I don’t have a thing to say about the Daily Kos flap, other than I think Kos has acted with a lot more decency than most of his critics. However, Matt Stoller has lots to say, and what he says is well worth reading..
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Thanks for the link. I’ve enjoyed your site for some time now.
My prediciton as a mostly republican who is a swing voter:
• Kos said a bad thing… Ooopps!
• Advertisers are cautious.
• Kos will survive this.
* Die hard Reps and Dems are diehards. The story will not sway their opinions about political contributions much.
• Most swing voters will find the argument that they should not vote for the Democrats becasue Dem’s raise money through blogs… subtle… very subtle. (By subtle, I mean, opaque.)
• Many will say.. blog? what’s a blog? (This is why they won’t get any point on way or the other.)
• Those who blog, know what blogs are.
• Really, really talented bloggers manipulate OTHERS to say the “bad” things….
Yeah, most of the uproar was over nothing much. Think of what Ann Coulter says almost every day about people, and nobody on the right tells her off. Still, there IS a problem with writing freely on topics and at the same time accepting advertisements. Every blogger who is big enough must determine what to do, I guess.
I really liked this post by August Pollak on the subject.
Just for the record, I was never a regular reader of Kos before this incident. Since then I’ve been checking daily Kos, well, daily. Take that how you want.
Put together a vicious and meanspirited statement, and an “apology” that was mostly directed at his enemies, and you have Kos’s behavior. What is good about that? As Baseball Crank said:
“No, the problem with Kos’ remarks is that they were vicious and mean, and effectively took sides with a lynch mob. Now, I recognize that many on the Right have been equally rough on Ahmed Yassin, Uday and Qusay, and even on less thoroughly evil figures like Rachel Corrie. But there’s a common denominator there: those are all people who chose to take sides with those who want to kill us. They’re on the other side.
“And that’s how Kos treated the men who were lynched in Fallujah: as not on his side. Except that, whatever you think of “mercenaries” and their motives (more on that below), there’s no dispute that these guys’ were in ultimately in Iraq because the Coalition Provisional Authority wanted them there to assist in its efforts to rebuild the country into a democracy. The fact that Kos sees the people engaged in that task as being on the other side puts him, at least emotionally, on the side of the lynch mob, the fascists, and the Islamists.”
Now, I recognize that many on the Right have been equally rough on . . . less thoroughly evil figures like Rachel Corrie. But there’s a common denominator there: those are all people who chose to take sides with those who want to kill us. They’re on the other side.
The fact that the Right believes that a peaceful demonstrator like Rachel Corrie is “on the other side” indicates to me their basic problem with humanity.
The fact that the Right believes, without evidence, that the Palestinians whose home Rachel Corrie was protecting “wanted to kill us” indicates to me their basic problem with reality.
For god’s sake, “Baseball Crank” isn’t even bright enough to pretend that he doesn’t consider people his enemies just for being Islamic.
This is why I reject the things you guys say, and this is why I lay the blame for every single person who’s died in this war directly at your doorstep. If we’re “objectively pro-Saddam,” you’re “objectively pro-death,” and that’s just plain evil.
—JRC
My problem with Kos’ comment was that he never really said much of an apology for something that was obviously a callous and stupid remark. Saying, “It was dumb” and “we had some people pull advertising but they’ll be replaced within a week anyway” and “I’ve only been criticized by right wing nuts” sound less like he’s sorry and more like he’s swaggering.
That’s fine; I never much liked the Daily Kos to begin with. The problem I had was with the lefty blogs’ reaction. Max Sawicky’s comments are a good example: anyone who thinks Kerry was right to pull his link and/or that it was right for the advertisers to pull their ads is caving in to the pressure of right wing nuts? Echoes of Spain. The guys at TalkLeft had a post saying that the criticisms of Kos from the left didn’t mean anything because they had come from “centrist Democrats.” Yes, because the closer you are to the Right the less your opinion counts for.
The Anne Coulter counter-argument (or, they don’t comment on Anne Coulter whenever she says something stupid) is specious at best. They don’t regularly link to Coulter comments and, if I recall correctly, do say she’s being a twit when she says something particularly foul that gets a lot of attention. Kos, on the other hand, was linked to daily by the major players in the left blogworld and they continued to link to and defend him (but not his comments, curiously enough) even after he said some pretty nasty things.
Look: I don’t care if Kos thinks it’s okay to burn mercenaries alive because he had a war-torn childhood. That’s his deal. I have a problem with non-apologies that are supposed to solve everything, blatant lies in his apology (there were people on the left who criticized him, hate to say … oh, wait, they were “centrist Democrats” or else below-the-blog-radar so they don’t count), and the nakedly partisan behaviour of the left blogs. If Glenn Reynolds had made the same comment and posted the same apology, would the left have said that it was all hunky-dory now? Likely Atrios would have given him some nickname whenever linking to him, like “Insta-Burning-People-Alive-Is-Okay-Pundit says today…”
Well.. I see nothing wrong with advertisers or blogs pulling ads or links. Advertisers, bloggers and web sites can and should pull ads and links when they disapprove” or simply find that the ad is not currently worththe money!
I still suspect Kos will survive. The thing about blogs, is he just has to keep running his site. He may not make money for a while.. but he can still keep running it. People do visit offensive sites, insightful sites, whatever….