IP Democracy: Fistfight in the Liberal Blogosphere

In a testament to the power of blogging in politics, a complex, mud-slinging, all-out fight has erupted among liberal writers, much to the glee of scribes on the right. It’s a complicated tale whose moral is this: the blogosphere is a potent new force in politics and traditional writers of all ideological stripes think this development stinks.

The target of the punches is The Daily Kos, the unbelievably powerful liberal blog that Democrats now bow to given its mighty mobilization powers. The real target is not the institution of Daily Kos but its founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (aka Kos).

Here’s the history: Jason Zengerle of The New Republic posted an item about a piece (behind a firewall, sorry) written by the New York Times’ Chris Suellentrop that linked Kos’ collaborator Jerome Armstrong’s work for Democratic candidates to alleged illegal stock-touting that Armstrong is accused of commiting in 2000. The nasty allegation here is that Armstrong is working as a consultant for Democratic candidate Mark Warner and that Armstrong is doing for politics what he did for stock trading in 2000 — using a web site, namely Daily Kos, to tout favorites that he has a financial stake in.

As Zengerle stated more clearly in a follow-up item,

Are Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas (of the famous Daily Kos) engaged in a pay-for-play scheme in which politicians who hire Armstrong as a consultant get the support of Kos?

In that same item, Zengerle purports to reprint an email sent by Kos to an elite group of liberal bloggers urging them to keep their traps shut about the allegations.

It’s a deliberate strategy orchestrated by Kos. TNR obtained a missive Kos sent earlier this week to “Townhouse,” a private email list comprising elite liberal bloggers, including Jane Hamsher, Matt Stoller, and Christy Hardin Smith. And what was Kos’s message to this group that secretly plots strategy in the digital equivalent of a smoke-filled backroom? Stay mum!

The liberal blogosphere then went on the attack to proclaim the emails produced by Zengerle as “fake.” The blogosphere practically hit tilt with the rabid attacks on Zengerle and The New Republic. Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s accusation that Zengerle is TNR’s new Stephen Glass, the infamous TNR writer who made up facts and stories.

Zengerle owes his readers and The New Republic an explanation, and soon. Did Zengerle really have three sources for these e-mails (as he claimed), or did he simply receive things from an anonymous source and then blindly rely on the veracity of what he was sent, only to claim that it was from “three sources” in order (a la Jason Leopold) to enhance the credibility of his claims? Or, a la Stephen Glass, did Zengerle simply fabricate e-mails in order to bolster his “story”?

Kos himself urged readers to quit TNR, saying that the “Liberman-worshipping neo-con” publication had completed its migration to the “right.”

If you still hold a subscription to that magazine, it really is time to call it quits. If you see it in a magazine rack, you might as well move it behind the National Review or even NewsMax, since that’s who they want to be associated with these days.

Martin Podhoretz, publisher and chief editor of TNR, then lobbed a reply back at Kos saying that until June 23, he had never read the Daily Kos (ouch!) and that the publication is “illiterate.” More than that, he accuses Kos of being, well, crazy.

And his rant against us, well, borders on a nut case’s. When a high- minded or, rather, high-strung moralist is accused by The New York Times of journalistic hanky-panky and then by TNR of running an ideological censorship bureau, reminiscent of the old Catholic Legion of Decency, he will go off the rails. And he did.

The right-wing bloggers are, of course, loving this. The fight has broken into full public view with today’s op-ed piece by right-leaning New York Times’ columnist David Brooks. In his piece (which, again, is behind a firewall) Brooks sides with Podhoretz and calls Kos a “Kingpin of the Keyboards.” (I can’t imagine than any NYT reader not steeped in the arcana of this fight understanding a word of Brooks’ column.)

The Keyboard Kingpin, aka Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way. And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a might force in his own mind and every knee shall bow.

On liberal blog MyDD today, Jerome Armstrong answers, sort of, the allegations first raised way back when in Suellentrop’s piece.

Let me just state for the record that any payola allegations or some quid pro quo deal involving Markos and myself are complete fabrications. Perhaps they are obsessed because they represent a party that has shown it’s complete inability to govern in this country, and they recognize that a people-powered movement is happening in this country that is going to oust them into the bin of history.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 25, 2006 11:13 AM to IP Democracy