Kos Goes for the Dishonest Smear
Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 8:50:36 am PDT
Markos “Screw Them” Moulitsas must be feeling a little beleaguered about the hateful content at his web site. He’s spent the last week protesting to the media that 1) the hateful content doesn’t exist, or 2) it’s “democracy at work.”
But today he’s going around cherry-picking unregistered comments from Republican blogs, and posting overheated, deliberately distorted attacks like this: Daily Kos: ME-Sen: Susan Collins wants terrorist attack on SF.
Under the Collins campaign’s own rules, anything written in the comments of a blog is representative of those who run the blog.
So since the Maine Web Report is run by Collins’ director of online communications, we can say this comment essentially came out of Susan Collins’ mouth:
Arthur Frain, Portland MEYeah, this is a ridiculous game, but if they insist on playing it...
Aug 14th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
You know what this country needs? Another terrorist attack. Take out SF or some other city full of dirty libs, and then the country will rally behind the GOP for protection.(And yeah, I’ve got a screenshot for when they try to delete it and pretend it was never posted.)
Of course, Susan Collins didn’t say what Kos directly attributes to her. Markos is quoting from an anonymous comment left at Maine Web Report, a blog run by Collins’ director of online communications—and that blog doesn’t even represent itself as affiliated with Susan Collins. Markos’ post is so dishonest it’s almost amazing. (Oooh, but he got a screenshot!)
Most of the hateful content that’s been brought out recently by media has appeared in Daily Kos “diaries.” Diary posts at Daily Kos are not comments; they’re blog posts, by registered users, they’re monitored, and each diary generates its own thread of comments.
And you won’t find a single page of comments at Daily Kos that contains a disclaimer, to explicitly point out that comments are the responsibility of the poster, not representative of the views of the owner.
At LGF, you’ll find such a disclaimer at the top of every page of comments.
Kos wants it both ways; he wants to claim this huge army of readers when it makes him look powerful, but disavow them when they embarrass him.
UPDATE at 8/15/07 10:00:07 am:
The diarists, of course, are going nuts over the criticisms: Daily Kos: Jews Evicted, Millions Branded Subhuman At Lieberman Endorsed Event.
UPDATE at 8/15/07 1:19:20 pm:
And after Kos’s little smear job, it turns out the comment he quoted was posted at Maine Web Report by ... wait for it ... a leftist troll.
