...I'm not going to add anything to this because I'm tired of talking (and thinking) about it, but since Billmon weighed in on the Kos issue, I thought I'd pass it along.
[T]here's no question Kos made a dumb mistake when he asked his blogging buddies to pipe down about the "story." It kind of put them in a no-win position, particularly once the TNR's GOP counterparts in the corporate media (David Brooks and Newsweek's Jonathan Darman) decided to get their licks in. If lefty bloggers ignore the story, then they're keeping silent to protect the tens of dollars they receive each month from the all-powerful blog ad cartel Kos supposedly controls. If they defend him, they're just pathetic monkeys dancing on his string. And if they criticize him, no matter how gently, well, they've only confirmed that the vague, unsubstantiated accusations against him must be true -- "see, even his own paid minions admit it."
Not that anyone cares what I think about all this, or should, but if the Swiftboaters want to slime me for defending Kos, they'll have to find another lame excuse. In the three plus years I've been blogging, I've never accepted a blog ad -- not from Advertising Liberally; not from anyone else. One reason, one big reason, is precisely to avoid situations where my credibility and motives might be smeared. I realize some bloggers badly need the money, but I don't. I do my whoring elsewhere. In any case, it's worth every penny of revenue forgone to be able to tell a bunch of supercilious little shits like the trust fund babies at The New Republic (and their boss, the man who married the Singer sewing machine fortune) to go fuck themselves, I'm not for sale.
Of course, there are other ways to slime people: guilt by association, for example. Most people who know me know I began blogging as a guest poster at Daily Kos -- way back in the neolithic age, when it was just another blog with a small group of regular commentors, and not the Mighty Wurlitzer of the liberal blogosphere. There's no question Whiskey Bar has benefited from the connection. I've always gotten a lot of traffic from Daily Kos, and my name is listed first under "Kos Alumni" on the home page. I'm sure that fact alone is enough for anyone who wants to bother to accuse me of being a diehard Kossak. I've already heard it from the kind of right-wing bloggers who seem to spend practically every waking minute sucking up to Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt and wheedling for spots on their blog rolls.
Whatever. The truth is that while I admire Kos's energy and enthusiasm, and am impressed by the online community he's nutured, his politics are hardly mine. He's a Democratic Party activist and loyalist; I'm not. He wants to be a mover and shaker in the party establishment; I regard the party establishment as -- at best -- useful idiots. And that's stretching it. Most of them are just idiots, period.
To be perfectly honest, my impression is that Kos the blogger has long since been swallowed up by Kos the aspiring politician. I would say he's sold out, but Kos has never, to my knowledge, claimed to be anything other than a Democratic (big and little d) political activist. Which is probably why we haven't corresponded in years. (We've never spoken or met face to face, and I seriously doubt we ever will.)
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