Kosfight

DailyKos must have finally pushed him too far. Bill O'Reilly declared jihad the week before the 2nd annual YearlyKos convention, leading to a distancing from the event by JetBlue. It's been covered extensively elsewhere, especially well in this TPMtv video, but I got an interesting analysis by loyal reader "m":

I hate to say it, but i'm starting to find the whole "Kos / O'Reilly" deathmatch very interesting from an old v. new media standpoint.

You have:

O'Reilly:
- an extremely large old media megaphone (granted, it's cable, but you know what i mean).
- It's Fox, so he can say whatever he wants, including cherry-picking wacko user comments, material out of context, & outright lies, etc.
- He can also have psychos like Malkin & Coulter, as well as a few faux Demos on to reinforce his baloney.
- And he can do it night after night, for however long his show is (and I assume he's also spewing this drivel on his radio show also)
- he's using his reach to try to scare off Kos' advertisers (which, i can only imagine, are piddly in the grand scheme of things)

then, you have Kos:
- largest political community website
- has solidarity with just about every other progressive site (Atrios, etc, etc)
- all of them are banding together to embarass/humiliate O'Reilly any way they can, with complete access to anything that's public record (the lawsuit depositions being the most obvious), and an army of amateur researchers who are only too happy to do so.
- they're using their reach to try to scare off O'R' advertisers (which, i can only imagine, are quite substantial in terms of $$)

Neither side seems to have any reason to stop short of death.

I think it'll be very interesting to see who cries "Uncle", and what the determining factor is. I think it's got to be O'R, since Kos has no one to answer to, but we'll see.

Maybe falafel boy just sees this as a load of inexpensive red-meat programming, and he doesn't care about having the humilatingly hilarious text of his harassment deposition winging endlessly thru cyberspace. But sooner or later, his advertisers might.

Home Depot appears to have pulled out earlier this week.

Presidential candidate Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) evidently stood up to O'Reilly, we may get to see it tomorrow.

For the record, I believe in free speech, even odious speech. I believe that in a democracy, if you find certain speech odious, it's your job to speak up.

It's not surprising that the Republican Party desperately wants to smear DailyKos and try to denigrate its brand value. Hopefully Red Scare it, make you the weirdo for going there to read or express progressive American opinions.

For the record, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga deserves a Congressional medal someday for single-handedly reviving, or inventing, a crucial corner of American democratic speech: the virtual public square.

It'll be interesting to see where the site goes once there's a Democratic President, especially if Congress stays the same. Will there be more Party specific critique and action? Will it still get 500,000 hits a day? Will it get more?

Let's do our best to make it until then.

Meowww

Republican once were though "strong on defense", mostly thanks to two 1950's terms by President (former General and WWII Supreme Commander) Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now, however, they seem to purr, screech and meow.

While the Democratic Party just had a highly successful YouTube format debate with rather braver-than-journalist user-gen questions, it seems the Republicans are just too scared to face regular American voters. Per Andrew Sullivan:

Rudy won't bite, apparently. Romney's decidedly cool to the idea. The others are getting iffy. Hewitt declares YouTube and CNN biased. Heh. For my part, the current old white men running for the GOP already seem from some other planet. Ducking YouTube after the Dems did so well will look like a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy. But then, we kind of knew that already, I guess, didn't we?

Ho ho, we did!

But a reader of Talking Points Memo thinks that maybe the problem isn't American voters, maybe the GOP is terrified to reveal exactly who are the core Republican voters:

As far as issues like illegal immigration and "coercive interrogation techniques" go, how does one ask questions like this in a Youtube format in an amusing way? The differences between the GOP base and the political mainstream can seem less extreme when asked by someone like Wolf Blitzer, but if presented from the standard GOP rank-and-file member of the base, it seemed like a great way to show how unhinged the GOP has become on some of these issues. Personally, I'm surprised the GOP ever got close to agreeing to this format, and once the Democratic debate happened and showed the format in action, I didn't see how it could have been pulled off by the GOP.

Mark my words: if they do hold the debate, filter will be on Rovian. You know, like 11.

Who else is making like a kittykat in the crazy camp? Why, none other than Bill O'Reilly, who has been trying his damnedest to demonize DailyKos, a place where people can go and express their opinions for all to read. You know, Participatory Democracy. O'Reilly has made such a massive misfire (he'll fail at anything here but playing to his base -- this is just strengthening Kos) that Stephen Colbert is getting into the act. By condemning...uh...promoting the site himself.

Unlike with his target, to post on O'Reilly's site you have to pay $5/month. That's $60 per year for "free" speech. And he sure can't take the heat when he's called on the hate speech posted to his site -- he's so feline he has to turn off Jane Hall's microphone and smear her, shouting, as a liar. (You can help fight back here.)

I guess when they're not chicken or chickenhawk, they're abusing their seats of power by breaking the law. In this New York Times article, they name 14 Federal lawmakers from sea-to-shining-sea who are current subjects of criminal investigations.

Yes, two of them are Democrats, well deserving of inclusion. That leaves 86% as Republicans.

They also commit perjury.

They've got that cat scratch fever.