C&L Book Chat: Bloggers On The Bus with Eric Boehlert
By Nicole Belle Thursday May 21, 2009 8:00am
It's a brave new world. More than thirty-five years ago, Timothy Crouse wrote the seminal Boys On The Bus, detailing for the first time how the press--specifically types like Robert Novak and David Broder, among others--operated as a kind of hive mind, which Crouse coined as "pack journalism":
(R)ight at the outset Crouse identifies the "womblike conditions" of the bus and/or plane as giving rise to "the notorious phenomenon called 'pack journalism,' " and goes on: "They all fed off the same pool report, the same daily handout, the same speech by the candidate; the whole pack was isolated in the same mobile village. After a while, they began to believe the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories, and write the same stories."
At a precociously early age, Crouse understood some essential but little-known truths about journalists and journalism: that journalists are deathly afraid of being "wrong" and thus tend to stay within parameters set by the pack; that journalists want "to be on the Winner's Bus" because "a campaign reporter's career is linked to the fortunes of his candidate" and they don't "like to dwell on signs that their Winner [is] losing, any more than a soup manufacturer likes to admit that there is botulism in the vichyssoise"; that "journalism is probably the slowest-moving, most tradition-bound profession in America," refusing "to budge until it is shoved into the future by some irresistible external force."
Well, look out, boys, because as Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert chronicles in his new book, Bloggers on the Bus, there is a whole new group of people on that bus, and they won't be swayed by the hive mind of the old media. In fact, they thrive on being the outsider. And to the horror and consternation of those boys so comfortably entrenched within the Beltway Bubble, these upstarts are actually grabbing their audiences....and doing their job better than the old guard.
The liberal blogosphere was birthed from the outrage of the offenses of the Bush administration and the search for sanity amid the crazy-making and incestuous relationship between the White House and the press corps. Vastly varied backgrounds and unlikely histories coalesced into a formidable force that not only cowered the administration and Congress at times, but helped carry our first African-American president into office. But not without some bumps along the way.
For every triumph like getting a clearly shaken Chris Matthews to apologize for his misogynistic statements about Hillary Clinton, or a nervous John McCain to refuse the endorsement of Rev. Hagee, or empowering Sen. Christopher Dodd to agree to filibuster retroactive immunity in the FISA bill, we've had lows like the intense bifurcation of the blogosphere over the Democratic Primary, and the disappointing arm's-length distance the Obama White House has kept his liberal supporters.
During this time, we've developed a brand new roster of go-to people for information: John Amato, Digby, Susie Madrak, Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall, Howie Klein, Marcy Wheeler, all of whom play prominent roles in Bloggers on the Bus (is it at this time that I mention the glaring omission of my work from Bloggers on the Bus? ;-P) We've adapted our approaches and focus, we've spent hours pouring over arcane and wonky reports, we've connected dots between different sources and we've uncovered a narrative that in drips and drops has been proven correct.
In Bloggers on the Bus, Eric Boehlert has talked to these new guards and chronicled the liberal blogosphere's growing pains and victories. As someone who was right in the middle of all this, blogging my little heart out, it's fascinating to read a bird's-eye view accounting of everything that was happening. Eric is here to talk about his book and take your questions.
Please join me in welcoming Eric to C&L.
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I'm so glad to have you here with us at C&L.
thanks for having me. it's nice to take a break from today's cheney-palooza tv production
To the new thread.
Plus I think there's a bunch of us still steaming at Cheney's speech.
The fact that every news channel covered Cheney's speech uninterrupted reminds me that there has been near-total radio silence in the media over your book.
A quick google search finds that only we DFH bloggers are discussing it.
Any comments on the media's silence?
every author wants more/better media coverage for their new book;)
but i do think it's obvious the press is in no hurry to acknowledge the gains of the blogosphere.
i mean, the idea that a book like 'bloggers on the bus' apparently doesn't make the cut for howie kurtz's 'reliable sources' seems odd. he always has hugh hewitt and goldberg on when they write (press hating) books. but a book about the intersection of the internet and politics? no thanks. seems odd
... with the whole 'on the bus' concept - the bus allows for people to pick seats, move between seats, etc. - but you nonetheless are a passenger on a fixed route, so even the 'rogue' is limited by the requirements of the establishment.
.
Thanks for coming, Eric. What a terrific book. I gobbled it up in short order -- great stuff for political-journalism junkies like me.
It also didn't hurt, I guess, that I knew a lot of the characters involved. It must have been tough narrowing down the bloggers you interviewed for this.
Anyway, welcome!
it was difficult. and in the editing process i had to cut 35K words and had to cut lots of people out of the book who probably deserved to be in a book about the rise of the netroots.
but i ended up focusing on people who had interesting lives prior to their blogging; people for whome blogging was sort of their second life.
As an editor, I know how hard that can be.
I guess you're forgiven for not mentioning me. ;)
Are television and radio pundits trying to imitate the abrasive tone of the web, or vice versa?
i think the abrasive tone of the lib web is different than the one you find on radio. within the blogosphere it's more snark/sarcasm, whereas on AM radio is more name-calling. at least to my ear.
I find the reichwing radio more threatening with the over-abundance of the term traitors etc.
And then for ari fleischer to actually say on air, "Americans have to be more careful of what they say and do now." (Rough quote.)
Eric, Amato will kill me if I don’t first address C&L in this chat. You did feature John and the advent of C&L in Bloggers On The Bus, and as someone who talks to Amato more than I do my siblings, I have to say your characterization of him is very apt. He is very much the opposite of the stereotypical blogger the old media likes to deride. Crooks and Liars really started the whole vlogging phenomenom—now HuffPo, TPM, DailyKos and others now routinely include video clips in their posts, but C&L was the first.
What do you think the impact of the immediacy of vlogging—politicians’ speeches, media coverage, catching dishonest framing from both—has made to the way campaigns are now run?
In terms of video in general, I know john had a very strong passion when he began blogging during the summer of 2004 that he wanted people to see what was happening on cable tv. It’s hard to even recall the era, but this was before youtube and before it was possible to grab sections of tv shows and turn it into a clip for your blog. But john and his buddy sort of cracked the code and figured it out and that really did revolutionize blogging.
Now yes you’re right, video clips are everwhere online, often has in the context of media criticism.
As for as campaigns and video, up until 2008 youtube was mostly synomymous with gocha-type moments, with the ‘macaca’ one being the most famous. And if a politician suffered a ‘youtube’ moment it was a bad thing. What the obama campaign did though, was turn youtube into an alley by flooding it with clips of obama and clips of obama supporters. literally thousands of clips and 1k-plus hours of obama video and the campaign turned it into another way supporters could connect with the campaign and follow the candidate.
I'd probably have become a C&L regular anyway way back when. But the video really made the decision for me since I don't watch TV and was now able to view a lot of what was being discussed throughout the blogospehere.
... but do you see the independent bloggers bringing some kind of transformative or 'corrective' influence to the media at large?
Despite the growth of independent voices, what reaches people in their homes are cable sources like CNN and FOX, or the major networks. Where do you see this going?
bloggers certainly try to bring some kind of transformative influence to the media, and have really created a whole new kind of media criticism. but the truth is they still do no enjoy a mass media platfor like cable or network tv, so the pushing back is tough
... CNN, FOX, and the major networks, right on down through their affiliates, run websites - but blogs are still relegated to 'trivia' and 'community' flavor (e.g. "Eye on Blogs" on our own station's web portal).
There's been some attempts at using Slingcams to bring video in, but it's still taking a back seat to 'traditional' newsgathering, and, of course, we're looking at management confusing a portal (web vs. broadcast) for content. It's still more about immediacy than insight.
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/original/...
One of the things that struck me about the blogosphere is how democratizing it really is. I’ve been a political junkie all my life, but the last few years are the first time that I’ve honestly felt that I could add my voice and making an impact on the national dialogue beyond just voting. I’ve written things that I’ve watched make its way around the blogosphere and even end up being said nearly verbatim on the 24 hour cable networks (rarely with credit, more’s the pity). What do you see as the biggest victory the blogosphere can claim to have steered?
Hmm, going back over the years, I think w/o the blogosphere the Valerie plame story would have died a very quiet death. Obviously the beltway press had expressed its sort of disdain for it and seemed more than willing to ignore it. Instead bloggers championed it and FDL ended up sort of reinenting journalism by live blogging the libby trial.
There was also the downing street memo following the iraq war. Another classic example of a valuable, compelling story that the press absolutely did not want to touch, but bloggers refused to drop it. And in the end I think the story did resonate.
Those are just a couple. I’m sure I’ll think of some more.
Let's not forget Trent Lott, which was probably the first blogosphere impact story. Those remarks would have died quietly if not for TPM and Atrios.
the blogswarm on that effectively ended Lott's career in Congress.
And Bill Frist after the Schiavo incident.
And Tom Delay after Abramoff (did the media do its job covering Abramoff before the blogs did?)
Was ignored pretty thoroughly and it was about as ugly as you can get. Bribes, nuclear weapons technology secrets being sold, Congressional payolla...and on and on.
I remember following the Humphrey/Nixon/McGovern election year as a young pup.
I didn't have a sense of humor and was trying to get background of a MAD article on If Presidents Were Elected Like Miss. America.
One of my favorite chapters of Bloggers On The Bus was “The Tweety Effect” where you go through how Chris Matthews’ continual ball-buster characterizations of Hillary Clinton actually helped her campaign when it was struggling during the primaries because women took umbrage at how unfair the coverage of Clinton was and even if they weren’t necessarily a supporter, voted for her out of spite.
Can you talk about how that whole dynamic went down and what effect, if any, you think it had on media coverage during the primaries from that point forward?
The tweety effect was sort of a classib blogswarm that erupted after Clinton won NH and Clinton appeared on msnbc the next morning and declared Clinton was only a viable candidate, and only became a senator from ny, because her husband fooled around. Even for bloggers who didn’t’ back Clinton, that was just too much and they and their readers raised holy hell, and two weeks later, with protesters marching outside the nbc studio in d.c, matthews was forced to apologize on the air.
And for the rest of the campaign he def. pulled back on the blatant sexist rhetoric. Although the issue became a bit more complicated as the primary became more heated because the Clinton bloggers claimed and the blogs suddenly stopped calling out the sexist attacks because that might help Clinton and they were backing obama.
sorry this a chat didn't notice. I'll leave you guys and gals alone for this.
(deleted by author)
I wanted to commend you especially for the material on the primary fight and how ugly things got in the liberal blogosphere. You managed to write about it fairly and dispassionately.
I only would have added one thing: You quite rightly tagged the Obama supporters for the eager adoption of old right-wing crap about Hillary. I would also add, however, that the same was true to a large of the Clinton camp WRT Obama -- especially the "a black man can't win" meme.
aka The Blog War of 2008.
what was so interesting/painful etc. for the blogosphere, i think, was not just how ugly it got, but how quickly civil discourse among obama and clinton supporters online evaporated.
blogs never had to deal w/ anythng like that. and i think for some people the scars remain fresh
While Crooks&Liars took a neutral stance during the primary, it didn’t stop us from being accused multiple times daily of “being in the bag” for Clinton or Obama (and even for McCain, for our refusal to outwardly take a side in this debate), depending on the post.
Personally, I was really disheartened to see how the rhetoric for and against both candidates stopped reflecting reality and to my dismay, really starting mimicking the Republican talking points: Barack Obama was the most liberal Senator and Hillary Clinton was this castrating power-hungry woman willing to do anything to be President, when the truth was that both of them were safe, fairly centrist politicians, neither of whom would really go that far to the left.
What is your take of this stratification of the blogosphere and how do you think it will impact future races?
My guess is the obama/Clinton battle was a one-time event in terms of the type of passion/rhetoric/ill-will it caused w/in the blogosphere. It was obvious going into the campaign that bloggers and their readers were going to disagree and that some would back Edward, some back obama and some Clinton. And that’s how it progressed through most of 2007 and the passion level, and the name-calling was pretty minimal. But then when Edwards got out of the race in late January, everything seemed to change and frankly, all hell broke loose online.
Agreed.
I think the thing that had me beating my head against the desk was the embracing of GOP talking points.
It was amazing to me how such heretofore smart liberals got sucked into these memes that didn't really have a connection to reality.
For example, if you looked at voting records, Obama was something like the 40th most liberal Senator, Hillary was around 6 places more to the left. Now when you have 100 Senators, 40th and 34th place is HARDLY liberal, yet you had so many bloggers screaming how Obama was this great liberal hope and Hillary was basically a Republican.
Neither was true, but it didn't stop the bloggers from furthering those memes. And I thought we were supposed to be the reality-based community.
That kind of ties back to my internet/radio tone. Everything is hardball now. There was one commenter yesterday on an earlier thread calling himself Naval Officer that had a valid point about the general tone of modern discourse, but he insisted on making it personal to this site and it's commenters.
I still need to see the movie Idiocracy.
It's funny and scary at the same time.
And remember...it's all about the electrolytes.
one thing i do chuckle about when i think back to the primary war was the line of thought that if clinton won the gop would go crazy, and the beltway would be so partisan, and they would hate her so much it would become a distraction. i chuckle because i don't think it's possible for the gop, or the conservative movement, to hate obama more than they do. so regardless of who the dems elected, i guess the unhinged rhetoric from teh right was inevitable.
Can you imagine a speech like Cheney just gave if Hillary was in office? I'd imagine he wouldn't have waited even 100 days.
and of course it's interesting how the press sort of pretends that what cheney is doing is normal and typica and everyday; that vp's, once they leave office, always launch what are essentially smear campaigns against the new administration.
in truth, what cheney is doing is unprecedented. but the press just shrugs
It seems as if the right are falling all over themselves trying to be the loudest in their disdain for all things Obama in particular and Democratic/Liberal in general.
That's Democratic Socialist, lNm.
:)
I forgot the repugs renamed us...which was very thoughtful of them.
:)
Actually pass that goofy resolution?
Steele backed off the language, and basically asked the Dems to not be so damned socialist.
What a buncha schmucks.
'... Apple is going to fail miserably' meme.
You predict failure, rather than success. If the outcome is:
-FAILURE, you get to play the 'see, I was right!' card and gain gravitas as the person who has their finger on the pulse of the industry, etc.
- SUCCESS, you can be 'pleasantly surprised,' and remind everyone that, of course, you're a true American who wants nothing but what's best for the country.
The way that the blogosphere responds to women is very different than the way they respond to men. You use the case study of Digby of Digby’s Hullabaloo as an example. When Digby (whom I’ve met in person a few times and is really a fascinating person to speak with) first established her blog, most people assumed by her writing style and her purposeful unwillingness to share anything of her personal life that Digby was a man. Certainly, I thought so for the longest time myself. But when Digby “outed” herself as a woman, the tone of her commenters changed radically. Suddenly, posters would revert to really nasty ad hominem attacks instead of arguing with her on the points. Our site team has often noted that John Amato and I could post essentially the exact same point of view, and I would be attacked by commenters on it and John wouldn’t. Certainly, bloggers focusing on feminist issues have been experiencing the same kind of treatment all the time as well.
What do you see as that misogynistic bent within the liberal blogosphere community stemming from? How is it that people so in tune with and quick to react to racist and homophobic rhetoric seem to get tone deaf to misogyny?
Yes, digby noticed a pronouonced difference in how readers responded to her when she ‘came out’ as a (middle aged) woman. Or as she jockingly called it, the worst of both worlds, at least in the eyes of the blogosphere. The topic of misogyny, or at least a double standard within the liberal blogosphere, is one that’s been discussed and debated for years. (although often offline.)
but it really exploded into full and public view during the obama/Clinton primary war andm as I discuss in the book, the complaint from Clinton bloggers was two-fold: lib bloggers stopped calling out the beltway press when it engaged in sexist attack on Clinton. And that within the blogosphere itself , bloggers didn’t do enough to police sexists attacks and may have even engaged in it themselves.
So I think a lot of it was driven by the passion of that campaign and the ‘irrational loyalties’ that developed, as one blogger described it to me. And I think during the brutal primary season, during that civil war, some rhetoric was used that 99 times out of 100 would’t be accepted on the lib blogs.
Why? Both digby and Susie madrak mentioned in the book that they thought some of the young, male pro-obama bloggers had some mother issues. i.e. they watched a middle aged candidate like hillary Clinton and were reminded of their mothers and quickly became very angry at the idea of hillary Clinton telling them what to do; of hillary Clinton leading the party.
Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. And obama bloggers I talked to dismissed it and said people were angry at Clinton and attacked her because she ran a wrong-headed and mean-spirited campaign.
But I don’t really think you can argue with the notion that an unusual amount of sexist rhetoric found its way into the conversation last spring; rhetoric we didn’t really ever see before and haven’t seen since
I'm curious if you think that the sexism was specific to Hillary and the way people responded to her (keeping in mind that they've witnessed some 15 years of her being smeared and defamed by the rightwing noise machine, which has echoed and resonated through the right wing blogs) or if any woman who stepped up to a presidential campaign would find herself treated with such (almost Freudian) hate.
Not addressed to me, but here goes.
I think men, regardless of partisan bent, fear and loathe the scolding mother, and when challenged in that manner, try to assert control of the conversation as soon as possible, by any means necessary.
interesting. that pattern described would certainly sound familiar to clinton bloggers.
Well I remember Shirley Chisholm saying she faced more flak running for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for being a woman than for being black.
...as men. Of course we know that that wasn't true.
I guess nearly everyone has a song to sing.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.
Could you explain?
The blogosphere does indeed respond differently to men compared to women...a fact. But I believe that Obama received attacks on par with Hillary when he went up against McCain.
Once the candidate was chosen, then the right was able to focus their evil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl9bvuAV-Ao
The blogosphere is still considered the upstarts and un-serious in the view of the Very. Serious. People. that populate the old media (the Beltway Villagers, as Amato likes to call them). However, the blogosphere has been responsible for very critical reporting—like the work Marcy Wheeler did on the Libby trial and so many more stories that the Bush administration would leak out and the old media would not connect together.
Tellingly, in an age where traditional print media is dying and cable news channels are populated more with opinion hosts instead of news, most Americans are looking elsewhere for their news—and the blogosphere has stepped up to the plate.
How do you respond to those who dismiss the blogosphere as too slanted or with too decided a point of view to take seriously as a news source?
i think bloggers prove their reliability over time and readers come to understand if a certain bloggers is intellectually honest or not. (altho if they're not, that doesn't seem to matter in bloggers on the far right.)
also, not all bloggers see themselves as a news source. rather, they're simply commenting on, or augumenting what the traditional press does.
in general though, and over the 7-8 years since its birth, i think the lib blogs have shown themselves to be very serious and factual
... I do with my blog. I'm not so much breaking news stories as commenting on them. It's the kind of thought we need to sustain our democracy - private thought leads to public thought - as opposed to the Dittohead/Talking Points crowd.
First off, longtime fan, firsttime commenter, blah blah. I greatly enjoyed and was edified by Lapdogs.
Anyway, my question is: You reference the "pack mentality" in the MSM of which Robert Crouse had mentioned back in the mid seventies. Such groupthink or an echo chamber, obviously, is inimical to a free press and for democracy itself. The blogosphere, while it largely has no corporate interests or careers at stake, is theoretically in a freer state than the wagon-circling MSM.
Yet from time to time we still see this echo chamber on both sides of the blogosphere (especially on the right). Do you see any end to this or is groupthink simply an immutable state of human thought?
i.e. the authoritarian tendencies, lend themselves better to groupthink.
We DFHs, despite rumors of taking orders from Soros or the Great Orange Satan, tend to start our reasoning by questioning authority and therefore are not quite as easy to herd into a single mind. Hence our failures at getting Congress to understand that the Dems now have the majority and can act like a majority party.
I, myself, have been the victim of the swarm mentality of certain blogs. If you want to see swarms in action, go to FDL whenever Jane Hamsher latches onto a cause.
But sometimes we swarm in the wrong direction. I've seen Michelle Malkin get hit by the entire blogosphere because one influential blogger took her statements out of context. While it's true the conservative mindset naturally lends itself to groupthink, that's not to say that we're immune.
It would be a good thing if we could eradicate any possibly of an echo chamber but I suspect it may be a sad fact of life that we will never disabuse ourselves from it.
I think Eric's right, part of it is human nature. Think back to the original Boys on the Bus. Those guys--Broder, Novak, et al.--wanted to be seen as following the "winners" of the elections. They inserted their own agendas into their coverage.
But I do think that for the most part we're less inclined towards hive minds. Individual blogs tend to attract like-minded people, but you don't see liberal blogosphere-wide swarms very often.
I'm not sure, they certainly have the propensity.
However political sociology shows that people of various politicial stripes tend to see themselves as fragmented, and the opposition as monolithical, which is rarely the case.
And once you see the opposition as monolithical group-think can follow.
i think it is part of human nature. and as you note it's far more pronounced among the right-wing blogs, whose readers, as far as i can tell, almost never call bloggers out for concocting phony stuff. in fact, the readers seem to thrive off it.
but i think the mere fact that the lib blogosphere is made up of so many like-minded people means there is going to be some sort of echo effect, which isn't alway a bad thing. in fact, it's one of the goals; to create a narrative and adopt the power of repitition.
what i think eveyrone wants to, and ought to, avoid, is making sure a lemmign mentality never sets in.
Knowledge vs dogma. It's a damned tough thing to distinguish.
Your view of the blogosphere not wanting to supplant the news mirrors my own. With few exceptions (such as Media Matters and Newshounds) I suspect not a single one of us got into this "business" with the intention of supplanting the news. We don't have the access, the sources and half of our function is to pass on what we get from them. Of course, the second half of our function, as you also brought up, is to filter it out of impurities and to give our spin on it.
I think that reaching a consensus ceases to be risky only when you're talking about a broad, abstract thing, for instance: "Obama, good. McCain, bad." After that, you need to start allowing for finer points and to explore different tangents.
Take the torture 'debate,' for example. It's codified in law and in international treaty, both of which I would regard as being fairly specific.
It's the waterboarding crowd that's trying to spin this as a 'finer point' and tacking on tangents.
I understand the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, Tokyo Hotel and other groups are organizing a charitable multi-act stage show called Lemmingaid.
Just how much of the venom released across the net during the primaries was the result of the campaigns' deliberate tactics?
For example, the Clinton campaign responded with immediate and furious attacks of misogyny whenever the issue of nepotism was raised or her qualifications were challenged.
Victimhood sold well for Hillary Clinton, and seemed to be a weapon of choice for her campaign. While accusations against statements made by Chris Matthews (as one example) surely had some validity, many of those concerned that her main qualification appeared to be that of a highly educated First Lady were met not with explanation, but with attack.
Was this "framework" deliberately adopted by the HRC campaign?
i never got the feeling, nor found much evidence, that either the obama or the clinton campaign were pushing the kind of red-hot, name-calling rhetoric that came to dominate the blogosphere during the primaries. it really was an unusual, organic phenoema.
Obama’s victory in the presidential election is really an interesting look at someone who understood the potential of tapping into the bottom-up grassroots' ability to shape the dialogue while still holding the netroots and the blogosphere at arm’s length. We continue to see this push-pull dynamic into his presidency, although his presidency is certainly the first to validate the netroots by (for example) calling on HuffPo’s Sam Stein in his first press conference.
How do you see the blogosphere operating from this point forward, trying to straddle the line between mainstream acceptance and maintaining our outsider niche that keeps us more honest than the Beltway Villagers?
So far, that outsider niche remains in tact. and honestly I just don’t see bloggers trying to parlay their background into jobs on K street. That said, covering the obama administration is, naturally, quite different than rebelling against the bush WH, which united the blogs for so many years.
I think it’s pretty evident that lots of bloggers are thrilled that a dem is in the WH, but it’s also clear blogs are committed to pushing democrats to the left.
Really the founding philosophy of the blogosphere was to provide a loud and proud voice for liberalism in America; a voice that bloggers weren’t really hearing anywhere else in 2002 and 2003. and I think it’s still the same today—they want to help promote a progressive agenda, whether that’s pushing back agaisn the gop noise machine, or pushing back against the obama WH.
We’ve already seen lots of instance were liberal bloggers have quickly and loudly made their disappointment known in terms of obama initiatives. So I don’t think they’re going to silence their concerns, in part because the blogosphere has never seen itself as an appendage to the DNC.
We ain't never gonna silence our concerns.
that, while Obama united the blogosphere and made it work as a powerful weapon for his presidential campaign, I don't see him going out of his way to do us any favors now that he's been ensconced in the WH. I can understand why he wouldn't post to Daily Kos, anymore, but I fear that Obama just may leave us to twist in the wind for the next three years until he decides to run for re-election.
And, call me cynical, but I can also perfectly envision Gibson or some other WH flak insulting left or right wing bloggers for bringing up an inconvenient truth about someone within the administration. Even when right wing bloggers are tarred with a broad brush than for no other reason than they are bloggers, I take it a little personally.
the 04, the 06, the 08... all saw more and more left leaning bloggers raising he voices/money, an increasingly challenged DLC/corporate dem, and the appearance that the elected democratic officials would get back to their progressive roots.
yet... now that the election is over we are back (with a few notable exceptions) the status quo (in areas of finance, foreign policy, etc).
my question: can the left leaning blogosphere effect more than just campaign promises, can it actually lead to systemic changes in the party itself when it comes to legislation and standing up the neoliberal centrists?
but we won't see "change" (if you'll pardon the expression) overnight.
Certainly, the work we've done with Blue America to get not only more Democrats in office but better Democrats has done very well, considering it didn't exist three years ago. We've helped put some great people like Alan Grayson in office.
is a GREAT example. and an effin great effort by everyone. good point.
good question, and i guess we'll see in the coming years.
it's going to be difficult no doubt. becuase despite the amazing growth of the blogophere, compared to inside beltway money institutions (i.e. consultants, think tanks, lobbyists) they really are out-gunned.
the right would go nuts because the hatred was intense and personal to the Clintons. This theory held that Obama represented an opportunity to get past that. I suppose the theory had some credence because the nastiness coincided with the Clinton Presidency.
Obviously the theory proved wrong. The nastiness spawned by the rise of and likes of Newt and Rush has simply been transferred to the new kid. Now the theory is that it is racist. Isn't that sort of looking at the world through the eyes of who the target of the vitriol is rather than at the pathology of the perpetrators.
If you say there was hope among bloggers than Obama could end this, what can you point to in blogs themselves that demonstrated that they conducted themselves in a manner that was any less vitriolic in their portrayal of candidates they opposed.?
well, i think any blogger who used that line of thinkign during the camapign (camapign can get us past the nastiness) quickly realized there's just no way the gop was going to let that happen. then again, i'm not sure who could have predicted the unhinged response the gop noise machine unleashed in response to obama.
as for blogs being less vitriolic today, i think they're just reacting to the general political climate, which the gop has ratcheted through the roof
but not altered the dynamic.
Eric, I know we've only got you for an hour, so one last question from me.
Social sites have changed the dynamic of the blogosphere just recently as well. I am a new convert to Twitter, and I have to say, I find it intoxicating. I can (and do!) actually send messages to Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, John McCain among other conservative stalwarts as well as a host of my buddies in the liberal blogosphere. I have actually gotten direct mail back from Rove and Gingrich responding to my tweets, which if you haven’t opened your email to find that Karl Rove has sent you an email, can be quite unnerving.
How do you see the blogosphere shifting in its focus as Twitter and Facebook groups step up to gather people for specific interests?
That’s a good question. Going back 7 yrs now, the blogging model, while changing somewhat, has stayed rather consistent; posting x number of posts each day and having readers/diarists adding in their opinion. lots of interaction with readers, etc.
It will be interesting to see if twitter of FB cause a lasting change in that model. Right now I get the sense that both for bloggers and readers those outlets to augment the blog sites. But of course there’s always a chance, if twitter and FB continue to expand their reach, that could produce a most lasting changing.
The interesting part is that nobody really knows that the blogosphere will look like in just one or two years time. It could be essentially the same as it is today or it could be completely unrecognizable.
i'm not smart enough to know which it will be.
I am hopeful that increased access to information on the internet means that lies and stupidity are more open to exposure and examination.
Thanks for all the tireless hours you and others put into investigating the stories and articles.
Great job Eric...
gracias
and some day if readers get a chance, ask john how he figured out how to get vid's onto his website.
How DID you do so before embed codes?
but let me just say that I came on board here at C&L when John was just a one-man operation and would literally be in so much pain he'd have to crawl from his TV set with recorder to his office with the computer to make clips.
This guy was so dedicated to getting the truth out there.
Depends.
It's been a blast, dude. Good discussion, all.
There is no way that anyone can accuse you of being some pajama-wearing kid in Mom's basement eating Cheetos. Well, maybe the pajamas part... ;)
And I think we should acknowledge the niche that you saw and moved into and how that has changed the way the blogosphere reacts to the media and politicians.
I always pictured you in a aqua translucent negligee with Camembert and Brie, and a Gauloises in long filter.
Very long.
Aqua isn't John's color.
And I don't smoke.
You peeked?
Who sits in the back?
Thank you for all your work.
Thank you so much, Eric, for spending this time with us and talking about something that I think is near and dear to all us C&Ler hearts.
C&Ler's if you haven't picked up Eric's book, yet, what are you waiting for?
Bloggers on the Bus
It's a quick read, and really, really interesting to get that perspective.
much thanks.
and thanks for the blogosphere's support. book quickly cracked top ten on amazon's politics list even though, as we mentioned, the press won't acknowledge it.
For what god it'll do. Why not? I've spent over four years whoring my own shit for 4 1/2 years. Might as well give someone else equal time.
after I get rent paid.
Yes, I'm a poor bastard.
Gonna go melt my debit card a little more at Amazon. If you hear a klaxxon alarm, don't worry. That'll be because of me.
I'm a liberal
Which means I don't have any spare money,
I'll have to wait until I can check it out from the library.
And request a copy.
In fact, that's a good policy for all books that support our fellow liberals. I do it all the time.
I also ask my local mom-and-pop bookstore to order copies as well.
To be fair to myself, I do tend to give a book or a dvd to my local library to help celebrate Alban Arthan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgbYZ3F4DjM&fe...
the book and having you here.
Do you consider blogging and the blogosphere to be a "bridge" to something that ultimately will benefit everyone in a practical way or is it more "we are what the news industry used to be, before it sold out to big business" where's it all heading?
has left the building, dude.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiNHe7BUqhc
that being the way the news industry used to be is ultimately of benefit to everyone?
Think of all the stories that would have died a quiet death if it wasn't for us bloggers.
Bus To Beelzebub . . . LOL
But I started blogging here for a couple of reasons. The first and foremost was to help John because he was nearly crippling himself trying to do it on his own.
But the second reason was because this site (and the rest of the liberal blogosphere) literally saved my sanity in those early days when I knew the media was in bed with the White House and we were being lied to continually.
I have to believe that is a service of utmost value.
when they used to be the watchdogs of democracy, as Helen Thomas once put it. So, obviously, the old MSM was beneficial to us and to our democracy in general. It's a Poli Sci 101 bromide that without a free, independent press, no democracy is viable.
appreciate all your hard work. ...
Funny thing is, this site (and many others) have inspired me to get out of my comfort zone……you guys inspired me to get more involved.
You informed and educated me, tugged at my heartstrings over and over, made me think about you and the people you were caring for on a daily basis, provoked me with your profound insights and comments and much more.
I am eternally grateful. ; - )
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