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.