Meanwhile, Back At The Grassy Knoll

Following in the trail blazed by Sidney Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton, Garance Franke-Ruta probes the latest machinations and manipulations of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (Blogger Subdivision).

This is breakthrough stuff, folks.  Here we go:

Not only are most bloggers not journalists; increasingly they are also partisan operatives whose agendas are as ideological as they come. Using the cover of anonymity (many bloggers use pseudonyms), the cacophony of the relatively new medium, and the easily inflamed passions of the Web, these partisan political operatives are becoming experts at stirring up hornets’ nests of angry e-mails to editors, mounting campaigns to force advertisers to pull out of news shows, and, most disturbingly, spreading outright false information.

Hmm, her link to "false" information requires registration, but somehow, I suspect she is not guiding us to this myth put out by the Lost Kos and picked up by the NY Times.

Ms. Franke-Ruta explains that Eason Jordan of CNN "was brought down not by outraged citizen-bloggers but by a mix of GOP operatives and military conservatives."  How this taxonomy covers Jeff Jarvis, Rep. Barney Frank, and Sen. Chris Dodd is left unclear.  But no worries!  The NY Times never mentioned the role played by Sen. Dodd either, so perhaps her readers will not notice the oversight.

Matt Welch has fun with the concept of "partisan operatives", and suspects that Ms. Franke-Ruta could look a bit closer to home; Michelle Malkin defends the gents at Powerline, who appear in the TAP effort as scare-quote "citizens".  And the always helpful Memeorandum points us to Kevin Drum, who says this on behalf of TAP:

Bottom line: a large part of the conservative blogosphere is nothing more than old style slime artists with a shiny new medium to abuse, while another large part either wittingly or unwittingly passes along their swill as a supposed groundswell of grass roots outrage.

A "large part"?  Well, the last time we checked a "bottom line" calculated by Kevin Drum was about two hours ago, and we found his accounting to be a bit fuzzy.  Oh, why be coy?  The post is titled "Just Make Stuff Up", and that is what he was doing then.

Look, we understand the pressures under which Kevin writes.  There seems to be a limitless appetite on the left for conspiracy theories (e.g., here is She Who Might Have Been First Lady), and I expect Kevin is under pressure from his employer to generate some buzz. 

I am not going to call the Washington Monthly "slime artists" - Kevin spent a great deal of time on the "Bush AWOL" story, so his expertise in making those judgements exceeds mine.

However, we infer the slightest of leftward tilts at the Washington Monthly, which apparently aims to be influential - my goodness, are they "partisan operatives" also? 

Strictly off the top of my head, if "partisan operative" means that a person is paid to promote a certain side of the national debate, then Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias (TAP), 'Atrios' (Media Matters), and Josh Marshall (Washington Monthly)  are "partisan operatives".  And one might add the Kos himself to that list, since his consulting and fundraising seem to fall on the same side of the aisle.

Amongst the big righties - well I would need the powers of a TAP sleuth to help me.  Glenn Reynolds?  Powerline?  Charles Johnson?

Go long tin foil. 

MORE:  Teresa as theologian:

"The church has a right and obligation to teach values," Heinz Kerry declared. "They don't have a right to restrict freedom of expression, which they did."

In light of this new information, I can't wait to learn the Church's revised views on pornography, obscenity, and blasphemy.

Comments

[Sando]

Jeez. Doesn't anybody critique these articles before they get printed? I have somebody read my college papers for coherence before I send them in. Course, I'm no high falutin' journo or nothin'.

[Joe Mealyus]

"There's more that ties together the blog storms over Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, Jeff Gannon, and Joseph Steffen, so read the whole thing. Bottom line: a large part.... [already quoted by JOM above]"

Notice that to draw his sweeping conclusion, Drum adduces these four stories. The Rather and Jordan stories make the bloggers look good, the Gannon story wasn't much about them, so since I don't recognize the name "Joseph Steffen" that one must really be a doozy.

Also notice Drum says "a large part" (twice) without actually naming names. I don't know if I would say that makes him a slime artist, but is it really good
journalistic practice? Seems at the very least Drum is inviting blog posts with titles like "self-parody alert."

[Cecil Turner]

"Hmm, her link to "false" information requires registration,"

It's also broken. Here's the unbroken link (still requires registration), to: "Repeating rumors is not the newspaper's job." Here's a freeper fisking of multiple excperpts (which at least gives the gist of the subject matter, if you don't feel like slugging through the Sun's cumbersome registration).

"Bloggers, for their part, often see themselves as polemicists and activists and chafe at being held to journalistic standards."

Seems to me the lady doth protest too much . . . and her main complaint is bloggers holding journalists to "jounalistic standards." [Were those scare quotes really necessary? --ummm, yes.]

[TM]

Also notice Drum says "a large part" (twice) without actually naming names. I don't know if I would say that makes him a slime artist, but is it really good
journalistic practice?

Good point. When I was composing this post mentally, my segue to the bit about Atrios, Yglesias, et al was going to be something like "Although Drum does not have the courage or confidence to name names...". Oh, well, I suppose enough cheap shots survived.

[Forbes]

TM: When KDrum refers to "old style slime artists," presumably he's referring to his, and Josh Marshall's, columns in Washington Monthly?

(Otherwise it's a, what, 100 year old reference?)

Pot. Kettle. Black.

[Neo]

Eason Jordan of CNN "was brought down not by outraged citizen-bloggers but by a mix of GOP operatives and military conservatives."

It is a well known fact[sic] that the "GOP operatives and military conservatives" pointed their phasers at Eason and shouted in unison "die you gravy sucking pig." Eason had no choice but to resign or be phased into reruns of "Gilliagan's Island".

Meanwhile back in reality, Eason Jordan was "threaten" with the truth, the same way Mahatma Ghandi threatened the British and Martin Luther King Jr threatened the White House. Bloggers have no weapons except words.

"That which is never spoken" by the MSM is what really made Eason Jordan resign. It is down a "black hole" somewhere near the Form 180 that John Kerry never signed. Some facts are just too inconvenient for sensibilities, just ask Larry Summers.

Perhaps Eason should have yelled "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me!"

[ed]

Hmmm.

"pointed their phasers at Eason"

Some of us, with CLASS btw, prefer the Photon Grenade Launcher.

Hmmmph.

:)

[Beldar]

Little bit off topic, for which I apologize, but: Tom, somehow I missed getting my VRWC combination membership/debit card. Also, I'm not getting the daily memos and need my email address added to the list. Finally, all this "cover story" of practicing law full-time is really getting to be a drag, and I need to find whatever VRWC department is responsible for refabricating cover stories to get something less onerous. Could you consult your pocket directory and email me with the right addresses/URLs to get these things fixed? Thanks much.

[Harry Arthur]

Now, y'all didn't think the MSM would die peacefully, did you? This democratization of news reporting thing has them virtually foaming at the mouth.

From your link above:

"COUNTING THE VOTES: Heinz Kerry is openly skeptical about results from November's election, particularly in sections of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," added Heinz Kerry. She argued that Democrats should insist on "accountability and transparency" in how votes are tabulated.

"I fear for '06," she said. "I don't trust it the way it is right now."

When she refers to "accountability and transparency" would she be including the governor's race in Washington state by chance? Just wondering. Sorry, a bit off track - guess I'd better go wrap my head with duct tape before my brain explodes.

[Joe Mealyus]

Garance Franke-Ruta states her thesis in paragraph two:

"All unrelated stories, except for the Internet angle, right? Scratch the surface and the same names turn up in each scandal, revealing the events of mid-February to have been part of an ongoing and coordinated proxy war by Republican political operatives on the so-called liberal media, conducted through the vast, unmonitored loophole of the Internet."

She tells three stories - about Eason, Gannon/Guckert, and Steffens - and she finds the same names, (or name - Krempasky) alright, but when you read her article carefully only the Eason one fits the description of a "proxy war by Republican political operatives on the so-called liberal media." The other two are other sorts of Republicans Behaving Badly stories.

She mentions the Rather story a few times but doesn't really use it to help prove her thesis, I assume because she doesn't want to defend the idea that Rather would still have his job if it weren't for the blogs.

So maybe she justifies the "same names" part of her thesis - though she isn't exactly bursting with examples - but it's hard to say that her one example, the Eason story, justifies the "proxy war" part. (And of course her discussion of the Eason story, as JOM points out, omits most of the relevant data).

But along the way she does make a lot of general statements about right-wing blogs....

[Matthew Hoy]

"Blogger Subdivision"? That's much too mundane -- it sounds like a housing development.

Blogger shock troops maybe.

Certainly we can come up with something better.

Ohhh...Pajamahadeen militia.

[Cecil Turner]

"Stormbloggers"? "Bloggernecks"? "Devil Blogs"? "Blog Guards"?

[Cecil Turner]

Powerline delivers a well-deserved spanking to Drum's post, using one of his own commenters. Speaking of which, Drum's comments section seems to be running sharply against him, which I've not seen before.

[TM]

"Blogaholics"? "Bloggeroosters"?