Monday, February 14, 2005

A Perfect Blogstorm

There is lots of chatter out there about the "larger implications" of the role the blogosphere play in the aftermath of the Eason Jordan and "Jeff Gannon" affairs. What follows isn't a "round-up" as such. Think of it more as a stream of consciousness on "blog power."

-From Michael Barone:

When four American contractors were killed in Iraq in April 2004, dailykos.com wrote: "I feel nothing over the death of the mercenaries. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them."

This repulsive comment produced no drop-off in page views. This was what the left blogosphere wanted. Kos was an early enthusiast for Dean's campaign for Democratic chairman and disparaged other candidates.


For 12 years, Democratic chairmen were chosen by Bill Clinton. He built a new generation of fund-raisers who relished contact with the Clintons. Now, the big money comes from the left blogosphere and Bush-hating billionaires like George Soros. Dean gives them what they want.

As Dean says, "I hate the Republicans and everything that they stand for." Hate. But Bush hatred was not enough to beat Bush in 2004 -- Democratic turnout was up, but Republican turnout was up more -- and doesn't seem likely to beat Republicans in 2006 and 2008. The left blogosphere has driven the Democrats into an electoral cul de sac.

The Bush campaign, quietly, used the Internet to build an e-mail list of 7.5 million names and a corps of 1.4 million volunteers, who produced more new votes than the Democrats. But the right blogosphere was different from the left. There was no one dominant website and no one orthodoxy.


While the influence of The Daily Kos is in some ways unfortunate - it can be wildly inconsistent in its content, as well as a little unhinged at times - there are numerous other left leaning blogs that refrain from the excesses seen on TDK. Barone should venture a little further in the liberal blogosphere before rendering such a judgement.

As for the conservative blogs, it is true that there is no "Daily Kos" of the right. But that doesn't mean it isn't riddled with Kool-Aid drinking denizens who utter things just as bad as the quote Barone cherrypicked from Kos.

-From James Miller:

Imagine that mind reading were suddenly imposed on humanity automatically transmitting all our thoughts to those around us. Involuntary telepathy would destroy countless marriages as wives learned of their husbands perverse fantasies. Bosses would fire millions after they found out what their employees really thought of them. Police would be inundated with reports of ordinary citizens contemplating hideous crimes. But eventually we would realize that all humans harbor evil thoughts and an equilibrium would emerge in which we forgave bad thoughts that didn't lead to terrible deeds.

People have more control over their spoken words than their unannounced thoughts, but occasionally most of us still say things we later regret. Recently, three powerful men have been damaged or brought down by their own utterances. Eason Jordan resigned his position as top news executive at CNN because he had allegedly said that the U.S. military was deliberately killing journalists in Iraq. Trent Lott had to give up his position as Senate Majority Leader because of his too-profuse praise of former segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond. And the not-yet former president of Harvard Larry Summers was forced to repent and apologize for suggesting that biological differences might explain the paucity of female science professors.

Of the three, Dr. Summers should have been most aware of the trouble his comments would incite. Dr. Summers' speculations on the biological differences between the sexes violated the multicultural faith of academia, which ascribes all such differences to discrimination. And the academy does not well tolerate its heretics.

One can understand why Trent Lott and Eason Jordan didn't think their comments would draw mortally wounding fire. Senators often praised old racists colleagues and the media had never previously cared. Jordan was speaking off camera to mostly like-minded fellows and he must have assumed that the media would never turn on one of its own for the politically correct sin of savaging the U.S. military. Both men were brought down by blogs that continually discussed their comments until enough Americans were angered such that the two could not keep their positions without harming their colleagues.


Blogs brought down Trent Lott? I was always under the assumption that Trent Lott brought down Trent Lott. And as for Larry Summers he was attacked the old fashioned way, through the main stream media. If anything the blogosphere offered him more defenders than accusers. Unfortunately he was too busy at re-education camp to notice. But I digress.

I fear that blogs may soon make many Americans afraid to speak their minds. Imagine you're a manager of a company. Your new blog nightmare is that you will say something stupid in a meeting and this will be reported in a blog. Other blogs will report the initial comment and soon whatever group you have offended will pressure your company to fire you. Or perhaps your distasteful remark will go unreported until you're promoted to CEO. Then your employees, while blogging about what kind of boss you are, will literally tell the world about your past unfortunate utterance.

I suspect that most of us have made comments at work more offensive than the statements that got Lott and Jordan fired. Unless we change the rules of engagement ambitious people will start being extremely circumspect in conversation with those they don't completely trust.

I plead for a new social order under which a few offensive spoken remarks, even if highly odious and taken in context, are forgiven. Most everyone has some fairly nasty thoughts and occasionally these thoughts turn into speech. If we allow a few obnoxious comments to destroy someone's career, many will avoid engaging in freewheeling discussions.


This is almost entirely wrong. People in high profile jobs always have to watch what people catch them saying. That was true ten years ago. It is true today. Blogging has nothing to do with it. The only difference if that blogging allows everyone to find out about it without going through the "editorial" process of the MSM. We are supposed to sit back and trust that the high muckity-mucks at CNN are gonna always do the right thing when they sweep such statements under the rug? The idea that the people must remain ignorant of the extreme utterences of public figures just doesn't wash in a society that values free speech and the freedom of the press.

As for any "chilling" affect on "freewheeling discussions," I just don't buy it. By definition, a charge such as that made by Eason Jordan doesn't add anything to a discussion. For example, you don't engage in a debate with someone who denys the holocaust, you suffer through their spiel. Jordan ultimately lost his job not because he was engaging in a discussion, but because he was caught spewing out a hateful screed. There is a world of difference there.

-From Cathy Young:

Some of Jordan's critics would probably rail against any negative media coverage of American troops. They're wrong. It's the job of journalists to report the truth, and it's our right and obligation as American citizens to know what is being done in our name. If a network news chief has evidence that the US military has deliberately killed or tortured journalists, the network should be reporting it and the government should be investigating it. Without such evidence, a journalist should be the last person to traffic in unsupported and irresponsible innuendo.

Jordan's downfall also attests to the rising power of the ''new media": the Internet weblogs. The bloggers broke this story, and kept it going when the mainstream media wouldn't cover it. Many of those bloggers undoubtedly had an ideological agenda, but the fact is that they did some solid reporting -- and that some of their information came from liberals such as Representative Frank. In some quarters of the blogosphere, Jordan's resignation was met with an unpleasant ''we got him!" gloating; but ''gotcha" journalism is hardly limited to blogs. Like other media, the blogs can be vehicles for vendettas and witch-hunts -- as well as a tool for openness and accountability.

Mainstream journalists should resist the temptation to view Jordan as a victim of a right-wing lynch mob. His fatal wound was ultimately self-inflicted. And, if the ''old media" don't learn some lessons from this incident, there will be more such wounds.

I think Young is right in mentioning that "witch hunts" (which will play a lasting, if ignoble, role in blogging, of that there should be no doubt) have a long tradition in american journalism. It seems to be part of the baggage that comes along with a free press. It's no good wringing ones hands about it and wishing it were otherwise. Facts are usually good things to fight back with against such witch hunters, so dive in and have at it.

The truth is if Jordan or "Jeff Gannon" had better facts on their side they'd still have their jobs. So don't waste your time crying for either of them.

-From Kevin Drum:

At the end of a post yesterday about the recent success of the longtime conservative crusade to hound public figures (mainly media figures) out of their jobs, I said: "It might be time for liberals to realize that even if we manage to collect a few scalps of our own along the way, conservatives gain strength from promoting this brand of warfare far more than liberals do. I hope we're not just being useful idiots by joining in this game."

I've gotten a lot of email and comments about this, so let me explain briefly what I meant.

What I'm not saying is that liberals should back down from a fight. I supported Howard Dean for DNC chair — even though I'm probably going to find myself wincing through some of his infamous miscues over the next four years — because liberals need fighters these days. Dean's a fighter.

But liberals and conservatives prosper in different kinds of atmospheres. Conservatives tend to thrive on a sense of besiegement, a belief that they're surrounded on all sides by enemies seen and unseen who must be destroyed. The politics of personal destruction, brought to a fever pitch during Bill Clinton's presidency, is tremendously helpful to their cause — and always has been.
Liberalism simply doesn't thrive in this kind of atmosphere. If we fight back using the same tactics we'll win a few battles along the way — Hooray for our side! Jeff Gannon is a smut peddler! — but in the long run we're just intensifying exactly the kind of warfare that helps conservatives the most.


So sure: of course we have to fight back. But we have to fight in a way that creates an atmosphere that encourages liberalism. The politics of personal destruction isn't it, and that's why I hope the lefty blogosphere doesn't give in to it.

Remember: you don't always fight fire with fire. Water usually works better.

I've always found the Democratic belief that they are somehow kinder and gentler than Republicans as amusing as it is, well, delusional. When you put any counterfactual in front of them, say the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, they will reply "Well, he deserved it." Somehow it escapes them that everyone who has engaged in such politics, from the misty dawn of time to this present day, said exactly the same thing.

Instead of going on about this, I'll let Doug Petch take over:

His point appears to not be that such activities are wrong, or that they should be eschewed on moral or ethical grounds. Rather, he seems to be saying only that liberals should use care in employing such techniques lest they begin to resemble the conservatives that they so despise. It's a pity that his point is such a shallow one, since the issue he raises is a vital one as it relates to the credibility and viability of blogging as a form of journalism. As one of the medium's leading voices, Drum's opinion will no doubt influence the debate. Hopefully these posts aren't his last - or best - word on the subject.

Petch's view is an idealistic one, but I don't use the term as a sort of putdown that he isn't being realistic. In some ways he is being far more realistic than Drum. In the end it is only some sort of idealism that allows us to evaluate the speech that we find in the blogosphere. Don't expect that all of it will look pretty, because a lot of it will be as ugly as sin. And certainly the ability to be self-critical will always be necessary, if difficult to pull off at times. The result can be a blogosphere that has something important to say for the left and the right, and those poor fools caught in between them.

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