http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080403/NATION/153270729/1002
Blog bickering called poison to DemocratsRampant acrimony? As opposed to couchant acrimony, or passant acrimony? But I'm being pedantic. Still, you'd think the deep-pocketed Right could find a slightly more literate scribbler. But you've gotta admire a paper willing to publish a story whose lede begins, "Some say..."Some say acrimony is rampant among liberal and progressive bloggers who debate the merits of the Democratic presidential candidates.... the divisiveness potentially exacting a toll on the party itself.
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly yesterday cited both "venom" and "liberals brutalizing liberals" on Web sites partial to either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama.
Vitriol is brewing among Democrats, Mr. O'Reilly said, singling out the Daily Kos in particular...
Markos Moulitsas, who founded the site, [says],
"While I'm touched by Bill O'Reilly's concern for our party, tell him not to worry. Unlike his show, where critics have their mics cut off and escorted out by Fox security, us progressive bloggers have no problem debating and disagreeing with each other."
Much more fun is Moulitsas' po-faced comment that "us [sic] progressive bloggers have no problem... disagreeing with each other." Having been purged from the Kos web site under half a dozen different aliases, I can testify that this is a whopping lie. The relentless tyranny of groupthink on Kos and the other "progressive" blogs makes the Gulag look like Liberty Hall. Debate, such as it is, occurs out at the fifth or sixth decimal place.
Moulitsas did O'Reilly an injustice, too, in implying that the latter's concern for the Democratic Party isn't genuine. In fact, Kos and O'Reilly have a similar interest in the Democratic Party: for both of them, it provides a career, though O'Reilly's has paid off a good deal better.
Advice to aspiring vaudevillians: Don't be the straight man if you can make your living any other way.
