establishment media needs less of it, not more."
-- Duncan Black at Eschaton: "I'm not of the belief that the Post is required to provide balance on its editorial page or Web site. But Posties have expressed a desire for balance, and if hiring Domenech, who has no counterpart on the left, is their way of achieving that, it's ridiculous."
-- Brad DeLong compared Domenech with "left-wing nut-boy Alexander Cockburn" and, much like conservative bloggers are starting to do with the idea of Kos at Newsweek, ridiculed Domenech's qualifications for the job: "a man with no policy or analytic or reportorial qualifications save a couple years as a right-wing speechwriter, an unarmed man in a battle of wits."
-- Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory: "I thought the hiring reflects some highly questionable editorial judgment, given that Domenech's writings are trite, rage-fueled rants filled with mindless talking points which one can find anywhere -- he aspires to be some sort of juvenile online Rush Limbaugh -- but WashingtonPost.com has the right to associate itself with that level of writing and analysis if it wants."
-- Hullabaloo: "[W]e do have to consider the obvious fact that [Howard] Kurtz and The Washington Post believe that this blatantly partisan Republican blogger 'balances' an allegedly 'left -eaning' White House critic. That they still don't understand the difference between the conventions of overt partisan media and mainstream online criticism like Dan Froomkin's column is painfully clear. That this particular blogger has been exposed virtually overnight as a racist and plagiarist proves that they had no idea how the right-wing media works."
-- Oliver Willis: "The braniacs at the Washington Post have decided that they should sign up a right-wing blogger. Okay. I'm sure there's a liberal blogger to even it out. What's that you say? They don't have one? Oh, okay then. ... The bastion of journalism that uncovered Watergate and printed the Pentagon Papers is devolving into yet another mindless oultet of the conservative cult."
Traveling back into real time, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters ponders what might be necessary to balance Kos: "I'm not certain that I would be a complete analog to Markos in any case. I try to expand minds, not explode heads; a proper balance would have a conservative willing to match Kos' stridency on topics, and hopefully with better arguments."
UPDATE: RedState has a list of prominent bloggers on the right who haven't been approached by Newsweek, including anyone from its own site.
Posted by Danny at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
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Misguided Buzz About Cleveland's Blog Scandal
I don't often find myself disagreeing with Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine for his views on the way things oughta be in the new media world. But his ongoing criticism of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland -- read it here, here, here and here -- is a bit off the mark.
First, the background: The newspaper made a bold and praiseworthy move this summer by opening a blog called Wide Open and paying four political bloggers, two Republicans and two Democrats, to contribute content to the site. Imagine that, old media curmudgeons not only welcoming new media rebels into their world but also paying them for their work.
Newspapers don't tend to take those kinds of risks, but the Plain Dealer did. It seemed to be working, too. But Wide Open took a seriously wrong turn only a few weeks after launch.
It turns out that one of the Democratic bloggers, Jeff Coryell, donated $100 to Bill O’Neill, the Democratic opponent of U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican. LaTourette complained to the newspaper; the paper's editors were not happy and demanded that Coryell refrain from writing about LaTourette; Coryell refused and either "parted ways" or was fired, depending on who's talking; the other Democratic blogger promptly resigned; and The Plain Dealer then closed the politically lopsided Wide Open.
No one is without fault in this whole mess. The newspaper goofed by not making its ethical standards clear to Wide Open bloggers; Coryell erred by not disclosing his financial ties, however small, to a candidate he might have mentioned at some point; and LaTourette embarrassed himself by making a stink over a blogger's $100 donation.
But anyone who gets his information on this story from BuzzMachine -- or Daily Kos, MoJo Blog, MyDD, Politics & Technology, Right Angle Blog in Ohio and other blogs -- might be misled into thinking there are clear heroes (the wrongly maligned blogger and the blogosphere at large) and villains (old media editors and a petty politician).
That's too bad -- especially coming from Jarvis. The our-friends-can-do-no-wrong attitude is no surprise coming from political bloggers who defend their own at all costs, but Jarvis is an excellent media analyst and should be able to see that Coryell is not an innocent victim in this episode.
Jarvis is right to scold the newspaper for assuming that Coryell should have known better than to think he could donate money to a candidate whose rival might have been a subject of Coryell's blogging. Even some journalists don't grasp that political donations create at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
But Coryell most certainly should have known that he needed to at least disclose the contribution -- first to his editors and then, if they decided to keep him as a blogger, to Wide Open readers. He is guilty of violating the one widely held ethical standard embraced by bloggers: transparency.
Jarvis needs to cut The Plain Dealer some slack. His tirade against Ted Diadiun, the newspaper's ombudsman, is particularly harsh. Yes, Diadiun's column about the Wide Open controversy is over the top, but that just means he, like Jarvis, would be a good blogger.
More to the point, the editors had their journalistic hearts in the right place; they realized the promise of media convergence and welcomed it instead of fearing it, as too many of their colleagues do.
Their experiment, not yet a complete failure because The Plain Dealer is working to resurrect Wide Open, is a sign of progress. Ethical concerns, not content restrictions, are at the heart of this controversy, and those can be overcome with more education in both directions -- newsroom to blogosphere and blogosphere to newsroom.
But they can't be overcome when smart men like Jarvis mercilessly badger and berate the few journalists who are willing to try something new. Keep that up and the curmudgeons most assuredly will continue seeing the media world through the green-tinted eyeshades of yore. Rather than charging forward, they will retreat into and fortify their ivory towers, and they will delay the inevitable, Internet-driven evolution of media.
(Read more coverage of Cleveland's blog scandal at the Poynter Institute and Editor & Publisher.)
CORRECTIONS: Jill Miller Zimon, the other blogger who quit Wide Open, corrected me in the comments. "I did not resign in sympathy," she said. "I resigned because I had the same conflict [political donations] and wasn't going to wait for them to offer me the same ultimatum." Coryell also noted in the comments that he never actually blogged about Bill O'Neill or LaTourette at Wide Open. He refused not to do so in the future, however, so my point on that score is still relevant.
That said, I have changed my phrasing in the two sections noted by Coryell and Zimon to address their valid points.
UPDATE: The debate continues at BuzzMachine and PressThink, where Jarvis and Jay Rosen respond to my post and those of other bloggers. It's also worth reading what Mark Potts has to say at Recovering Journalist.
Posted by Danny at 09:14 AM | Comments (6)
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Who's Behind Maryland's O'Malley Watch Blog?
The Maryland Democratic Party has leveled the following accusation: "Evidence is mounting that former [Republican] Gov. Bob Ehrlich and his new North Carolina law firm’s Maryland-based staff are the driving force behind a totally anonymous and controversial smear [blog]."
The site is called O'Malley Watch and takes a critical look at the administration of Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, who defeated Ehrlich in November. In its release condemning the blog, the Democratic Party asked, "[I]s this a dignified way for a political figure to behave following his own defeat?"
O'Malley Watch responded to the allegation in true blog fashion: "Evidence is mounting that the Maryland Democratic Party (MDP) and the O’Malley administration wet their pants several times a day over the new phenomenon known as omalleywatch.com. ... The Democrats have failed to provide any evidence of untruths or smears promulgating from the Web site. It appears they simply prefer to cry and whine and blame Governor Ehrlich."
Ehrlich also denied any involvement with the blog.
Posted by Danny at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)
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The John Edwards Blogger Rule
The cover story in the current issue of National Journal takes a critical look at how the Internet has changed politics for the worse. A sidebar to the story posits "New Rules For The Information Age," and one of them is worth noting here because of its tie-in to the blogosphere.
It's called the "'Joey' Rule, and here it is in its entirety (notice the last line, which I've put in italics):
You don't have to be personally tech-savvy. For political practitioners of a certain age, this might be the most important principle of all. Howard Dean didn't use a laptop or a Blackberry in 2004. Ignore all the talk about bits and bytes and bandwidth.Just focus on applications -- the services, experiences, and results you need. Then find some 16-year-old computer jockey in your neighborhood ("Joey") and pay him or her (a small sum for you, a fortune for them) to buy the equipment that you need and to set you up with a turnkey system. Every two years, thanks to the pace of Moore's Law, go out and find another Joey to upgrade your system.
Pay attention, however, to what these young people do in your name. Call this the John Edwards (Honest, I really don't hate Catholics) Blogger Rule.
That last sentence is a subtle jab at bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, who quit the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Edwards only days after they became the subjects of first blog scandal of Campaign 2008.
NewsBusters recently resurrected the scandal in arguing that Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, was hypocritical in challenging conservative commentator Ann Coulter to stop using hateful speech when Mrs. Edwards was a key decision-maker in the hiring of Marcotte and McEwen.
"Since Elizabeth Edwards is the one responsible for hiring the two bloggers," Lynn Davidson wrote, "she is either so completely incompetent that she hired people for a presidential campaign sight unseen without even reading their Web sites, or she did check their Web sites before hiring and, at the very least, tacitly approved of their 'hatefulness and ugliness' which 'lowers political dialog.' You know, 'cause it's OK to use 'hate speech' as long as it's hating the 'right' people."
Posted by Danny at 07:02 AM | Comments (10)
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A Hillary Fan Hiding Behind A Blog
A few months back, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the target of a negative video attack by an anonymous YouTube user who favored Sen. Barack Obama, one of Clinton's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. The producer of that video, Phil de Vellis, eventually was outed as the employee of a firm consulting for the Obama campaign and lost his job as a result.
Now the tables have been turned, with an anonymous supporter of Clinton getting some attention for a blog that is unfriendly toward Obama. The site, dubbed Hillary Is 44 because of its goal of seeing her elected as the 44th president, has been online since mid-April but is getting noticed now because it merited a critical mention in an OpinionJournal column about Clinton by Peggy Noonan.
It is rather mysterious. It does not divulge who is running the site, or who staffs it. It is not interactive; it has one informative voice, and its target audience seems to be journalists and free-lance oppo artists. ...Encouraging readers to send in "confidential tips," its primary target and obvious obsession is Barack Obama: "Senator Barack Obama (D-Rezko) is busy lately lying about President Bill Clinton" and "attacking entire communities." "We have written extensively on Obama, and his indicted slumlord friend Antoin 'Tony' Rezko. We have repeatedly warned David Axelrod, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama that this story is not going away." The Obama campaign is "still posing as innocents incapable of doing anything unsavory even as evidence mounts that unsavory is their favorite dish." "Dirty Obama Smear" and "Obama's Dirty Mud Politics" are two recent headlines.
This appears to be the subterranean part of Hillary's campaign, the part that quietly coexists with the warm, chuckling lady playing the jukebox with her husband.
Noonan provided no evidence to support her suggestion that Hillary Is 44 is somehow part of the Clinton campaign, and the site includes a statement that it is not affiliated with Clinton's presidential team. But the Obama incident earlier this year shows that some connection, however remote and perhaps unknown to the campaign, is plausible.
It also wouldn't be the first time that purportedly independent blogs have caused problems for their preferred candidates. Such blog scandals surfaced last year in Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia.
Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, noted of Hillary Is 44, "The anonymity of the site raises a legitimate inference that there is some connection to the campaign."
That anyone would suspect, without strong evidence, a link between a campaign and a random, anonymous blogger is unfair. But politics in the information age has become so ugly that suspicion is the norm. Forget "trust but verify;" these days, people would much rather assume and villify, and then wait for somebody to prove them right -- or wrong if they can.
Posted by Danny at 02:18 PM | Comments (7)
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More Blog Woes For John Edwards
Hard as they may try, the people trying to get John Edwards elected president just can't seem to get things right when it comes to the blogosphere.
The first mishap came earlier this year when Edwards' campaign, known for its embrace of and outreach to the blogosphere, hired two bloggers. Both of them quit within days after an uproar over harsh words they had written about Catholics.
This week, the Edwards team got another black-eye when a top aide slammed the netroots as a movement where "the only true tolerance they ever exhibit is for their own pseudo-intellectual arrogance." Predictably, the netroots are not happy about the criticism, as evidenced by retorts at Daily Kos, Eschaton and MyDD.
The aide in question, David (Mudcat) Saunders, later attempted to smooth relations with bloggers in a follow-up post at Time's Swampland. But Matt Stoller of MyDD would have none of his "fake apology."
"An apology requires a real self-examination, and understanding of what you did wrong, and a recognition and willingness to take the time and effort not to do it again," Stoller wrote. "If you think you didn't communicate your feelings clearly and that's the problem, you obviously have no idea why people are upset."
The controversy has blog watchers once again pondering what it all means for bloggers and campaigns. My own analysis squares nicely with the one voiced by Garance Franke-Ruta of Tapped.
"People who are working for presidential candidates ... are ill-served by engaging in anything but the most innocuous personal blogging efforts," she wrote. "They're likely to get their candidate in trouble if they speak freely but in a way that's off-message for the campaign, and then if they stop speaking freely to counter that, they come off looking like hacks or like they've been silenced."
Both Franke-Ruta and Adam Bonin of Daily Kos lamented that in today's Internet-driven campaign world, it is almost impossible for campaigns to say or do anything on their own time, including blogging, without it somehow being connected back to the campaign. But they hope that might change.
"This is a new world in which we're living, where folks associated with campaigns can self-publish to the world and are not only heard from when the media quotes them on a matter relevant to the campaign work," Bonin said. "We still have the power to shape these rules, and allow folks associated with campaigns to have some ability to speak on their own behalf, or to decide that they're always "on the clock" when it comes to anything they say publicly. Up to you."
Posted by Danny at 01:14 PM | Comments (1)
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Ky. Prosecutors Investigate Republican Blogger
Reprinted from today's PM Edition of Technology Daily
By Michael Martinez
Another blog scandal has erupted in the Bluegrass State. Kentucky prosecutors announced this week the launch of a preliminary review into how a Republican political blogger obtained state telephone records that he posted on his site to damage Democratic candidates for statewide office.
The state attorney general's office is looking into how Brett Hall, a former spokesman for Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, accessed records he mentioned in a recent post on his blog, KyPolitics.
Hall posted excerpts of messages left for now-State Auditor Crit Luallen by Democratic attorney general candidate Jack Conway. Conway uttered a disparaging remark about former U.S. Rep. Anne Northup, R-Ky., who last month lost Kentucky's GOP gubernatorial primary.
Luallen, who was working for former Democratic Gov. Paul Patton when the message was left for her, is up for re-election this year. Conway won the Democratic bid to replace Attorney General Greg Stumbo in last month's primary. Hall has removed the post that contained the excerpts of Conway's call to Luallen.
A Stumbo spokeswoman would not elaborate on the preliminary probe when asked for comment Wednesday. Conway and Luallen are calling for an independent investigation.
In a post earlier this week, Hall said he is committed to protecting his source. He previously told the Louisville Courier-Journal that he obtained the information through a public-records request but later acknowledged that was a fabrication.
He also accused "liberal" reporters of sensationalizing the story and blasted Democratic public officials for "attempting to criminalize something that is nothing more than an exercise of the First Amendment."
"What has transpired in recent days is the making of a political cooking show, complete with two Democrat constitutional offices working together to prevent further information from being published," he wrote.
Hall denied that Fletcher had anything to do with the issue. Fletcher overcame controversies of his own to defeat Northup in the primary. Fletcher was indicted last year in a hiring scandal but was never charged with any crimes.
"Not having talked with [Fletcher] at all about this or any other related topic, I can well imagine he is not pleased," Hall said. "You see, the [Fletcher] I know doesn't countenance the shading of the truth. But, try to convince the 'glass is half-empty crowd' of that."
Fletcher was at the center of a separate blog controversy last summer. Democratic blogger Mark Nickolas of the BluegrassReport accused Fletcher's administration in federal court of blocking state employees from reading the blogger's site for political reasons. Nickolas also managed the failed gubernatorial campaign of now-U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler against Fletcher in 2003.
In a post on Tuesday, Nickolas said he is having a hard time believing that Fletcher had nothing to do with Hall's predicament. "Another year, another Fletcher scandal concerning improper official conduct," Nickolas wrote.
Calls to Fletcher's office were not returned before deadline.
Posted by Danny at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
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Amanda Marcotte, 'Hero' Or 'Bigot'?
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon was all over the news early this year during her short-lived and controversial career as the chief blogger for the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards.
So does her experience make her a "hero" or a "bigot"? It all depends on who you're asking.
BlogPac, an outfit run by Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller of MyDD, think Marcotte is a hero and gave her $1,000 last week "for her courage in the face of an irresponsible media."
Conservative blogger Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation has a different view: "Since when did it become heroic to act as an anti-Catholic, trash-talking bigot?"
Posted by Danny at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Hillary And Hamsher, Blogging And Blackface
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton caused a minor stir this week with her guest-blogging appearance at Firedoglake, a site where one of the lead bloggers last year painted Sen. Joseph Lieberman in blackface before apologizing and removing the entry at the behest of Lieberman's opponent.
Clinton, D-N.Y., posted an entry at Firedoglake on Tuesday to mark Equal Pay Day and to tout her legislation aimed at guaranteeing women the same pay as men when they do the same work. Clinton also briefly engaged the blog's readers in the comments at the bottom of her post.
Mary Ann Akers, who writes The Sleuth blog for The Washington Post, reported that Democratic activists privately questioned Clinton's decision to appear on Firedoglake because of the tarnished reputation of Jane Hamsher, one of its chief bloggers.
Last summer, while following Democrat Ned Lamont of Connecticut in his bid to unseat fellow Democrat Lieberman, Hamsher posted an image of Lieberman in blackface at The Huffington Post. Although Hamsher never worked in a paid capacity for Lamont's campaign, she did produce a video for the campaign. Her close connections to Lamont prompted the campaign to contact her about the image.
She deleted it and apologized, but according to Akers, the incident is fresh enough in the minds of some Democrats that they think Clinton should have kept her distance from Firedoglake. Dan Gerstein, who worked for Lieberman's campaign last year and was reviled by bloggers like Hamsher, was among those who questioned Clinton's decision.
"Just as pure strategy," Gerstein said, "why would you want to take a risk and invite scorn and controversy and an accusation of hypocrisy when you don't have to?"
Peter Daou, a blog adviser for Clinton's campaign has not responded to my e-mail for comment.
The questions about Clinton's choice of blog venues comes less than three months after a higher-profile controversy involving the campaign of fellow Democrat John Edwards.
The Edwards brouhaha occurred when his campaign hired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, two bloggers whose anti-religious writing enraged Catholics and others. Edwards resisted calls to fire them, but both Marcotte and McEwen quit on their own within days of being hired.
Clinton's decision to appear at Firedoglake doesn't seem likely to snowball into that same kind of full-blown blog swarm. For starters, Clinton didn't hire Hamsher, and as Ann Althouse noted, it's a stretch to "pin that blackface nonsense" on Clinton.
What's more, Clinton ironically is now the victim of some blackface nonsense directed at her. Today, conservative cartoonist Chris Muir painted Clinton in blackface in a "Day By Day" strip that pokes fun at her recent attempts to speak in a Southern accent.
Even so, the Clinton-Firedoglake connection revives questions about whether direct interaction with the top liberal bloggers poses a greater risk to Democratic candidates than potential benefit -- and also whether bloggers are letting themselves be co-opted by campaigns.
Although she won't blame Clinton for Hamsher's blackface disgrace, Althouse criticized Clinton's decision to blog at Hamsher's site. "Firedoglake is a hardcore place, and Clinton doesn't belong there," Althouse said. She also scoffed at the suggestion that Clinton guest-blogged. "The blog is publishing a press release."
One commenter at Firedoglake agreed: "Forgive me, but maybe someone can tell me exactly what was accomplished by having Hilary as a 'guest?' ... [S]he didn't say one thing that wasn't part of her campaign talking points and managed to duck answering any of the more pointed questions."
Several readers also complained that Clinton had dodged a question from netroots star Matt Stoller of MyDD.
Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft applauded Clinton's appearance. But her praise gets to the other concern of co-opting. "I hope you do it again on other issues," she wrote. "It's a great way for the candidates to make our acquaintance and strengthen our working relationship with them."
The problem is that the pursuit of a "working relationship" with campaigns can undermine the very spirit of the blogosphere. As one Firedoglake reader noted: "Senator Clinton is very on message. I don't think of a blog as a place to focus on just one subject. I can understand a candidate insisting on this as a requirement for appearing, but, on the other hand, it just doesn't seem bloggish."
Critical readers seemed most annoyed by the fact that Firedoglake limited the questions asked of Clinton to the equal pay topic she chose to discuss. Here are some their reactions:
-- "I found it discouraging that the questions here turned into the softballs we rip on the press pool for asking."
-- "You can’t ask for commentors to keep it on topic here and then criticize Beltway journalists for having cozy relationships with politicians. Why should it be cozy for Senator Clinton here or in D.C.?"
-- "Is it really a democratic kinda thing to limit discussion to one issue? Was she REALLY only prepared to discuss ONE issue? Hmmm."
-- "[T]hese kinds of cameo appearances are of very little use, other than enabling the candidate to hype her talking points."
-- "I think you guys made a mistake, believing that you could INCREASE your blog power, or readership, or whatever, by bringing Hillary in here, having her field a few sweetheart questions, and then having her waltz out with credit for making a 'tough blogsite' appearance."
Posted by Danny at 06:24 PM | Comments (12)
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How Much Did Those Bloggers Cost John Edwards?
The April quarterly campaign reports have been filed, and that means everyone can get the answer to the question I know you've been asking since February: How much did those two bloggers who caused so much trouble for Democrat John Edwards back in the winter cost him?
In one sense, you can't put a price tag on the cost of the first blog scandal of Campaign 2008. We'll probably never know whether Edwards alienated Catholics by hiring Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, two bloggers whose sharp-tongued and sometimes vulgar religious criticisms won them almost universal scorn after the Edwards campaign hired them in January.
Edwards' decision not to fire Marcotte and McEwan in the face of that outcry actually won him the favor of the netroots, a core constituency in the Democratic Party. Chris Bowers of MyDD vowed his support to Edwards precisely because he stuck by the bloggers. Bowers also noted that Edwards won a national primary poll amid the controversy.
But thanks to the Federal Election Commission, it is possible to put a price tag on the scandal in terms of dollars and cents: The Edwards campaign paid Marcotte and McEwan a total of $4,769.06 between Jan. 31 and Feb. 14.
The first payment of $1,769.06 went to Marcotte on Jan. 31 for "salary." Then on Feb. 14, two days after Marcotte had resigned and one day after McEwan had done so, each of the bloggers was paid $1,500 -- Marcotte for "consulting/Internet services" and McEwan for "consulting/events."
The language of campaign finance reports is often confusing, so I'm not sure why Marcotte was paid a salary the first time and referred to as a consultant in the second payment. I'm also unclear as to why they were paid after resigning their jobs, though presumably it was a payment for "time served" during the previous several days, a severance payment or some combination of the two.
I contacted the Edwards campaign by telephone and e-mail but have not received a response yet. I will post an update if the campaign gets back to me.
Posted by Danny at 12:38 PM | Comments (12)
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'Scalping' Standards For The Blogosphere?
In the aftermath of the first blog scandal of Campaign 2008, Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise accused Republican bloggers of "scalping" her fellow feminists, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan Of Shakespeare's Sister.
The scalping term surfaced again this week after CBS Radio fired shock jock Don Imus over allegedly racist and sexist comments he made about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Jeff Jarvis of PrezVid wondered whether people need to be more forgiving of mistakes in an era of "ubiquitous video."
"[M]y fear is that as we see more of each other in ubiquitous video ubiquitously played, we will see more moments of humanity -- that is, screw-ups -- and so we need to decide, rationally, what deserves a scalping and what does not. And we should not be held at the hands of ransom demands from our publicity-crazed, self-appointed guardians of righteousness ... who will hold a press conference and demand a firing if they can get airtime or money out of it."
How true, how true -- and for the blogosphere, too.
In my years of blog-watching, I have been amazed at how quickly today's online watchdogs are to drop the f-word. I'm not talking about the one banned on the airwaves by the FCC; I'm talking about the one spelled f-i-r-e-d, or its face-saving sister, r-e-s-i-g-n. Nary a scandal, real or imagined, goes by without some blogger on the right or the left demanding that so-and-so resign or be fired if he refuses to go quietly.
As Jarvis said, sometimes it's justified. "Imus? Good riddance. Sen. George Allen? Bye-bye now. Trent Lott? He got his proper drubbing. Those are deserved departures from center stage. These public figures were caught at their worst, being themselves, and so they got their justice."
But every controversy does not warrant a firing or a resignation, and demanding as much runs counter to another goal of many bloggers: candor and transparency in politics.
"They will mess up. They will say something in an unguarded moment," Jarvis noted. "Yet we want them to be unguarded. We want them to be human. So when they are human and they do mess up, we can’t demand their scalp for every screw-up.
"We have to judge whether this was merely a mistake or whether it revealed a fatal flaw in their character. And we need to be make that judgment ourselves, not under the threat and deadline of the press-conference piranha. We cannot run politics and the nation by the tyranny of the gotcha moment."
Posted by Danny at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
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Bluegrass Blog Suit Will Move Forward
As reported in Technology Daily's "State Roundup" last week (while I was on spring break):
By Michael Martinez
A federal judge in Kentucky this week denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the Republican administration of Gov. Ernie Fletcher of blocking state employees from a Democratic blog for political reasons.
U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell has referred a lawsuit filed by Mark Nickolas, the author of the liberal BluegrassReport, to a federal magistrate. Nickolas sued the administration last summer after his blog was targeted by a Web-filtering initiative designed to improve the efficiency of state employees.
Fletcher aides said the blog was among a trove of sites that was blocked by a content-neutral filtering program. Nickolas, who managed the failed 2003 gubernatorial campaign of now-Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., said he was censored and that his site was blocked the week after he was quoted in a front-page story in The New York Times about Fletcher being indicted in a hiring scandal.
"So much for all the predictions by Fletcher loyalists that the case would be dismissed," Nickolas wrote this week.
Mark Inman, the state's technology commissioner at the time the filtering initiative was implemented, told the Lexington Herald-Leader last month that officials in Fletcher's administration bragged to him about specifically blocking BluegrassReport. Inman, who was fired last year and replaced by Mark Rutledge, also told the newspaper that he heard Cabinet members discuss how they spied on the e-mail accounts of certain employees to determine their loyalty to the administration.
A Cabinet spokeswoman told Technology Daily last week that Inman was a "disgruntled former employee" and that his "recollection of events" was inaccurate. She declined to comment on Nickolas' lawsuit because it is still pending in court.
Nickolas, who maintains that he never has had any contact or discussions with Inman about the matter, said the administration's argument is disingenuous and that Inman's story is a "blockbuster" development in the case.
In other news, The Denver Post reported Thursday that a Republican blogger in Colorado was deflecting accusations this week that he conspired with lawmakers to attack a Democrat who recently criticized supporters of the state's charter school system.
Brad Jones, a political consultant who posted e-mails in which state Rep. Michael Merrifield blasted charter school supporters, is beating back accusations that he conspired with Republican state senators to smear Merrifield. Some Democrats said they have become suspicious of Jones' connections to a Web site for state Senate Republicans.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany also denied any connection to Jones or the open-records request Jones made to obtain Merrifield's e-mail. "Any accusation that there is some massive amount of coordination between that and any other project I have really isn't accurate," Jones said.
Posted by Danny at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
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Blogger Fired After Edwards Comments
As reported today by Michael Martinez in Technology Daily's "State Roundup":
A South Carolina-based political Web site last week fired a blogger and former aide to Gov. Mark Sanford for comments the blogger posted after Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards announced last week that his wife's cancer had returned.
SCHotline fired former Sanford spokesman Will Folks over a post he wrote on his FITSNews blog that blasted Edwards for remaining in the presidential race despite his wife's condition. SCHotline announced in a press release that it will "discontinue any editorial and or other professional association" with Folks, who recently had become a partial owner of SCHotline.
Folks had accused Edwards of shamelessly exploiting his wife's condition for his own political gain. Folks said most Americans were "completely hoodwinked" by the family's announcement that the cancer of Elizabeth Edwards was incurable.
SCHotline Vice President Jeffrey Sewell said the company will buy back Folks' shares in the company, which he estimated are worth as much as $4,000. "He just wouldn't compromise with regard to his posts," Sewell said. "The Edwards' post was over the top."
Folks posted a tongue-in-cheek response to his termination the day after he was fired.
Posted by Danny at 01:58 PM | Comments (1)
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The Blogger Who Wouldn't Work For Edwards
Some Democratic bloggers chastised and even ridiculed me when I called a controversy surrounding Democrat John Edwards the first blog scandal of Campaign 2008. But a month later, the episode is still generating scads of commentary in both the blogosphere and the mainstream media.
Last week's coverage included a Boston Globe column by Ellen Goodman.
"This may be the first certifiable staff flameout of the 2008 campaign," Goodman wrote. "But it's also about a clash between two cultures and two languages. We are living now in both the blogosphere and the mainstream. One is ironic and edgy, challenging and partisan. The other is cautious and modulated."
Dean Barnett of HughHewitt.com didn't care much for the column, particularly Goodman's grasp of what blogs are all about.
"[W]hat really grates is Goodman’s summation about the blogosphere, that 'you win attention with controversy and get hits with an over-the-top persona and a vivid vocabulary,'" he said. "Really now -- what blogosphere is she watching?"
This week, Salon.com published the story of Lindsay Beyerstein of the blog Majikthise, who declined an invitation to blog for Edwards -- in large part for the reasons that created the controversy.
"I tried to explain this [to an Edwards staffer] as delicately and clearly as I could: A-list polemicists are popular because they say things you don't hear on television," Beyerstein said. "The blogosphere isn't just 'The Situation Room' with swear words, it's a space for writers to explore ideas that are outside the bounds of mainstream discourse. If you hire these larger-than-life personalities to blog for John Edwards, they'll have to stop espousing many of the radical policy positions and unconventional values that made them popular in the first place."
Beyerstein's firsthand account also touched on another subject that won me the scorn of political bloggers in December -- my argument in a New York Times column that it might seem strange for independent-minded bloggers to go to work for campaigns. For Beyerstein at least, her desire to remain independent was a factor in her decision not to join the Edwards campaign:
My blog means more to me than any job I've ever had. After three years of hard work, I finally have a platform from which to express ideas that won't get a hearing in the established media, let alone in mainstream Democratic politics. So the prospect of giving up my untrammeled freedom to blog press releases for John Edwards gave me pause. Still, I assumed Bob [her pseudonym for the Edwards staffer] would say it was a necessity.I was wrong. Bob promised that I wouldn't have to give up my personal blog. He added that I probably wouldn't have much time left for personal blogging, since everyone was working 18-hour days on the campaign. But, he noted, he hadn't given up his own blog, and neither had another member of the Edwards Internet team.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A bunch of Internet staffers with private blogs sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. I knew that if I was blogging for Edwards, anything I said on Majikthise would be a potential liability for the candidate, even if I wasn't talking about politics.
And aside from the risks to the campaign, I wasn't sure this arrangement would be healthy for my blog. With this responsibility weighing on my mind, how could I continue to deliver the independent perspective that my readers value? If I were suddenly on a candidate's payroll, yet still posting my own "independent" thoughts on Majikthise, what would my longtime readers think? Would they still trust me? Should they? Full disclosure wasn't going to solve the problem of divided loyalties.
Beyerstein's story prompted another round of blogospheric debate about bloggers and campaigns. The highlights -- including a comment from Amanda Marcotte, one of the bloggers involved in the scandal -- are in the extended entry:
-- Ann Althouse laughed at Beyerstein's suggestion that only right-wing bloggers are guilty of "scalping" -- picking a target and harassing him or her (or the employer) until they resign or are forced out of the public eye. "I have the personal experience of lefties trying to do exactly that to me -- including on Beyerstein's blog," Althouse said. Later, she made the case for more independence by bloggers rather than more collective action.
-- The American Scene: "[T]he appointment of Ben Domenech as the Post's conservative blogger inspired a tidal wave of attacks from nearly every left-wing blog there is, with liberals eagerly digging through his archives to find examples of racism ... and other fireable offenses. They got lucky and found something legitimate -- Domenech's long history of plagiarism -- but the campaign to 'scalp' him existed independently of his actual sins."
-- Majikthise: "The scalp-taking metaphor is apt. Not only do right wing blogs swarm to get people fired, they cherish [the] trophy as a symbol of their collective power and a warning to their enemies. That's the really insidious part of scalping as a political strategy. It's all about intimidation."
Marcotte joined the conversation at Majikthise, equating the scalping technique to "McCarthyism." "I suppose the most common term for their technique is 'McCarthyism,' which is to say using blacklisting as a way to take away protected rights. Okay, you technically have the right to free speech and free association, but thanks to blacklisting, you only have that right if you're willing to give up eating."
-- Right Wing News: "If anything, blogs on the right have gone after people like Dan Rather, Trent Lott, and Amanda Marcotte for things they've specifically said or done as opposed to going, "I don't agree with them politically, so let's dig up something to nail them with," which is what both sides of the blogosphere do to politicians."
-- Andrew Sullivan: "Personally, I'm all for making life difficult for bloggers who have whored themselves out as paid propagandists for campaigns. But it's always best just to expose ugliness and dishonesty, not punish it."
-- And before Beyerstein's article was published at Salon, Mark Schmitt offered this thought on campaign bloggers at TPMCafe: "The bloggers' voice can be vulgar, can be fierce, can be wonky ... can be satirical, can be critical of its own favored candidates. But that voice cannot be and should not be the voice of the campaign itself. The candidates who will take advantage of the new politics are those who can let go and live with those voices on the outside, whether bloggers or field organizers."
Posted by Danny at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
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Campaign 'Sock Puppets' In The Blogosphere
As noted in Technology Daily's AM Edition on Friday:
Political bloggers fear that campaign publicists acting as "sock puppets" will infiltrate their sites anonymously to post flattering comments about favored candidates, The Boston Globe reports.
When blogger Erick Erickson of RedState spotted articles supporting Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., he traced them to a Michigan political operative whose firm worked for McCain, a 2008 presidential candidate. Erickson and other political bloggers say they worry that public relations firms masquerading as grassroots citizens could plant favorable opinions of a candidate, much like businesses do now.
"This is going to happen more and more, and blogs are going to have to be vigilant," Erickson said. "I expect there will be commenters jumping in and trying to build negative campaigns to cause scandal for the other side. That's my fear."
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of liberal blog Daily Kos, added that campaigns understandably promote their candidates and efforts." If they do it openly, it's well-accepted," he said. "If they use sock puppets, then it's a big deal."
On a side note, one blogger at RedState cited the Globe's differing descriptions of Daily Kos and RedState as further evidence of the media's liberal bias.
Posted by Danny at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
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Blogging And Politics Don't Mix
So says Katha Pollitt of The Nation in a blog post at TPMCafe that reacts to the first blog scandal of the 2008 campaign:
Politicians use any angle they can against their opponents. Bloggers write hundreds of thousands of words off the top of their head. Put those two facts together, and it's obvious that your words will be held against you.
Posted by Danny at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)
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Amanda Marcotte's Take On The Blog Scandal
Amanda Marcotte, who quit as the "blogmaster" of the John Edwards presidential campaign this week, has published her first-person account of the first blog scandal of Campaign 2008 at Salon.com.
Here's what she took away from the experience:
Blogs are popular because they provide space for everyday citizens to engage in politics, in the language and manner that is comfortable for us, if not for the establishment. To my mind, however, it would be a terrible thing if bloggers did heed the advice to mind our manners and ape our betters if we want in, since this is supposed to be a democratic system that respects the right of everyday, common people to participate in politics.While there's a chance that the crusade to separate McEwan and me from the Edwards campaign was just a singular happening, the possibility lingers that this was just the first sign that the established media and political circles will not be letting the blog-writing rabble into the circle without a fight.
A Salon writer also published an article that seeks to answer this question: "Can liberal bloggers be both partisan kingmakers and independent journalists?" The writer defended Salon's earlier report that Marcotte and another Edwards blogger, Melissa McEwan, had been fired before being rehired -- all of which happened before both quit.
[A]s Salon reported the rumors of the firing, we noticed something disturbing: Instead of the blogosphere joining the search for truth, we encountered a decision to close ranks. The bloggers had never been fired; Salon was wrong; everyone move along, there's nothing to see here; please return to your stations. It started to look as though protecting the Democrats, the Edwards campaign and the role of bloggers in the new political firmament -- or some combination of all three -- was much more important.... When Edwards announced he was "keeping" the bloggers, the lefty blogosphere declared victory. ... But a few days later, Marcotte and McEwan resigned.
Maybe I'm the one who's naive, but the whole episode made me wonder: What does it mean if liberal bloggers aren't warriors for the truth, but rather for candidates? What does it mean for media, and what does it mean for politics? Why did either John Edwards or Amanda Marcotte enter their relationship so seemingly unready for what was likely to happen (assuming anyone in the Edwards camp had read Pandagon)? Either Marcotte would blunt her commentary, and lose the constituency Edwards was attempting to court, or else she'd alienate a whole lot of other people, and Edwards would spend the whole campaign defending her.
Posted by Danny at 07:16 AM | Comments (0)
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Edwards Bloggers: And Then There Were None
Yesterday, blogger Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon shocked the political blogosphere with her resignation from the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards just days after Edward had stood by her and resisted pressure to fire her. Today, Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, quickly followed Marcotte out the revolving netroots door at the Edwards campaign.
Like Marcotte, McEwan blamed her abrupt departure on "sustained ideological attacks" and on people " who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation." Here's more from her statement:
I would like to make very clear that the campaign did not push me out, nor was my resignation the back-end of some arrangement made last week. This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family's level of exposure.I understand that there will be progressive bloggers who feel I am making the wrong decision, and I offer my sincerest apologies to them. ... There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. ... This is a win for no one.
So the two bloggers who for the past week have generated more headlines than the candidate who hired them are now gone.
My headline may be a bit misleading, though. William Beutler of Blog P.I. notes that at least one other blogger is still on the Edwards campaign: Matt Gross, Edwards' "senior adviser for online communications/chief Internet strategist/general adviser on all things bloggy." But Beutler wonders whether Gross, who ostensibly had a role in hiring Marcotte and McEwan, might be the next to go.
UPDATE: Now for the roundup of reactions from the blogosphere:
-- Chris Bowers of MyDD: "I think someone, maybe BlogPac, should produce some sort of guide for independent bloggers with no experience working on statewide or presidential campaigns both what they should expect and what they should demand when they are first hired. Clearly, this wasn't something that Amanda and Melissa wanted to do. Then again, this entire experience might make such a guide moot, considering how much publicity this received online."
-- Confederate Yankee: McEwan "exhibited more class and dignity than Marcotte, even as I find it somewhat ironic that someone who calls my fellow Christians "christofascists" accuses others of unleashing "frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation."
Posted by Danny at 08:05 PM | Comments (23)
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Edwards' Campaign Blogger Resigns
Amanda Marcotte has resigned as the blogger for the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards. She blamed her decision on Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League who last week demanded that Edwards fire her for anti-Catholic statements at the blog Pandagon.
Marcotte announced her resignation there. Here is an excerpt:
[The campaign by Donohue] was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.
Unencumbered by her work for Edwards, she vowed to strike back. "The main good news," Marcotte wrote, "is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on."
UPDATE: Here's a telling insight from Matt Stoller of MyDD about what it means for bloggers to work on campaigns (and he should know because he did a blogging stint for now-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., in 2005):
Amanda feels encumbered by the campaign and unable to effectively defend herself from the right-wing. As such, it's the correct decision to make because a presidential campaign is the wrong place to be if you want to hit back at the right on your own behalf. Aspiring bloggers for campaigns should take note of the restrictions placed on your freedom when you go to work for a campaign. The personal cost can be quite high.
Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, meanwhile, are compiling links in reaction to Marcotte's resignation.
Posted by Danny at 10:14 PM | Comments (25)
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The 'Nuttiness' Of Bloggers And Campaigns
From an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times:
By trying to gin up support from the blogosphere, candidates are bringing lots of folks into the campaign who've left long trails of (often intemperate) commentary online. So not only do candidates have to worry about having their own gaffes preserved and promoted on YouTube, they may have to distance themselves from what their employees said before coming onboard. Expect this kind of nuttiness to continue until voters show that they care more about a candidate's thoughts than those of the hired hands.
Posted by Danny at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
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Edwards Will Keep His Campaign Bloggers
Updated with new information in the main text and reactions at the bottom.
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards posted this statement to his campaign blog not long ago:
The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor or anything else.But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word.
We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.
Pandagon, where Marcotte blogs, has the statements of Marcotte and McEwan. You can tell they are working for a political campaign now because they are apologizing just like politicians.
Rather than saying "I am sorry," for instance, Marcotte wrote, "I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics." And this from McEwan: "It has never been my intention to disparage people’s individual faith, and I’m sorry if my words were taken in that way.”
Basically, Marcotte and McEwan have agreed to muzzle themselves while working for Edwards. That is in keeping with what Marcotte herself promised to do upon joining the campaign.
"I am the blogmaster," she wrote in answering readers (like this one) who wondered whether the campaign might "censor" her. "I am also an adult. I know how the game works. I’m more interested in helping my candidate win than anything -- luckily we see eye to eye on most issues. It was hard letting go of a platform where I can just run my mouth, but the fate of the world is important enough that I’m willing to play nice."
Daily Kos praised Edwards for the decision to keep the bloggers on staff: "It took a little while, but Edwards set the right precedent for how this type of smear should be handled. As a Democrat, I'm proud of him and his campaign."
More links and commentary:
-- Ann Althouse: "Edwards faced serious damage whichever decision he made, so it remains to be seen how reluctant candidates will be to hire bloggers. ... Anyone thinking of hiring a blogger as a liaison to bloggers will now check much more carefully, and there will be some worrisome things on everyone's blog. On the up side, this incident shows how much harm bloggers can do, so the candidates are on notice that they need to hire blogger wranglers."
-- Balloon Juice: "You can tut-tut about whether or not he should have hired them in the first place -- sure, it would have been safer to hire people with a less controversial past -- but he chose them, they are qualified, and he is sticking with them. If you ask me, that is admirable."
-- Chris Bowers of MyDD: "because he refused to cave to right-wing pressure and establishment campaign advice, Edwards will receive a significant amount of criticism. When this happens, we need to remember that he stood with us during this fight, and so we have to stand with him against the forthcoming attacks. This goes for everyone, whether or not you are an Edwards supporter."
-- Crooks & Liars: "We're still almost a year from the primaries and this was clearly the first shot off the Swiftboat prow for Edwards. But the netroots' work isn't done. This particular gambit might have failed, but there will be more and we must be prepared to face them and push back."
-- The Fix: "Edwards is saying that whatever the women wrote -- controversial or not -- before they joined his campaign late last month is largely immaterial. Is that the same standard he will hold to his non-blogging staff? If Jennifer Palmieri, Edwards' spokeswoman, had been quoted making the same comments that Marcotte and McEwan did, would she still have a job?"
-- Mary Katharine Ham at Townhall.com: "Probably wise, in a sense. ... The Nutroots hatred for betraying one of their own would have been brutal and everlasting. When Edwards picked these women, he threw in his lot with that crowd, and that crowd don't take kindly to traitors."
-- The Hillary Spot: "Good luck, whoever the ultimate coordinator for 'Catholics For Edwards' is."
-- Instapundit: Keeping the bloggers is "probably the right thing to do."
-- Michelle Malkin: "The Pandagonization of John Edwards is complete."
-- Protein Wisdom dubbed the bloggers' promise to behave "one of the most pathetic public surrenderings of personal integrity I've ever seen."
Posted by Danny at 05:25 PM | Comments (10)
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The controversy surrounding bloggers from the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards prompted this thought from Jim Geraghty, a former colleague of mine at Congressional Quarterly and now the blogger for The Hillary Spot:
By the way, if writing outrageous, furious blog postings can hinder your future career options, this may actually save the blogosphere. ... If using the F-bomb more frequently than punctuation and metaphorically spitting on the beliefs of others can hinder one's chances at future career opportunities, we may see a politer, more respectful, kindler and gentler blogosphere.
Jonah Goldberg of The Corner hopes Geraghty's vision comes true. I don't think it will, for this reason:
As in the rest of the political realm these days, when one side of the blogosphere behaves in a way that outrages the opposition (whether for good cause or not), it only infames the animosity between the two and makes the online world more polarized.
There is already evidence of such polarization as a result of the current blog scandal. While some bloggers and their readers on the left blame the campaign for not vetting the bloggers before hiring them, the most influential of the liberal bloggers are unanimous in characterizing the story as a right-wing smear.
And how have they reacted to that alleged smear? One of the bloggers, Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory, dug up some of the pointed commentary written by Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits, who does online consulting for the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Another one, Chris Bowers of MyDD, said Edwards' decision to either keep or fire the bloggers in question would be a make-or-break issue in determining whether he could support Edwards in the primary.
It doesn't get much more polarized than that, and polarization frequently pushes people over the rhetorical edge. Rather than seeing the fewer "outrageous, furious blog postings" that Jim would like to see, I expect to see far more of them in the run-up to the 2008 presidential race.
Posted by Danny at 09:01 AM | Comments (2)
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Salon.com: Edwards Campaign Fires Bloggers
Salon.com is reporting that the presidential campaign of John Edwards has fired bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.
But the publication also reports this:
Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later."This isn't the first Internet-related misstep for the Edwards campaign, which had been making an effort to reach out to the "netroots" but has found its popularity dropping in a straw poll done on the landmark liberal blog Daily Kos. Though he still leads the poll by one point over Sen. Barack Obama, Edwards' support has dropped nine points in the past three weeks.
I don't even know what to make of that story -- hired, fired and possibly rehired, all in a week's time. That would just be bizarre.
UPDATE: "The Salon story is not credible and cannot be verified at this time," said Chris Bowers of MyDD. "The campaign is still involved in internal discussions." He also warned: I have a pretty vicious rant and an important action alert lined up, but I am waiting to hear from the Edwards camp ... before doing anything."
Posted by Danny at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
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As noted this morning in Technology Daily:
A Catholic group on Tuesday demanded that two bloggers recently hired by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards be fired for items they wrote on the Internet before joining the campaign.
AP reports that Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called on Edwards to fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan for posts they wrote recently criticizing the stances of the pope and the Catholic church on homosexuality, abortion, contraception and other issues.
"John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots," Donohue said.
The Edwards campaign did not provide comment in the story. Marcotte and McEwan were put the campaign's payroll last week.
National Review Online Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez also criticized Marcotte's writings about Catholocism.
UPDATE: The New York Times covered the story, too. And John Cole of Balloon Juice, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, said he doesn't know "who to root for in this mess. My gut instinct is to treat this as a Browns/Cowboys Super Bowl, in which I would root for injuries."
Other commentary:
-- Ann Althouse: "I like to see bloggers use blogging to snag political jobs, and, on the other hand, I'm wary about this new activity of wrangling bloggers for the benefit of political candidates. For you bloggers seeking jobs: I hope you get them. But for you bloggers staying in this noble enterprise: Preserve your independence and don't let yourself get manipulated, even by some blogger wrangler you loved when she was one of you."
-- Tim F. at Balloon Juice: "In general I understand the instinct to incorporate bloggers into political campaigns. After all, few people understand a new media better than the new medianauts themselves. That said, in many cases it probably is not the greatest idea. ... [B]logging tech exists at a weird juncture between immediacy and permanence. We constantly communicate in first drafts, with all the attendant messiness that rushed communication implies, but our words stay out there forever, archived and easily accessed by Google."
-- Dean Barnett at HughHewitt.com: "On the one hand I can’t believe that Marcotte had become so comfortable in the left wing echo chamber that she actually believed her past didn’t preclude her from publicly entering a mainstream presidential campaign. On the other hand, I really can’t believe that the Edwards campaign apparently didn’t vet a high profile hire."
-- Duncan Black at Eschaton: "Uh, Edwards campaign? I'd suggest not taking campaign advice from the racist [Michelle] Malkin and bigot and professional outrage machine Bill Donohue."
-- Ed Cone: "They look weak to their friends and to their enemies if they cave on this thing. But they do need to get out in front of it and address the relationship of the campaign to bloggers and staffers, and to things that bloggers blogged before they were staffers."
-- Ezra Klein: "[T]he Edwards campaign chose her. They hired her. She left her blog for the position. And now they've got to defend their choice. To back down would either prove that their hiring process was incompetent and they didn't vet someone with anextensivepublic record, or that they'll collapse beneath even moderate pressure from rightwing professionals. Neither is a good look for the new campaign."
-- James Joyner at Outside the Beltway: "Having top bloggers on the staff makes sense, because these people have demonstrated not only that they have the ability to express themselves in writing but that they 'get blogging. As a bonus, they probably have a network of other bloggers that they can reach out to with more credibility than some flack on the communications staff. At the same time, however, there is a serious downside that Edwards is now discovering: Bloggers have a “paper” trail. The longer someone has been blogging, the more of their sometimes-developed thoughts are out there for public consumption."
-- Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters: "The blogosphere features many talented and rational writers on both right and left, and even in between. It's incumbent on the campaigns that hire bloggers (and media outlets, too) to distinguish those from the frothing lunatics at all points on the political spectrum. Their failure to properly vet bloggers reflects much more on the values and competence of the campaign than it does on the blogosphere in general."
-- Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit: "A lot of the lefty bloggers are up in arms that this has become a scandal. ... I suspect that this is because a lot of them would like to join the establishment and now fear that their prior anti-establishment rantings will get in the way. It'll be interesting to see if there's more Pandagon-like airbrushing of blog archives over the next few weeks."
-- Matt Stoller at MyDD: "If a campaign's first instinct is to grant credibility to manufactured complaints, then that campaign simply cannot make it through the right-wing gauntlet. This is also poor framing; the Edwards campaign knew what they were getting when they made the hires, and now to pretend like the bloggers did something wrong is not ok. It's a pure 'I'm going to offload responsibility onto the lower beings' play."
Posted by Danny at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
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The First Blog Scandal Of Campaign 2008
We're only one month into 2007 and the first blog scandal of the 2008 campaign already has erupted.
The central character: Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, who this week accepted a job as "blogmaster" to the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards. Part of her job is to write at the campaign blog.
The scandalous storyline: Like all bloggers, Marcotte is fast and loose with her opinions, and her opinion of the infamous rape allegations against lacrosse players at Duke University didn't sit well with some folks. When Marcotte started catching flak for that opinion, she apparently deleted it and started altering other comments at Pandagon.
Marcotte's move to the Edwards campaign and the subsequent hiring of another blogger, Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, as netroots coordinator won praise from her netroots friends.
"What this move symbolizes in the blogosphere is that Edwards team understands how to move to the left on the issues," wrote Jerome Armstrong of MyDD. "The early move by Edwards to consolidate the liberal wing of the Democratic party at the beginning is very smart."
But now Marcotte's attempts to airbrush her past are fast becoming a black-eye for Edwards, even as he earned raves yesterday for a speech at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting in Washington. "Edwards should demand Marcotte’s immediate resignation from the campaign," wrote K.C. Johnson of Durham-In-Wonderland, who blogs about the Duke case and acknowledged being a supporter of Barack Obama, an Edwards presidential rival.
Some commeters in a forum at TalkLeft called Marcotte a "political liability" to Edwards, and one said that "if she feels this man should be our next president, it might be wise [to] make herself politically correct immediately or resign from the position."
As often is the case in politics (and blogging) -- and as a prominent blogger like Marcotte should have known -- the cover-up is worse than the crime. And it doesn't help that Marcotte has been both dismissive and defiant in response to her critics.
"[I]f I see the words 'Duke' or 'lacrosse' in an e-mail that has the whiff of accusatory tone, I'm deleting it and simply not going to reply to it," she wrote at Pandagon. "I have never, ever stated that I think that anyone should go to jail without a proper trial. Those comments will also be deleted from this thread."
That thread eventually was closed, but the controversy surrounding both Marcotte's thoughts on the Duke case and her subsequent attempts to alter the historical record is continuing.
Patrick Ruffini, now the e-campaign director for Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, said Marcotte crossed a "bright red line" into bad taste. And this insight from Betsy's Page, gets to the heart of the issue:
Hiring a campaign blogger is now necessary for each campaign. But this episode shows how treacherous the waters can be when a candidate just dives in and picks someone. For now Edwards and his campaign will be in the position of having to defend what this woman has written in the past and explaining why he found her particular writing style so suitable for his campaign.
Other blogs covering the story include Brainster, Hit & Run, Outside the Beltway, Overlawyered and South of Heaven. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit also has called attention to Marcotte's woes.
Some people think the controversy is ridiculous. "You're opposing Edwards' candidacy by criticizing his blog manager, for her opinions posted on a different blog, about a state-level criminal case?" one commenter wrote at Overlawyered. "'Foul language' -- that's what you base your decisions on in the most important political race in the democractic world? And that's what it took to distract you from an issue in any way related to the actual candidate: 'comic joshing' about the house he lives in?"
But whether it should have or not, this story now seems to have generated the kind of feeding frenzy that ensued among liberal bloggers when conservative Ben Domenech of RedState was accused of, at first denied and later admitted to plagiarism, costing him a high-profile blogging job at The Washington Post. Marcotte eventually may face the same professional fate.
One other footnote: Marcotte's behavior the past couple of days reminded me of something I discovered at Pandagon late last year when researching my New York Times article on bloggers who had gone to work for campaigns. One of those bloggers, Jesse Taylor, got his start at Pandagon before joining the campaign of now-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat.
I reported Taylor's move when it happened in October 2005 and linked to his announcement at Pandagon. When I clicked back to Taylor's post in November 2006, it was gone and there was no sign of it in Pandagon's archives. I had to search the Wayback Machine to find Taylor's post again.
Did Marcotte, who claimed ownership of Pandagon upon Taylor's departure, scrub the site of his disclosure, and if so, why? Those questions came to my mind last fall but didn't seem worth asking then. They were just a curiousity.
Now that Marcotte has shown a penchant for deleting Pandagon content that causes her grief, maybe the questions are worth asking -- though I gather that my "whiff of accusatory tone" would just land any query I sent to her in the electronic trash.
UPDATE: Marcotte still has her fans in the liberal blogosphere, as evidenced by this love-her-lively-writing praise at EzraKlein.com:
I hardly ever read campaign blogs, even for campaigns I really like. They're not usually written very well, and the people who write them sometimes don't really seem to understand how the blogosphere works. They don't link to other people, and they're so predictable that you don't have to do much more than look at the post title to figure out what the post will say. To summarize all that I've just said, campaign blogs aren't usually written by Amanda Marcotte.
He's right about the quality of campaign blogs; most of them are pitiful. But embracing the unpredictability offered by the Marcottes of the world may not be the best move for candidates.
UPDATE: Ezra Klein and other bloggers are rightly taking me to task for mentioning the missing announcement about Jesse Taylor at Pandagon. I thought twice about adding that footnote to my coverage of the brewing Marcotte controversy; I should have thought three times and not included it. It sounds like the missing post and others from the fall of 2005 were just the result of technology problems at Pandagon.
I also should have contacted Marcotte rather than assuming, based on her comment about her critics, that she wouldn't respond to a query from me.
Posted by Danny at 09:01 AM | Comments (75)
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Digging Up The Dirt On Bloggers?
There is a rumor flying around the blogosphere that the campaign of Sen.-elect James Webb, the Virginia Democrat who paid two bloggers as consultants to his campaign, compiled "opposition research" files on various bloggers this year -- including on the two who worked for him, Josh Chernilla and Lowell Feld.
Virginia blogger Shaun Kenney started the rumor. My former National Journal colleague Bill Beutler then mentioned it at Blog P.I., and that prompted an "instalanche" after a link at Instapundit.
Jessica Vanden Berg of the Webb campaign denied the story in a response to J.C. Wilmore of The Richmond Democrat, one of the bloggers mentioned by Kenney. "We don't have an opposition research on you," Vanden Berg said. "We don't have any opposition research books on any people who blog."
But that hasn't kept bloggers from chattering about the implications of the story. Here's what they are saying:
Bloggers who allegedly were targets of the research
-- Chad Dotson at RedState: "Making sure they kept their own guys on the reservation may have been as important as keeping an eye on the opposition. Again, we'll see how much of this story is legit. Either way, the lesson may be that campaigns ignore the blogosphere at their peril. Just ask George Allen."
-- Jon Henke of QandO, who worked for Webb's Republican opponent, Sen. George Allen: "I'm not sure if the story about the Webb camp digging up oppo research on ... me is true, but I'm not really sure it was inappropriate, either. In any event, bloggers shouldn't be naive. They are playing with very ruthless people who will not hesitate to spread rumors and innuendos. Forewarned is forearmed."
-- Ben Tribbett of Not Larry Sabato: "The staff involved can not keep their story straight. One person pointed out they had a report done on them, and we should feel complimented, and another denied any such thing existed."
-- Wilmore of The Richmond Democrat: "When you stop to think about it you can't help but realize how silly it is that someone would think that Lowell Feld, Josh Chernila, Ben Tribbett or J.C. Wilmore could be a threat to Jim Webb -- a man we all idolized. The mere suggestion is an insult to us all."
Other commentators
-- Blog P.I.: "It shouldn't be too surprising that the Webb campaign would do this, if they did this. Recent history gives us good reason to assume that politicians are wary of bloggers, certainly more so than traditional volunteers (who do not make a point of expressing their opinions in public)."
-- Instapundit: "It's not at all clear that the Webb campaign did this, but those who have ambitions toward being paid political bloggers for campaigns should expect that this may well happen to them. As blogging goes more mainstream, I'd say it's inevitable."
Posted by Danny at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)
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Liberal Blogger Tackled In Allen Confrontation
Supporters of Sen. George Allen of Virginia wrestled a liberal blogger to the ground Tuesday after the blogger confronted Allen with what witnesses said was a question about whether he had spit on his former wife.
The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Va., reports that Allen, who is being challenged this election by Democrat James Webb, was walking toward the lobby of a hotel after a campaign speech "when University of Virginia law student Mike Stark approached him and loudly asked if he had ever spat at his first wife."
Stark, a 38-year-old, first-year law student, blogs at Calling All Wingnuts. In a post there on Monday, he said, he is "trying to 'Roger & Me' George Allen whenever I can." "Roger & Me" was the documentary that made liberal activist Michael Moore famous. The film featured Moore's confrontational attempts to interview then-GM CEO Roger Smith about plant closings in Flint, Mich.
Tuesday's encounter was not Stark's first run-in with Allen. Two months ago, as recounted at his own blog, Stark confronted Allen at a Staunton hotel with questions about racial insensitivity.
After the latest incident, Stark contacted local police about pursuing assault charges.
He said he is not associated with any campaign, but in a post at AllenHQ, Allen campaign blogger Jon Henke characterized Stark as "a Democratic activist and Webb supporter with a history of aggressively harassing Senator Allen and pulling stunts for media attention." Henke also said the spitting rumor has been spread on liberal blogs.
A press release issued by the Allen campaign also identified Stark as a foul-mouthed, frequent blogger at Daily Kos. The founder of that site, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, proudly claimed Stark as "our very own," and a letter that Stark wrote in response to what Moulitsas called an attack by "Allen thugs" was posted to a Daily Kos diary. Stark also gave a brief interview to TPMCafe.
Video of the tackling incident is online, and numerous blogs are discussing it. Here are some excerpts:
-- Americablog: "You are witnessing a multi-million dollar lawsuit, not to mention a crime."
-- Hot Air: "The nutroots' mock outrage is mounting, as would ours be if a righty blogger had been laid out by Jim Webb's handlers. Of course, righty bloggers wouldn't be trying to push their way through a ring of people to shout questions about whether the candidate had ever spat on his ex-wife."
-- MyDD: "Not a good move to have your campaign assaulting voters, senator."
-- Think Progress: "Stark is not, as CNN reported, a 'protester.' He is a constituent who was trying to ask Allen a question."
Other Virginia news outlets covering the confrontation included The Free Lance-Star, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Roanoke Times, The Virginian-Pilot. AP and The Washington Post also had stories.
UPDATE: Conservative bloggers have been working hard this week to provide more background information on Stark and to put his confrontation with Allen in context. Captain's Quarters had two posts on the subject, and another blog pointed readers to Stark's own secretive musings about "guerilla tactics" he was plotting in late August.
Posted by Danny at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)
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Gay Advocate Fired For Exposing Page Scandal
As noted at National Journal's Technology Daily this morning
A gay rights group on Wednesday fired one of its employees after it was discovered that he had created a blog that published copies of the suggestive e-mails that former Rep. Mark Foley sent to a teenager.
The New York Times reports that the Human Rights Campaign said it first learned of the employee's actions this week and immediately fired him for misusing the group's resources.
After the messages appeared at Stop Sex Predators, ABC News released its own independent report, which resulted in the disclosure of more sexually explicit messages from Foley, R-Fla., to House pages.
The creator of the Web site declined requests sent by e-mail to identify himself after news of the scandal broke. Instead, he posted a message urging the news media to ask questions about "when the Republican leadership knew about it, what they did, how they were connected, what favors took place, etc."
Posted by Danny at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
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Rep. Edwards Dismisses Intern Over Blog Posting
The campaign of Rep. Chet Edwards has dismissed an intern who posted to his blog, Affable Athiest, an image of a desecrated American flag.
The dismissal came after another blog, Right of Texas, broke the story and after RedState wondered aloud whether Edwards, D-Texas, Justin Mueller, would can the intern.
"The photo of the individual with the desecrated American flag and offensive t-shirt is revolting and in direct conflict with the values of Chet Edwards and our campaign," campaign manager Chris Turner told Right of Texas. "He has volunteered sporadically, and given his actions, he has been told that he is not welcomed in our campaign again.”
Mueller commented on the dismissal in a post at his blog. He claimed that he was "expunged from the Democratic Party.
"Well, thanks to the wonderful folks down at Right of Texas, a right-wing blog, I have been kicked off of the Chet Edwards campaign," Mueller wrote. "Apparently, being opposed to the mass slaughter of innocent people, and then expressing that disgust is enough to get you hounded and expelled from any traditional electoral channels whatsoever."
Posted by Danny at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
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Minnesota: The Land Of 10,000 Blog Scandals?
Sometimes it doesn't pay for bloggers to be paid by campaigns -- or to work for free. In fact, bloggers and campaigns alike are learning this year that maybe they weren't meant for each other. That is especially true in Minnesota, which has been the breeding ground for blog scandal after blog scandal since mid-summer.
The first controversy involved the campaign of Democrat Coleen Rowley, who is challenging Republican Rep. John Kline. Kline's campaign accused Rowley of using a blogger as a "double agent" to gather inside information about the Kline campaign. David Bailey, the blogger and campaign volunteer in question, denied the charge and defended himself at the Rowley campaign's blog.
A second blog-related scandal hit the campaign of Democratic Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar. In that instance, a blogger not connected with the campaign appears to have illegally accessed an unreleased advertisement by Klobuchar's GOP foe, Rep. Mark Kennedy, and sent it to Klobuchar spokeswoman Tara McGuiness. She was fired for having looked at the television ad.
Now the Gopher State is in the midst of another blog brouhaha, this time over a Republican blogger who is being paid by two campaigns and Democratic bloggers who have received "new journalist" fellowships from an outfit called the Center for Independent Media.
The Republican blogger is Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed. He previously disclosed that Kennedy's campaign pays him, but until the Democratic blog MN Publius reported it last week, Brodkorb had not mentioned that GOP House candidate Michelle Bachmann also paid him $5,500 in August for opposition research and press consulting.
Other Democratic blogs, including City Pages, Minnesota Monitor and Minnesota Republican Watch, picked up the news.
Brodkorb, a former GOP operative in Minnesota, responded in part by reporting that the media center "is spending at least $31,500 (seven paid bloggers x $4,500) to pay liberal bloggers in Minnesota."
"After this post," he wrote, "we'll see who in the liberal blogosphere is actually interested in disclosure and whose using disclosure as a way to attack the messenger because they can't attack the message."
At least one of the bloggers in question, Matt Martin of MN Publius, answered when Brodkorb called him out. And City Pages acknowledged that "Brodkorb's greater point, that more than a few in the liberal media are themselves paid to blog, bears greater disclosure."
At this rate, there is plenty of time for more blog scandals to surface in Minnesota during the last five weeks of the campaign. And I imagine that others are brewing across the country. Shoot an e-mail to dglover@nationaljournal.com if you know of any.
Posted by Danny at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)
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Blog Posts Lead To Resignation Of House Aide
As noted in Technology Daily this morning
A top aide for Rep. Charles Bass resigned yesterday after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the lawmaker's political opponent in messages on a blog intended to convince people the race was not competitive.
AP reports that operators of two liberal blogs traced the postings to the House's Internet server. The office for Bass, R-N.H., traced the messages to his policy director, Tad Furtado, and issued a statement announcing Furtado's resignation.
Posting as "IndyNH" and "IndieNH," Furtado professed support for Democrat Paul Hodes but suggested that Democrats should invest their time and money elsewhere.
UPDATE: Political consultant Kari Chisholm of Politics and Technology has been tracking some of the online tomfoolery this campaign season.
Here's what Chisholm had to say after the New Hampshire scandal: "One more time: It ain't worth it, people. Don't be stupid. You're professionals. Let the high-school kids run around town stealing lawn signs; let the high-school kids screw around on the blogs."
Swing State Project and Wizbang also have posts on the scandal.
From Wizbang: "The guy might know all the ins and outs of the legislative process and how the House works, but he's a moron when it comes to blogging. ... Bass needs someone on his team who has a fairly good grasp of how blogs work, how bloggers think, and just what they do -- and don't do."
Posted by Danny at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
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Enough Blog Scandals To Justify A Guide
Like me, Blogometer alum Bill Beutler has been tracking political blog scandals, and he has published a helpful guide to them over at Blog P.I.
In light of how quickly the blog scandals are emerging, Bill's list is amazingly up to date. It includes the latest controversy, the one involving alleged "sock puppet" from the office of Rep. Charlie Bass, R-N.H., who stands accused of posing as a liberal blogger. The subscription-based Roll Call published a story on that episode today, and Daily Kos printed an excerpt. Raw Story is on the case, too.
"For a crowd that claims progressive blogs help them out, they sure spend a lot of time trying to undermine them," Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga said of the New Hampshire news. Then again, at least the Bass campaign copped to their transgressions, unlike the equally stupid people at the Tom Kean campaign which were busted for denying their own trolling."
Posted by Danny at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)
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Political Blog Scandals Of The Mid-Atlantic
The Senate campaign of Maryland Republican Michael Steele is trying to get as much political mileage as possible from the news that Steele's Democratic opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin, had to fire a campaign staffer over her anonymous blog.
Over the past few days, Steele's campaign has issued a steady stream of e-mail releases that mention the firing. Most of the e-mails promoted stories on the dismissal, like those written by AP, WBAL and The Washington Times and columnist Robert Novak. But the most interesting one, sent yesterday, made a connection between the blog scandal and Cardin's maneuvering over debates with Steele.
"Debates are serious, important conversations with Marylanders," the e-mail said. "Playing typical 'gotcha' Washington politics ... instead of actually returning a phone call to begin the discussion process is a transparent attempt to distract from the congressman's disappointingly narrow win in the primary and the recent discovery of a senior Cardin staffer's racially insulting blog."
The e-mail twice referred to the "racist comments" of Ursula Gruber on the blog and once called her a "senior staffer" -- in contrast to the "junior staffer" label the Cardin campaign used in announcing the firing. Cardin's campaign also has not identified the aide in question. Wizbang, the Republican blog that broke the story, identified Gruber as the aide after some online sleuthing.
Returning calls to negotiate any debates would "provide an opportunity for Congressman Cardin to apologize to Michael Steele personally for Ursula Gruber's racist comments about him on her blog," the e-mail added.
The blog in question, Persuasionatrix, was active only a few weeks, and the content has been deleted since the controversy broke. Wizbang Politics has an archived version, and the home page of Persuasionatrix currently points readers to Wizbang.
The Maryland blog scandal is but one of three to garner attention in mid-Atlantic states over the past few days. The latest occurred yesterday in New Jersey, where a blog called BlueJersey accused the Senate campaign spokeswoman of Republican Thomas Kean Jr. of anonymously posting comments on the blog. The spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, denied having been involved.
The New York Times covered the story today. Top Democratic blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD also noted the revelations.
"If they're willing to lie about simple things like this, what else would they lie about to win?" Matt Stoller wrote at MyDD. "Does Tom Kean Jr. condone this type of unethical behavior in his campaign? And will he fire all those involved?"
On Sunday, meanwhile, The Washington Post reported on questions being raised about the ethics of paid bloggers who are covering the Virginia Senate race. Both candidates have bloggers on their staffs.
UPDATE: Blogs continue to be the subject of controversy in the Virginia Senate race. The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a piece a couple of days ago about the campaign of Republican Sen. George Allen blaming Democrat James Webb for encouraging anti-Semitism on Democratic blogs in regards to Allen's Jewish ancestry. Allen aide Dick Wadhams in particular criticized bloggers paid by the Webb campaign.
Wadhams' blog attack prompted this retort from Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos: "Some of you will instantly grasp the irony. Remember, Wadhams was John Thune's campaign manager in South Dakota in 2004, the only Republican to oust a sitting Democratic incumbent. And he did so, in huge part, by using 'paid bloggers.' ... They want to dish it out, but they can't take it."
Another irony: Allen's campaign also is paying a blogger, Jon Henke. Salon took him to task this week as well: "Henke ... was regularly advocating on his own blog that there be a Democratic takeover of Congress as a means of restraining unprincipled and corrupt Republicans," Tim Grieve wrote. "Does radically changing one's political views in exchange for some pay by a political candidate forever undermine, or destroy, one's credibility as a political commentator? It ought to)."
Blog scandals aren't exclusive to Virginia or the mid-Atlantic, though. AP reports that the Minnesota Senate campaign of Democrat Amy Klobuchar this week fired chief spokeswoman aide Tara McGuiness. She watched an unreleased television advertisement of Republican Mark Kennedy from a local Democratic blogger who allegedly obtained it illegally.
The blogger in question apologized at Blanked-Out. Kennedy vs. The Machine, MN Publius, Power Line and Minnesota Democrats Exposed, Wizbang have more on the scandal.
Posted by Danny at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
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Senate Campaign Fires Aide Over Blog
Maryland Senate candidate Ben Cardin fired a staffer yesterday over a blog she had been keeping and that included racist comments about "Oreos" directed at Cardin's Republican challenger, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black.
The Washington Times and WBAL have the story. The controversy has sparked coverage by Republican blogs, too, including Wizbang, which has a cached version of the now-deleted comments at the blog in question, Persuasionatrix.
The Ballot Box, RedState and Mary Katharine Ham at Townhall have more.
Ham offered this tongue-in-cheek insight, which, sadly, is probably on the mark: "Well, take heart little staffer. When you're done with this gig -- which will be, um, today -- you'll have a wide-open future speaking on panels about blogs at technology and politics conferences. Seriously, they love people who have been fired for blogging, even when the firing was a result of their own stupidity."
The Steele campaign quickly seized on the development by sending links to the news stories in at least two e-mail releases.
UPDATE: Wizbang publisher Kevin Aylward e-mailed to say that his site broke the story about the fired Cardin aide and that the Times reporter saw the blog's entry and then moved the story forward. That's citizen journalism at work.
Posted by Danny at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)
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A Blogger Mole In Minnesota?
As noted this morning at National Journal's Technology Daily, with additional reporting by me.
The campaign of Republican Rep. John Kline has accused Democratic challenger Coleen Rowley in Minnesota of using a blogger as a "double-agent," the Star Tribune reports.
Kline's campaign alleged that the blogger, David Bailey, attempted to make an illegal campaign contribution and hurt Kline's re-election effort. "Our campaign has never sent anyone in there to do anything like that," Rowley campaign manager Terry Rogers said in denying the charge.
Bailey, currently Rowley's director of "earned" news media, said he did attempt to make the contribution in order to get on the mailing list because he wanted to learn more about Kline's beliefs. But he was only a volunteer for the campaign at the time and said he acted independently of it.
Kline spokesman Marcus Esmay said Bailey gave his real e-mail address and home address.
The Star Tribune noted that Bailey "was a Rowley volunteer and blogger who posted an Internet blog critical of Kline" at the time of the incident. Since May, Bailey has been a staffer on the Rowley campaign and writes much of the content for its blog, The Blotter. He posted a disclosure to that affect at John Kline's Record when he quit writing entries there.
Rowley's campaign finance report for the quarter that ended June 30, available electronically through the Federal Election Commission, does not indicate any payments to Bailey. Walter Winger, the policy research director for the campaign, said that's because Bailey is filling a "nontraditional position" that evolved out of his work as a blogger/volunteer for the campaign.
Bailey is not paid for his work as earned media director. Winger said the campaign "wanted to give him a title when he was talking to radio producers." He added that Bailey also interacts with blogs, "trying to get Coleen's name out there."
At The Blotter, Bailey called the latest story about his attempt to get on Kline's mailing list "an attack against me, in yet another effort to distract the media and the public from the issues that matter."
"I live in the second district; I'm one of John Kline's constituents, and as a constituent, I was trying to get answers about his position on the issues," Bailey wrote. "I didn't get answers that day, and John Kline is still stonewalling about his positions today."
Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, a conservative blogger based in Minnesota, is not buying Bailey's explanation of what transpired. He also questioned Bailey's decision not to blog about his "attempt to donate money to Kline's campaign on [his blog about Kline]. It would seem to be a bloggable event, having met with Kline staffers in both his district office and his campaign headquarters."
Posted by Danny at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
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Blogger Kills Lieberman Image At Lamont's Bidding
The unofficial interplay between independent bloggers and political candidates reached a new level yesterday as the campaign of Connecticut Senate hopeful Ned Lamont convinced a blogger to remove a doctored photo of Sen. Joseph Lieberman from the Internet.
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who has been traveling with Lamont's campaign in recent days and posting frequently about the intraparty race between him and Lieberman, posted an image of Lieberman in blackface at The Huffington Post. When Lieberman complained about the image and demanded that Lamont disavow it, his opponent did just that.
Lamont's campaign also appealed to Hamsher to remove the photo. She agreed and then apologized at both The Huffington Post and Firedoglake. But Hamsher also blasted Lieberman for using the controversy "to hurt [Lamont] and score political points," accused his campaign of distributing "race-baiting" fliers and attacked "right-wing Republicans" like blogger Michelle Malkin for calling attention to Hamsher's blog entry.
At the top of her "sincere" apology for people who were "genuinely offended" by the image, Hamsher included this disclosure: "It’s also important to note that I do not, nor have I ever, worked for Ned Lamont’s campaign."
Tim Tagaris, Lamont's campaign blogger, called Hamsher's manufactured image of Lieberman (and former President Bill Clinton) "terribly disappointing" and "in poor taste." But he emphasized that the campaign was not responsible and complained of a "direct attack on us, using a blogger as a proxy."
"It’s worth noting [that] well over 500 bloggers write about the campaign almost every day, none of which are campaign staffers," Tagaris added in a post headlined "Weapons Of Mass Distraction."
He did not mention the role Hamsher played in directing Lamont's first video blog.
The use of blackface images and other racial stereotypes by liberal bloggers has arisen before, as noted on two occasions at The Blogometer last year.
Ironically, liberal blogs such as Eschaton and TalkLeft have criticized the use of blackface in other settings. And even more ironically, Hamsher herself went ballistic last fall when first lady Laura Bush made a reference to comedian Eddie Cantor, who gained a following with his blackface routine.
"Does the first lady not know who Eddie Cantor was?" Hamsher wrote. "Or does she actually think it's appropriate to invoke a comedian famous for appearing in blackface when talking about minority students, and then crack wise about their erstwhile future as criminals?"
UPDATE (snippets of what others are saying):
-- Kevin Aylward at Wizbang: "Coziness with bloggers like Hamsher (and several million of his own dollars) helped propel Lamont from nowhere into a tight race for the Democratic nomination [for] U.S senator, but that coziness comes with a price. When one of their biggest boosters has a ... moment like this, they have little choice but to distance themselves, potentially alienating their biggest boosters."
-- Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics: "it's interesting to see Lamont throw the crazies who've essentially made his campaign under the bus so quickly when their antics put some heat on him."
-- Erick-Woods Erickson of RedState: "Ned Lamont went to bed one night in the arms of left-wing bloggers. He rode them for all they were worth and woke up apparently regretting the experience."
-- Jake Tapper of Political Punch (ABC News): "From the classic school of 'It can't possibly be offensive when I do it because I'm a liberal!' which is so popular on the internet these days."
UPDATE II: Oliver Willis weighed in with a thought for his fellow liberal bloggers. "Incidents like this continue to fuel my belief that liberal bloggers need to really think of their role as journalists/commentators and get over the activist thing. Yes, the GOP infrastructure is clearly more advanced than the DNC's, but at some point you have to just let the party be the party and do your work from the outside."
Posted by Danny at 08:00 PM | Comments (2)
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Jerome Armstrong Defends Himself
Last month, MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong was the target of a major blog swarm over his past as a stock analyst and astrologist, as well as his present as a consultant in political technology. Armstrong briefly responded to critics in a comment at MyDD but was largely silent about the controversies.
This week's numerous criticisms of another blogger -- Patrick Hynes on the Republican side -- prompted Armstrong to say quite a bit more at MyDD in his own defense. Surprisingly, the entry has gone largely without comment in the blogosphere considering how much people had to say about Armstrong a few weeks ago.
Here are the highlights from Armstrong's post:
-- "In regards to the [stock] issues, given the agreement I made [with the Securities and Exchange Commission]], I can't, unfortunately, talk about the details of the case. What I can say is that it happened over six years ago, and it was a civil matter, which in the grand scheme of things places it quite low in regards to such matters. I was a newbie to the world of stock trading, and made some naive mistakes that I would not do again, but I sleep fine knowing what my state of mind was during the time."
-- "The whole astrology matter is really just a lark that I have to laugh at myself with along with the crowd. ... Writing the articles under a pen name associated to me the lack of seriousness with which I approached the matter of looking at politics through the astrological spectrum with, but to others I guess they thought I was hiding the matter."
-- "[F]or known bloggers that work on campaigns, I've not seen anything shady at all. This intersection isn't going away, and I hope more and more bloggers are able to work to influence how campaigns are run."
-- "I think we've reached the point where some sort of disclosure is the norm, which is fine with me. My only gripe is the seemingly dual standard that people make on bloggers in comparison to the talking heads, for example."
-- "[T]he blogger-criticism part of the blog world strikes me as totally against the spirit of what we are trying to do with the blogs. I hardly think that setting standards above what is done in other media outlets is something that's of vital importance."
-- "And just a note about '06. I might have the urge to start blogging here again after Labor Day to the election."
UPDATE: Bill Beutler, a former colleague of mine and the man who introduced the world to The Hotline's Blogometer, shared his expert observations about Armstrong at Blog P.I., a new blog that Bill started earlier this month in his work for New Media Strategies.
My favorite line of Bill's: "If I was a Democratic candidate for federal office, I’m not so sure I’d be eager to hire Jerome Armstrong."
Posted by Danny at 01:32 PM | Comments (1)
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No Cato Love Lost For Patrick Hynes
Word that Patrick Hynes is doing blog-related consulting work for AARP doesn't sit well with a former colleague of his at the Cato Institute.
Radley Balko, a policy analyst at Cato who blogs at The Agitator, questioned Hynes' integrity in working for AARP soon after leaving Cato, where he said Hynes' job "was to be the PR point guy for Cato's Social Security Choice campaign."
Balko complained that AARP is "probably the one group that did the most to derail President Bush's plans for private [retirement] accounts." "Perhaps one of the righty blogs defending Hynes' integrity can explain his representation of ... the group that wants to expand Medicare, kill private accounts and enact all sorts of other monstrous, big-government federal entitlements," Balko added.
Reached by telephone, Hynes said such criticism is irrelevant because he is "not even doing any policy work for AARP." He reiterated his previous description of the consulting work: "They have a blog, they want to make it a better blog, and I'm helping them do it."
UPDATE: Andrew Kline, the editorial-page editor for The Union Leader in New Hampshire, reported on a bad experience he had with Hynes. In that case, Hynes wrote a column for the newspaper about pending state legislation without noting that his company had a state client who supported the bill in question. Instead, Hynes listed his affiliation as being with an environmental group that did not exist. (Hat tip to Balko.)
UPDATE II: Here's a defense of Hynes, via Instapundit.
Posted by Danny at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)
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More Disclosures From Patrick Hynes
Blogger Patrick Hynes just called from the road after seeing my entry about the controversy surrounding his political consulting work. I asked about the apparent inconsistency of him criticizing other bloggers for not engaging in full disclosure about suspected business relationships when he himself had not disclosed an actual business relationship.
"For the record, you're right," Hynes said contritely.
He also agreed to disclose some other business relationships.
Straight Talk America, the political action committee of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is one of three clients Hynes has through his consulting company, New Media Strategics. The other two are the seniors' group AARP and a candidate for the New Hampshire Executive Council, an entity that works in conjunction with the governor to approve boards and commissions.
Hynes said he is auditing the Web communications of AARP. His work also entails advising the group about its blog and how to foster relations with bloggers.
He further noted that he is an employee of Calypso Communications, a New Hampshire-based public relations firm whose clients include the University System of New Hampshire and U.S. Cellular. Hynes said he is in business with one of Calypso's partners at New Media Strategics.
One thing is clear to me after talking with Hynes: He is on the mark when he boasts that he "understands how bloggers receive and process information. What energizes them and, just as [important], what turns them off."
He was as forthright and honest with me as any source I've ever interviewed, and he was not at all defensive even though I was asking pointed questions. That was definitely a new media approach to talking with a journalist/blogger.
UPDATE: Wonkette noted another irony in this whole story -- that Hynes criticized Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos for being a "paid shill" of 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, even though Moulitsas disclosed that relationship. Moulitsas and his blog buddy, Duncan Black of Eschaton, shared a laugh over that revelation of hypocrisy.
Over at RedState, meanwhile, the blogger who posts under the pseudonym Machiavel inexplicably chastised National Journal's own Blogometer for allegedly ignoring the story -- twice -- and then leapt to the illogical conclusion that the entire mainstream media is biased against bloggers on the right.
I'm thinking Machiavel needs to expand his MSM diet beyond The Blogometer to include Beltway Blogroll, Hotline On Call, The Fix at washingtonpost.com and the rest of us mainstream losers.
UPDATE II: As the story spread yesterday, Hynes started taking a verbal beating in the comments section at Ankle Biting Pundits. I liked this sarcastic comment best: "I have the sincerest sympathy for a man who accuses another of doing something that he himself has been engaging in and who offers up a heartfelt apology after he gets caught."
There is also this post, purportedly from Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, speaking of himself and Moulitsas: "First of all, you blogethicists that demand disclosure are full of s---. Secondly, I’ve always disclosed who I’ve worked with and to my knowledge, so has Markos."
And over at Real Clear Politics, Ryan Sager offered this observation about a perceived hypocrisy of McCain's: "[I]sn't McCain the one always hyperventilating about 'circumvention' of campaign-finance laws. He and his pals even wanted to clamp down on the Internet recently to prevent bloggers from coordinating with campaigns. And now this is what his PAC is up to? Very odd. Or, really, entirely predictable."
UPDATE III: More thoughts from Lorie Byrd at Wizbang.
Posted by Danny at 11:07 PM | Comments (1)
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'Straight Talk' About Blog Disclosures
Republican blogger Patrick Hynes has insinuated various ethical lapses by leading Democratic bloggers Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Matt Stoller. Now courtesy of a fellow Republican blogger, Jim Geraghty of National Review Online, Hynes has been forced to respond to ethical criticisms of himself.
Geraghty broke the news that Hynes has been on the payroll of Straight Talk America, the political action committee of GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for political consulting. Geraghty noted as an example that Hynes' firm, New Media Strategics, was paid $16,500 by the PAC on May 23.
The information apparently was not easy to confirm, however. Geraghty said he didn't get much straight talk from McCain's PAC in his intial contact with the executive director, and Hynes only publicly disclosed his relationship with McCain after Geraghty began pursuing the story.
Before making disclosures at both his company blog and his political blog, Ankle Biting Pundits, Hynes wrote favorably about McCain and critically of one of his potential 2008 presidential opponents, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Geragthy provided links to those entries.
"The error is in not informing readers," Geraghy wrote. "I think bloggers have an obligation to disclose their relationships to entities in which they have a financially compensated relationship or interest. There’s no reason to think that anything Hynes wrote is anything less than his unvarnished opinion; but his readers ought to be informed that McCain is not just his favorite presidential contender; he is, ultimately, a client."
In a note to Geraghty, Hynes agreed that he should have disclosed his relationship with McCain sooner. One reason Hynes said he didn't do so is that "I was not being paid 'to blog'."
He was being paid for his knowledge about the blogosphere, however, because that is precisely how he markets himself at New Media Strategics. The "about us" page dismisses "traditional public relations executives who have plenty of experience working with the old media but wouldn't know a blog from a vlog or a podcast," and it touts Hynes as an expert in using such tools to convey a message.
"Beyond 'commenting on other people's blogs,' President Patrick Hynes and his team design unique new media communications plans for each NMS client," the company site says. "Patrick Hynes is a blogger. He understands how bloggers receive and process information. What energizes them and, just as [important], what turns them off."
The controversy surrounding Hynes is even more interesting in light of some of the criticisms he has leveled against top bloggers on the left. He has been particularly critical of Stoller. At The Channel Changer, a blog of his focused on compeititon in the communications industry, Hynes has called Stoller a "suspected paid Google/MoveOn shill" in the battle for "network neutrality."
Hynes has not provided evidence of the alleged financial relationship but wrote this last month: "I have dug as far as it appears I am able to dig. Matt Stoller has ignored three e-mails from me, and I have commented on his net neutrality rants over at MyDD. But he evidently is following Kos' marching orders and the secret of who is actually paying for this spontaneous outpouring of emotion from the 'netroots' ... is safe."
Hynes has not yet responded to my request for comment about how his now-confirmed work for McCain is any different than the unproven insinuations that Armstrong, Moulitsas and Stoller have been paid for but not disclosed some of their blog-related activism on behalf of pet candidates or causes.
UPDATE: Mark Tapscott has added his voice to the criticism of Hynes: "It ought to be Rule One among politically active bloggers that the financial relationship should be acknowledged whenever you post on behalf of a candidate who is paying you. Better you disclose it first than somebody else at a less opportune moment, right?"
And Tim Chapman observed: "I think Hynes is handling the whole thing quite well. ... This just goes to show that on the right side of the blogosphere, credibility, transparency and full disclosure are cherished values." Like Tapscott, though, I have to wonder how cherished those values really are when the transparency and full disclosure come after bad publicity.
A reader at Ankle Biting Pundits made an astute point. "Unfortunately, this case is only a snowflake on the tip of an iceberg," the anonymous commenter wrote. "There are huge numbers of political operatives pretending to be average citizens posting blogs and comments under fake names."
Posted by Danny at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
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CIA Contractor Fired Over Views Posted To Blog
Here is some blog news we noted this morning at National Journal's Technology Daily, where we start each weekday by summarizing and linking to tech-related stories in other publications:
A software contractor at the CIA whose Web log was a popular read among a select circle of people with top-secret security clearances has lost her job. The Washington Post reports that BAE Systems has fired Christine Axsmith and revoked her security badge.Axsmith had used her blog to express her personal opinions on agency policies and several contentious issues, such as the torture of prisoners. A CIA spokesman did not comment on Axsmith's termination but said that "managers should be informed of online projects that use government resources" and that the agency "expects contractors to do the work they are paid to do."
BAE did not provide comment in the story. Axsmith had expected to be reprimanded but not fired.
In other news, AP reports on a blogger in France who has sued her employer for firing her.
Posted by Danny at 01:50 PM | Comments (1)
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Transparency Monday
Leading bloggers on the left have been under fire the past several days, in part because their critics think those bloggers should be more transparent about their business and political dealings. Bloggers pride themselves on transparency, after all.
Perhaps that explains today's burst of transparency -- and talk about the need for more of it.
The talk, curiously enough, came at the liberal blog EzraKlein.com. A pseudononymous blogger there suggested that Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos has not been forthright enough about his relationship with MyDD founder and political consultant Jerome Armstrong, and Armstrong's most prominent client, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.
After noting that in a previous career life Armstrong gave some pretty sorry stock advice, Neil the Ethical Werewolf wondered aloud whether Armstrong's political advice is any more trustworthy. Likewise, he said Moulitsas' decision to tout the potential presidential candidacy of Warner is just as suspect.
"I'm not saying that Kos is getting paid off by the Warner campaign. ... There's a simpler explanation," Neil wrote. "Maybe Kos is just another gullible Bluepoint investor who trusts and admires Jerome, and is buying an Internet stock for a lot more than it's worth, on Jerome's recommendation. We ought to be suspicious of pro-Warner comments Kos makes in the future. You don't just have to beware the guy who's willing to mislead you for financial gain; you have to beware the guy who listens to him."
Neil acknowledged in his entry that he is a supporter of John Edwards, the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate in 2004 and a potential presidential candidate in 2008.
When Neil's post generated some kickback from readers of EzraKlein.com, the Ezra Klein jumped to his defense. "Markos is a good guy and a powerfully positive force, but he's as subjective and biased as anyone," Klein wrote. "Neil, an Edwards supporter, is arguing that that's led him to support a candidate ideologically unsuited to the netroots. That strikes me as a fair point, and one that should be seen as coming from the subjective prism of an Edwards supporter."
Klein also made a fresh pitch for more transparency as bloggers start taking sides in campaigns. And in a follow-up entry, he noted his own leanings (subject to change): 1) 2000 Democratic standard-bearer Al Gore; 2) John Edwards; 3) 2004 Democratic candidate Wesley Clark; 4) and former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
At Salon, meanwhile, blogger Peter Daou announced that he has taken a new job as a blog adviser to another potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. His mission: Help Clinton, who is unpopular among blog readers, "facilitate and expand her relationship with the netroots."
Said Chris Cillizza of The Fix: "Clinton's decision to bring on Daou -- coupled with the hiring of Jesse Berney, another liberal blogger -- shows a recognition on her behalf that blogs will play a crucial role in choosing the 2008 Democratic nominee and that she has work to do in the courtship of this increasingly important interest group." (I could not find a mention at Berney's blog, now on hiatus, about his work for Clinton.)
Chris Bowers of MyDD also made a disclosure about his new paid consulting gig with Netroots Research, Strategy and Analysis. Two blog diarists -- Hale Stewart at MyDD and David Atkins at Daily Kos -- are the other members of the firm.
"Just so everyone knows," Bowers wrote, "I will disclose every campaign I end up working on."
And a campaign blogger for John Bonifaz, a Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Massachusetts, offered one last bit of disclosure at MyDD today, as he has in previous entries there and at Blue Mass Group.
Posted by Danny at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
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The 'Blogfather' Breaks His Silence
Jerome Armstrong used the MyDD forum he created to finally respond to ethics outcry against him and co-author Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos.
"Let me just state for the record that any payola allegations or some quid pro quo deal involving Markos and myself are complete fabrications," wrote Armstrong, whom Moulitsas calls his "blogfather."
Armstrong's comment was posted as an addendum to a post authored by Matt Stoller that was dismissive of the ongoing controversy. "I think these insiders and Republicans are just obsessed with us," wrote Stoller, who has faced criticism himself at The Channel Changer for his "apparent lack of concern about the (Jerome) Armstrong dust-up."
Moulitsas, sounding like the leader of an effort that he alternatively has called both a leaderless movement and an "everybody-who's-part-of-it-is-a-leader" movement, also took to the Internet yesterday afternoon and urged the netroots to stay the course.
"Just a quick reminder as the media nip at our heels: We didn't get here because of them," he wrote. "They can praise us, they can trash us, they can ignore us, and ultimately none of that will matter as long as we keep doing what we've been doing."
Matt Margolis of GOP Bloggers, meanwhile, has some thoughts on Moulitsas as a leader. Commenting on a statement by Moulitsas to Newsweek, Margolis wrote:
The way Markos talks, he clearly thinks he's the messiah of the Democratic Party. ... What Kos fails to understand is that the greater influence he does have in the Democratic Party, the more Republicans are going to win. And if he wants to ignore that fact, by all means, he should continue what he's doing. Kos not only suffers from delusions of grandeur, but he also harbors delusions that he is in the mainstream, and that Republicans and moderate Democrats are not.
UPDATE: Moulitsas' stay-the-course message, apparently written in response to a critical New York Times piece by conservative writer David Brooks (subscription only), was not well-received by one diarist at his site. And her admonition to Moulitsas that "The Cover-Up Is Worse Than The Crime" was not well-received by the Daily Kos community.
The diarist, Karen Collins, just happens to be married to journalist and former America Online editorial director Jesse Kornbluth, who counter-attacked at The Huffington Post. Some excerpts:
For better or worse, Markos is on trial. And this is tragic, for the site is one of the greatest on the Web and Markos, on his worst day, is a zillion times the man and thinker that Brooks is on his best. But in his e-mail, Markos got it exactly backward. If the "news" about Armstrong is indeed nothing, he would have done better to suggest that his friends in the progressive community write about it. ... But there's an easy way out: Markos, do what my wife asked --- give us an explanation. And then promise you'll never send another e-mail that makes you look like Vito Corleone [of "The Godfather" movies] telling the Tattaglias and Barzinis what to do.
Also at The Huffington Post, Marty Kaplan offered a different view of Brooks' column.
UPDATE II: Armstrong now has responded to the astrology angle to the story (same MyDD link as above). "I have done the new-age-type things over the years -- life's never boring that way," he wrote, adding that "it has nothing to do with what I consult with in online political strategy."
Posted by Danny at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)
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Virginia Suspends Worker Over Blogging
The Virginia Department of Business Assistance this week suspended a worker for 10 days for blogging on agency time, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Martinsville Bulletin report.
The Richmond-based employee, Will Vehrs, told AP that the suspension was for "excessive casual use of the Internet." But he has been blogging from work for a while now and only recently landed in trouble when he took some jabs at the economies of Martinsville and Henry County in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His comments were part of a caption contest.
The comments -- for which Vehrs later and repeatedly apologized, even inviting Martinsville and Henry County residents to post comments -- prompted outrage from some state lawmakers. Delegate Ward Armstrong of Henry County even wrote a letter of complaint to Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, asking him to call for Vehrs' immediate resignation.
Vehrs blogs at Commonwealth Conservative and addressed the suspension in an entry there.
"I think the punishment is unduly harsh and doesn't do anything to allow me to atone in a positive way for my mistake," he wrote. "It also doesn't address in a broader way issues with economically distressed areas or blogging by state employees. But that's their call, not mine. I had a three-part resolution to offer, but they never gave me a chance."
Vehrs also is blogging for the Martinsville paper as a form or penance and plans to make a trip to the area. "I remain very chastened by the ruckus I have caused, and I want people to know that those unfortunate entries I made in that ill-fated caption contest in no way reflect how I feel about your community," he wrote in his first entry. "Perhaps, if you get to know me through my blogging and other potential personal interactions, I'll be able to convince you that I never meant any harm."
Despite the suspension and Vehrs' outreach, the furor has continued. The Times-Dispatch blasted Vehrs in an editorial yesterday. "Quips that offended the region were as clever as typical jests in the blogosphere -- i.e., not very," the paper wrote. "The jokes offend Martinsville and Henry County primarily because of their deficient wit."
But Times columnist Ray McAllister took a somewhat contrary view in a column about blogs. "Some are well-informed, passionate, smart, funny, valuable. ... Some are self-indulgent, sniping, ax-grinding, partisan -- all without adult supervision," he wrote. "Some are simply boring." In that big scheme of things, he said Vehrs' blogging activities are "positively responsible" and his suspension over them "so funny."
Vehrs' blogger friends are upset that he was punished, with some now targeting Armstrong, who was embroiled in a speech controversy of his own a few years ago and is now being portrayed as a hypocrite.
One state lawmaker who blogs with Vehrs at another site, VACostCosting, said the story about Vehrs has been overblown.
"Honestly, if every time a state employee takes a cigarette break and says something negative about their job, vents, makes a joke, will they be called out and asked to resign?" Delegate Chris Saxman wrote. "How do we expect our employees to perform if we intend on overpoliticizing a blog post? It was not anonymous. It was a joke. It was wrong. The man has apologized. Let it go."
Posted by Danny at 07:02 AM
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