Can Bloggers Get Real? NYT

[kpete]

The Way We Live Now
Can Bloggers Get Real?

By MATT BAI
Published: May 28, 2006

Las Vegas, as the ad campaign likes to remind us, is a place people go to untether themselves from reality — to become, if only for a weekend, anonymous and uncensored. It's odd, then, that Vegas is about to play host to a gathering of ordinary Americans whose objective is precisely the reverse. Next week, 1,000 devotees of the liberal blogging universe — people who know one another only as pseudonyms on a screen, connected by only their running commentaries — will descend on the Riviera Hotel in hopes of affixing names and faces to their online personas. The event has been dubbed the YearlyKos convention, and it is the first-ever corporeal assemblage of the bloggers at the Web site Dailykos.com. These are the people who are said to be changing the very nature of American politics, transforming the old smoke-filled room of insiders into an expansive chat room for anyone who wants in. And so it's not surprising that Democratic luminaries like the party's chairman, Howard Dean, and its leaders in Congress, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, have arranged their schedules to address the convention, along with at least a few 2008 presidential contenders. No small contingent of political professionals and journalists will show up as well. (I myself will sit on a panel about political journalism, which is kind of like being the Dunkin' Donuts spokesman at a cardiologists' convention.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/magazine/28wwln_lede.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[BlooInBloo]

1. That's so fucking rich. Goddamn republican c*ck-sucking bitches...

That, hard on the heels of David Broder kicking some tabloid ass, saying:

"But for all the delicacy of the treatment, the very fact that the Times had sent a reporter out to interview 50 people about the state of the Clintons' marriage and placed the story on the top of Page One was a clear signal -- if any was needed -- that the drama of the Clintons' personal life would be a hot topic if she runs for president."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114857728079530556

Get real? Gimme a fucking break. Jackasses.

[SoFlaJet]

2. They're getting a litlle nervous

since the internet is making them obsolete

[BlooInBloo]

4. Nah. They're making themselves obsolete (imo).

[tocqueville]

3. the end of the article is a prophecy

All of this suggests that for all the philosophizing about the meaning of online campaigns and the passing of the 20th-century political model, this next iteration of American politics won't really look so dissimilar from the ones that came before. Just as the liberal social activists of the first television generation overthrew the urban bosses who had ruled the Democratic Party, so, too, the Gina Coopers of the world, a decade from now, may very well be running for Congress, managing campaigns and lobbying for legislation. This is as it should be. Technologies change and movements flourish, but the essential process of American politics endures. And those who lead the most consequential revolts against the status quo never really vanquish the party's insider establishment. They simply take its place.

[rocktivity]

5. If bloggers are so awful, why is he doing a panel at the convention???

I hope he's ripped up one side and down the other about Judith Miller, Lisa Bumiller, and the stories they've been sitting on!

:mad:
rocknation

[leveymg]

6. A restoration of order story. Bai's message: nothing changes.

He's saying, the rabble are storming the Capitol and there may have been a lot of bodies lying around when this is over, but the authorities are restoring order. It's safe to go shopping again. Here's the way he wraps it up:

All of this suggests that for all the philosophizing about the meaning of online campaigns and the passing of the 20th-century political model, this next iteration of American politics won't really look so dissimilar from the ones that came before. Just as the liberal social activists of the first television generation overthrew the urban bosses who had ruled the Democratic Party, so, too, the Gina Coopers of the world, a decade from now, may very well be running for Congress, managing campaigns and lobbying for legislation. This is as it should be. Technologies change and movements flourish, but the essential process of American politics endures. And those who lead the most consequential revolts against the status quo never really vanquish the party's insider establishment. They simply take its place.