Cross Posted On Dailykos
How do you know when the media is obsessed with the progressive netroots?
When they report on a sub-par flame war on Dailykos:
The most prominent disgruntlement came in a "diary" written and posted Saturday by Maryscott O'Connor, who describes herself as a "contented and fulfilled ... denizen of the Daily Kos community," and is now the proprietor of My Left Wing, "a spin-off of Daily Kos."
O'Connor, who was actually the subject of a 2,181-word front-page Washington Post article about the liberal blogosphere published in April, began her July 8 diary entitled "Something is Rotten in Blogmark":
"Sometimes I am embarrassed to call myself a member of DKos. This is one of those times. There is a sort of groupthink, Lord of the Flies kind of behaviour at DKos over certain issues that absolutely makes me nauseated," she wrote.
O'Connor was referring to a diary by another Kossack, Richard Silverstein, published at DKos on June 26. It openly addressed some of the issues raised by The New Republic's Jason Zengerle as well as The New York Times' David Brooks.
This is hysterical--in every sense of the word. Fox News is seriously dedicating time to a Dailykos flame war? Could they grow any more obsessed with the progressive netroots? I've been around since the very beginning, and I have seen all of the flame wars. As far as flame wars go, this ranks somewhere between the fight over no extended entries on front-page posts, and the fight over the Brown--Hackett Senate primary in Ohio. If you think this is a flame war, then your obsession with the progressive netroots is clearly new and you have really come late to the party. If our flame wars are news, why not rank them? Basically, I mean, if you really want to talk about flame wars, then why didn't touch the whole early 2003 Nader thing (#4 all time) the great 2005 pie-fight (#3 all time), the post-election kurfuffle over election fraud (#2 all time), or even the dreaded all-time flame war:
SYFPH (Best. Flame. War. Ever.). But somehow the first major post-Yearly Kos flame war is news to Faux News.
How astonishingly pathetic. The whole thing reminds me of Sixteen Candles when Anthony Michael Hall (the writer of this article) somehow gets Molly Ringwald's (Dailykos) panties, and thus becomes cool among the computer geeks (the Faux News audience) for doing so. Or, perhaps, a better analogue: all those teenie boopers who thought that Nirvana's best album was their MTV Unplugged recording (what's Bleach?). Even better: people who thought that Enterprise was a really great show, but had never heard of Star Trek (I'm saying this as someone who liked Enterprise, but who thinks that Spock and Jean-Luc Picard vie for the title of "epitome of Star Trek greatness").
I'd give the writer of the article, someone from Real Clear Politics, a tip and let him know that flame wars are par for the course on Dailykos. As one of the many major conservative sites that do not allow comments, this may actually be news to him. Like any good popular kid in high school, in response to this strange obsession from an overwrought nerd, I'd like to tell him "I'm very flattered by your interest, but sorry." However, since this is Faux News, I think I can safely say on behalf of the entire progressive netroots that I'm not flattered in the slightest. Like any good music snob from High Fidelity, I can tell him that he has no idea what he is talking about, and that band / blog was way better before it become popular anyway. As user ID #123 (never trust any user ID over 10,000!) I can also tell any "outsider" that s/he really has no idea what s/he is talking about, and that the diary in question is an extremely minor incident in the history of Dailykos that will not damage the blog in the slightest. In fact, with the attention it has brought, it will probably only help it.
This obsession with trying to bring down the progressive netroots is amazing. It makes me think I gave you too much credit
in my post from earlier today. Like I said above, it is also hysterical. It is incredibly funny that Fox News is reporting on a below average Dailykos flame war, as part of their desperate, last gap hopes that the progressive netroots are going under. Their next story will be about the next major user banning on MyDD, as "a sign that the progressive movement is about to collapse." But hey, whatever, show off those panties to your fellow computer geeks. You know about as much on how Dailykos works as how those losers knew about feminine undergarments. Waste your time and build our legend. That is fine with me.
