Howard Kurtz, who publishes an online column which I highly recommend called Media Notes at WashingtonPost.com, noted this very interesting occurrence on the day President Bush announced John Roberts as his nominee to the US Supreme Court:
At1:27 a.m. yesterday, the Guerilla Women of Tennessee weighed in on President Bush's Supreme Court nominee."John Roberts: Married to Anti-Choice Org VP," the group's Web site blared. Another site, A Liberal Dose , asked: "Why does John G. Roberts Hate Our Soldiers?"
And Feministing.com made no attempt at subtlety: "Why John Roberts Sucks."
The lightning-quick attacks came after 50 top liberal bloggers joined in a 45-minute conference call Tuesday night. "On the left, we've always talked about the need to have an echo chamber," says John Aravosis, a Washington lawyer and gay activist who writes at Americablog.com . "We believe the right has a whole media network, from talk radio to Fox News to Matt Drudge. The left doesn't have that because the left doesn't play well with others..."
Such coordination seems to defy the image of bloggers as iconoclastic lone rangers, pounding the keyboards in their bedrooms and basements without regard to interest-group politics. Bloggers, after all, come from all walks of life, building a following on the strength of their words and ability to draw attention from other Web diarists.
I agree. At the same time, I'm not at all surprised. As a matter of fact, I mentioned this possible new trend back in mid-February and Mr. Kurtz wound up pulling a quote from that same post for his show on CNN.
The whole point of that original post, "Bloglust," was to express my concern regarding this growing sense of power among liberal and conservative bloggers. Blogs have REAL influence, and they've demonstrated that influence over and over again. But I was concerned then and now that Blogs might try to, in a sense, 'unionize' and create false issues in order to help a particular party or candidate.
The mainstream media already does enough of that. It would be better, in my opinion, if blogs simply stuck to whatever mattered to them rather than what matters to some politician and/or interest group in DC.
The influence of the Blogosphere is most apparent when bloggers move away from their random comments and articles and move suddenly into alignment on what are often unexpected issues. Such alignment, as most of us in the Blogosphere know, is called a "Swarm," and swarms should occur naturally, because bloggers CHOOSE to highlight an issue rather than PLAN to highlight an issue.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
I've got five words to put fear into the hearts of all good pinkos: Chief Justice Janice Rogers Brown.
Hear me now, believe me later.
2 - David Flanagan
Lol! Thanks Al, now I can start my day.
David
3 - todd
A. It wasn't a slam dunk that Bush was going to nominate a conservative. The social conservatives got a nice taste of Bush's arrogant prissiness when they complained about Gonzoles.
B. It is still not settled whether this guy is a conservative. For once, I actually agree with Ann Coulter about something.
C. I would expect that this central planning in the blogosphere is going to get much worse. When people start blogging for cash instead of kicks, it all goes downhill.
D. So the intellectuals are no longer found in the Colleges so much any more and are now on the net, blogging.
So the elites are moving to co-opt them into their little programs, surprise surprise.
E. Its not just liberals.
4 - David Flanagan
Thanks for your comments Todd. You make some good points.
David
5 - Erin in Indiana
In all reality, I agree that the armies of well known bloggers getting together to plan some kind of way to influence people in the same direction seems rather underhanded. If an individual person comes across a piece of information that they believe to be true and their source honest, and that information could have an impact politically or otherwise, I believe they have an obligation to the rest of us to get that info out there, and fight for their right to do so.
When I see people like that getting together to report exactly the same thing in exactly the same way to make sure that I'm getting influenced just like this from all directions, that disgusts me.
I am a single mother in a red state, I have refused to subscribe to cable TV, and I have refused to listen to the radio. I don't want to be inundated by the smear tactics that both parties have chosen to participate in, and it's not even anywhere near an election. The things I read on the internet, I filter very carefully based on content. I don't know who or what to trust anymore.
What can I really base my opinions on if I don't believe that anything I hear is entirely accurate? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out.
Thanks,
Erin
6 - Temple Stark
>>By the way, am I the only one who understands that Roberts' nomination as an Associate Justice makes it very likely that the next Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court will be a woman? Can you imagine how silly Democrats in Washington will look trying to "Bork" a woman who has been nominated to be the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in US history?
William Rehnquist become Chief Justic by moving from Justice to Chref Justice.
There's no requirement, of course, but I can't see someone from the outside being promoted directly to Chief Justice
7 - todd
What I would like to see is a fleshing out or expose of a trend I suspect that I am seeing:
Paid (or unpaid) shills who post on blogs, forums, and the like regularily with talking points handed down to them by some central organization.
This is close to what this post is referring to, but more focused and coming from a specific source. And always claiming to be one of the faithful with a reasonable objection.
I see this happening on slashdot alot and it goes like this: I have been using Linux for years, and am no fan of Microsoft, but....
THese people will always be liberals if its a liberal site, conservatives if its a conservative site, linux lovers if its a linux site... with that all important, but.....
8 - David Flanagan
Erin,
I think you have to look at as many of the facts as you can find and then use your good judgement.
You will almost never agree universally with any given person and you will almost never disagree universally with any given person because you are a unique human being with your own opinions. So gather the facts and take an open-minded stand.
What I mean by that is you can state your opinion but remain open to modifying that opinion IF additional information presents itself. And always ask good questions.
Hope that helps.
David
9 - Dave Nalle
>>There's no requirement, of course, but I can't see someone from the outside being promoted directly to Chief Justice<<
Rhenquist was the exception rather than the rule. Appointments straight the Chief Justice are pretty common historically.
>>Paid (or unpaid) shills who post on blogs, forums, and the like regularily with talking points handed down to them by some central organization.<<
As a relatively conservative blogger I've never been offered money nor have I ever been sent even one RNC talking point. I'm not convinced they even exist - I've gone looking for them. They seem to make no effort to promote their agenda to the general blogger population at all.
On the other hand, I can find talking point pages and mailing lists for the left just by doing a google search, plus there are multiple known, paid bloggers associated with moveon.org and other organizations.
Dave
10 - Selfprodigy
The news stations aside from being incrediablly sided one way or another dont do very much. They are really good at telling us everything the president does and feeding us his propaganda. Then they say something like we report you deicide. Anybody with a basic understanding of physcology that watches fox news is disgusted. They way the phrase and ask questions is sickening. ABC and the democratic stations are no better. The news has just gone to hell in this country. Were down to five and a half media companies in this country. The u.k alone has more than 50. I could go on forever so ill just leave with this. Dont believe everything you watch in fact don't believe most of it.....
11 - Bob A. Booey
Senator Barger,
For all Bush's many faults, I don't think he's susceptible to your ridiculous notions of tokenism.
I know you're rubbing your hands waiting for a black woman to tear apart the country and cause suffering for minorities, but your speculation is based more in wishful thinking than in any political reality. It's of course possible she's seriously considered, but you have no knowledge of the political process or about Brown in particular which leads you to keep repeating this. You just think it's funny that a black woman might help destroy civil liberties and equal opportunity ... is that irony too rich for you? Spit it out before you choke. Gluttony's not attractive.
That is all.
12 - Rob Adcox
I've run across a lot of liberal blogs, and it seems that most of them have no provisions for feedback. That tells me that the libs who don't want to hear any feedback really aren't interested in discussing issues. They want to be able to state their views and insult conservatives and then shield themselves from any negative feedback they would otherwise receive. If the libs who do this are so insecure about being able to defend their positions, then it becomes delf defeating for them. But it isn't just liberal bloggers. Many liberal websites do the same thing, not the least of which is moveon.0rg. In this age of war, thge time will come when the US pushes the libs out of the way and pursues the war more aggressively. The libs will bitch and mouth off all they want, but the rest of us will laugh at them and revel in our victory.
13 - greg walden
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