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.
The beauty of the Web beast lies in its surreptitious—almost stalking—nature that grabs its prey from behind with eyes averted but ego completely engaged in the hyperbole.
This was the case of Cindy Sheehan and many seasoned campaigners since. What began as a cry in the wilderness of Crawford, Texas and the birth of “Camp Casey” ended with the one-two gut punches of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Cindy sought the spotlight for her son’s death but when the overwhelming devastation of Katrina is revealed American eyes turn to that tragedy. In 2008 Cindy plans a march on Washington and unseating Nancy Pelosi. Kos points out in Sheehan’s case that she is reviving a strategy that was no longer viable — the march. Nobody cares.
Kos juxtaposing Cindy’s march with the one staged by millions across the globe protesting that foray into Iraq... argues that it did not dissuade Bush nor the U.S. military. Taking insists that a neophyte blogger with an insightful weblog is a more powerful weapon in the activists’ arsenal than a thousand marches.
At one point Cindy posts her “resignation,” Martin Luther-like, on the door of Daily Kos. She resigns from the Democrat Party. But a couple of days later she, well, comes back from her self-imposed exile and continues posting to her Kos diary as if nothing happened. But something did happen, she became irrelevant and misspent the political capital and sympathy garnered by her activism. It was simply too little too late.
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