Mark Barrett at
The Premise wrote an interesting commentary about the blogoshere and the mainstream media.
But at the same time, how many lessons in right-wing abuse does the Democratic Party have to endure before it notices that right-wing charges don’t have to have merit or even make sense in order to be effective. If the GOP can smear John Kerry — a combat veteran — they can smear anyone. I mean, these are the people who wore Purple Heart band-aids at their own convention during a war in order to make fun of the Democratic nominee. So why would anyone think that attacks on Barack Obama’s middle name (Hussein) or the size of his ears or some trumped up scandal involving a real estate deal would not be prosecuted to the fullest? When has truth ever had anything to do with smears from the GOP? And why didn’t Mr. Benen and Mr. Drum recognize that immediately?
(snip)
Which brings me to my last point. Anyone who’s read this blog for even a week knows that I supported John Kerry in 2004, and that I’ll support him again if he runs again. What’s surprised me over the past four months, however, is the degree to which left-leaning bloggers either gloss over their own political leanings while still advocating for particular candidates, or attack candidates they don’t like using charges as false as any leveled by the opposition party. John Kerry’s botched joke was a real wake-up call for me not because of what the GOP did, but because of how the left-leaning blogosphere and associated Democratic politicians reacted.
But again that’s only part of the story. Over the past months, with the release of the April NIA on terrorism, the release of the Iraq Study Group report, the debate about withdrawal or redeployment from Iraq, and now the call by the Bush administration for a larger military, we’ve learned that John Kerry was not only right about the policy choices we should have been making, we’ve learned that he’s where the country is on those choices as well. And yet almost no one on the left is willing to say so because that might encourage John Kerry to run again, which might muck things up for other candidates.
And I guess I don’t think that’s healthy for the Democratic Party, or honest. Sitting on one’s hands and refusing to acknowledge the truth is what bloggers used to complain about with regard to the mainstream media. And yet the more I look around these days the more I see the left-leaning blogosphere functioning not as a counter-weight to cable and network news, but as simply another pipeline for the same bias.
I think we need to take his words to heart. Most of us, if we're honest, would be thrilled to see absolutely anyone's and everyone's name attached to the missions John Kerry has been involved in since the loss in 04. And most of us would be thrilled to see someone showing the spine to stand up to take on Bush and his cartel, to stand up to the media, and to work day and night to get progressives and anti-war Veterans elected!
Yet, the blogoshere has become an echoing chamber of the media and people don't even care if they are repeating a well-known right-winged mainstream media propaganda line--as long as their 'favorite' is protected.
This has to stop!
We're only hurting ourselves when we continue to be the echoing chamber of the msm. And we need to get back to the basics.
WE WERE THE MEDIA--the HONEST MEDIA and it's what drew most of us online.
It drove us to discover the truth.
It's what drove our activism.
It's what drives our ability to be effective and get the kind of POLICIES we want--not just the personality behind the policy.
Look, I've actually spent LESS TIME online since I was swamped in pre-election activism. I also was involved in
Camp Democracy. And via Camp Democracy, I became involved in the
Jesselyn Radack story. Before I went to Camp Democracy, I had little knowledge about who Jesselyn Radack was or what she did. Now, I ended up deeply involved in helping her get her book published.
The point is that through all this we were discussing that the MSN DENIES us the TRUTH and that the msn worked to get neoconservative and Republican laws passed. So we were using our activism towards education and protest and building progressive policies.
What the heck happened? One day after a blue sweep in our country, policy disappeared from cyberspace and instead we have the fantasy bowl of 08 elections instead.
What I wish is that people would return their focus back onto the policy again. We have a huge chance of overturning some of these neoconservative and Republicans Bills IF we can ignore the media's glorification of the 08 race and instead return our activism to policy!
For instance, Jesselyn Radack wanted people to purchase ONE BOOK--even make a donation towards ONE book to send to EACH of the Congressman serving to get them
to overturn the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Jesselyn Radack knows more about torture and prisoner abuse and the lack of Habeaous Corpus than she ever wanted to. She knows about how the Bush machine operates against dissenters. AND her story presents the reality of what happens when a government loses control of it's political servants and becomes entirely partisan based.
I asked her how many people donated or bought a book for that cause. She told me only ONE book has been purchased to send to Congress on January 3rd when they resumed. (To make a donation contact Jesselyn Radack via: general_info AT patriotictruthteller.net
This is what I mean by policy and activism--not personality. The story isn't about a political figure or a celebrity. It's about what all of us can do to affect policy. And we don't throw people like Jesselyn Radack (who isn't famous) out, because she's still fighting tooth and nail to be treated like an AMERICAN CITIZEN! What happened to her can happen to any of us and that's why we can't affort to just throw away ANY political candidates, like John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, etc...to jockey around for 08!
WE MUST STAY ON MESSAGE! The message is PROGRESSIVE POLICY!
To hell with personality wars.
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