I was content to say, "F*ck DailyKOS" and move on. I'm glad, however, that Jeff Wells managed to come up with a somewhat more eloquent reaction to dKOS' Soviet-style attempt to stifle inquiry and appear "normal." While Markos Moulitsas' behavior is pathetic, it illustrates the standard tendency toward evil that MUST happen if one wants to join the ranks of mainstream punditry.
Sites like DailyKOS, however, represent a genre of media we may come to think of as sub-mainstream media. Imagine, if you will, that bloggers represent a social organization that resembles chicken sh*t. There's a wide flat base that includes most bloggers. Then there's the narrow, raised-up white part. This represents the pinnacle of the blogosphere. With the castrated analysis and cognitive dissonance, DailyKOS is clearly aiming for the this hallowed, almost-mainstream ground. Keep flushing verifiable facts down the memory hole, boy. You'll get there.
Here's a hint, Kos: Excluding information to reach a more accurate understanding of events makes about as much sense as a Jew signing up for
capo duties in a Nazi deathcamp:
So DailyKos has conducted a "mass banning" of those who had been "perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories." I hope no one is terribly surprised by this development. From the darlings of alternative media, purges usually follow their contributors' binges of unproscribed spelunking into the deep politics of a mass event. If someone like Kos doesn't distance himself from inquiries that offend mainstream sensibilities he risks the loss of the honourary privileges extended to the pacified blogosphere, and where is he then? Just another former Republican who has a problem with women. And since inquiry isn't his strong suit - Kos regards the theft of the 2004 election as just another "conspiracy theory" and can write with a Bushian lack of irony that he has a "high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate" - making it a sacrificial offering to the incurious middle couldn't have been a tough call.
More than truth, such people crave respectability, which they call "credibility" because it conforms to the conventional wisdom of those whose approval they seek. This becomes the capital they believe they trade for "influence," which is nothing more than their place in punditry's pecking order.
They want, dear God, to be normal. That was never much to which to aspire, and it ain't what it used to be.Research Credit: TR, holder of a PhD in cognitive science, told me that universities share a structure similar to that of chicken sh*t. The professors represent the narrow, raised-up white part.
posted by Kevin at 3:07 PM