I have avoided the meta meta battles and opinions that have raged recently regarding “that place who shall remain nameless” because I had other things to do, but have decided, now that the fire has turned to ember, that it’s a fine time to stir the pot. 😉 (yeah, yeah, mixed metaphors, I know)
You didn’t think that I had really turned over a new leaf did you (pun intended) with all my doom & gloom and seriousness? Man, I seriously need to try harder here.
Anyway, hi. Back to the meta. Back to… ummm… Kos…
What is the deal with dkos? Why do we spend so much time talking about the site? Why do we care? This morning alone I ran into two freakin’ things on this site about dkos. Completely unrelated too. One was a diary and the other was a comment in a different diary. Seriously now people. In the last few days people are still talking about the “BooSwarm” and the regrettable incident with Boo’s diary foray into the land of Armando… I feel your pain, I do, I swear, but I need to get this off my chest before I decide I’ve had enough of waiting for Boo to ban me and just leave on my own…
I know I got my start on dkos (hmm, odd term, I don’t do this for a living or anything so I guess “start” doesn’t really fit, but I digress) and back in the day it was a community very different than it is now.
But that is to be expected, no? The agenda of the site has been clear from the get-go — it’s a Democratic blog. Committed to electing Democrats. Of any shape or size. It is not a liberal blog, nor a progressive blog. It could be, it is kinda, but all in all it is a political party blog. The dynamics are shaped by the community of course, as they are here, but the “tone” is set by the host & Markos has never been shy about the fact that he wants to be in the political game. His consulting work with Howard Dean, his book, etc. etc. Not a big deal to me, guy has a perfect right to have a career, but let’s not forget that, have unrealistic expectations or distort it when we talk about the site. It is what it is.
Does this bother me? Sure. Quite a bit in fact, but my life will go on. It is telling to me that the opportunity to truly build a “think tank” (as some so foolishly still call the site) was lost as soon as the purges/ incidents happened. Specifically Fraud, Donna Brazile & the Conspiracy theorists. Why, you may ask, do I feel these in particular were detrimental to the sites direction?
Because the work that the community did that broke the national media floodgates open for dkos was Ohio (Georgia10 et al) & Propagannon (SusanG et al). Both of which early on could have been called conspiracy theories and which in fact did veer into that territory at times as the research and pieces fell into place. Under the current rules could those types of projects happen? Do they still happen or is it, all breaking news and someone’s friends conversion to hating bush, all the time? Just asking.
When did Conyers, Slaughter & Boxer show up? Right around the time Georgia10 was releasing the white paper.
That being said, the site still serves a great purpose & yes, Armando’s work on Gonzales helped raise awareness, but it was not so much the journalism itself but the reverberance from so many voices channeled as one that brought that awareness. Daily Kos is still one of the best places to get important news quickly (if there doesn’t happen to be a major breaking news story that day of course) & to hook up with like-minded people who can then join other projects like ePluribusMedia, BooTrib Camp Casey, etc. which they may not have been exposed to if not for the initial draw of dkos.
Which leads me to us…
From my perspective we have our own valuable purpose to serve with this community that has nothing to do with, nor depends on for validation, Daily Kos. We should be free to disagree vehemently with any of the posters on dkos, be they a “no name” diarist or the site’s host and go on our merry way… and sometimes, just sometimes, I think everyone in the blogosphere sees influence where there is none & gets bent out of shape because of it… hell, most of the country/ world, doesn’t even know what a Kos is… nor would they care. So why should we unless he runs for office or starts writing speeches for Hilary Clinton.
OT – I personally feel quite offended though that no one came running to my defence when I didn’t post anything in any of the diaries over there. I feel so neglected and not part of the clique… tragic I tell ya.
And with my parting words of wisdom, I leave you with this thought… In the grand scheme of things, It’s Just a Blog 🙂
