Kos may be the longest name among politicos both left and right who use the Internet as their medium to network with like-minded individuals. In his third book Taking On The System, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga flexes his political muscle for a book that might also be titled How To Take On The System. In 272 pages Kos, a moniker he acquired from army buddies and users online, delivers an unexpectedly laugh-out-loud great read. Kos prefers the “progressive” label because he is left wing and a Democrat. Two baby-brand progressives, Kos and Arianna Huffington used to be Republican. And like so many screwed first by the GOP, Kos emerges through the birth canal a re-born Democrat.
Four anchor stories comprise the bulk of Taking. It retells the story (among others) of two women and two men: Katie Couric, Cindy Sheehan, George Allen and Mark Webb. These lives offline connect with many online and eventually pave the way for Web empires like Drudge Report, Josh Marshall’s TPM, Daily Kos: State of the Nation and The Huffington Post. Steve Colbert’s enduring “truthiness” also makes an appearance. His stinging levity in the face of George W. Bush and a cadre of journalists would have been an obscure performance witnessed only by those in the room. But CSPAN records it and one person passes the event along as a virus worth catching for YouTube. That is the Internet model at its best; the template that transfers power from one person to another via elections or network firings.
Kos chronicles headlines dangling in the news-ether from the beginning of the Iraq war to the 2006 election cycle, including the rightful questions journalist Couric formulated when faced with the facts of the Iraq war: is that all there is? However, it remains just a question in her mind and in the minds of other establisment journalists who give President Bush enough political rope to hang Iraq around the Republican hulk.
Throughout Taking Kos questions what one might call the “why” chromosome of journalistic credentials. Why does a journalism degree confer on the holder all the genetic material required to fill every nook and cranny in the 1960's media only with the countenance of white men? Kos becomes myth buster and Web giant by poking holes in the story that the media strangely ignores, or worse, has no clue it’s brewing.
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