It’s actually not very enjoyable to see someone you know get smeared on FOX News. That’s true even when you have your own disagreements with that person. Opinions vary on the meaning of Newsweek’s decison to hire Markos Moulitsas as a opinion columnist. Many share Bob Johnson’s initial reaction:
Just what we need…Another fucking pundit.
Within the blogosphere, the concern is not with Newsweek hiring a left-leaning activist to provide political analysis, it’s more about what it means for the Daily Kos community. We haven’t seen anything quite like this…the head of a major blogging community taking up a seat next to Howard Fineman at the cocktail frankfurter buffet. It will be difficult to wear those two hats at the same time. How Markos handles it will tell the rest of us a lot. The situation certainly has a lot of potential pitfalls.
None of this, however, justifies the treatment Markos received from FOX News.
Take Juan Williams, referring to the now infamous Blackwater incident from 2003.
“The fact is that (Moulitsas is) not a journalist in terms of someone who knows how to do reporting, someone who reflects balance in what he portrays. To the contrary, he engages in the kind of hyperbole and extreme statements that are represented by that crass and I think offensive statement that he made about those dead people. But you know what? I think that’s just what’s going on in journalism. I think that there’s more and more opinion, less and less people who know how to do the job. All you gotta do is shout, say something on the blog that offends and attacks the other side and suddenly you have the credentials and you’re said to be a journalist. I think it’s a great lie.”
Williams actually had the gall to say this on the Hannity & Colmes program. Sean Hannity didn’t notice the irony. We are subjected to a mainstream media that tolerates Don Imus, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity…and actually embraces them. We have serial liars like William Safire and Charles Krauthammer making shit up in order to justify making war on innocent people. We have ostensibly left-wing concern trolls like Richard Cohen, David Broder, and Maureen Dowd, consistently telling us that no matter what happens it redounds to the Republicans’ benefit.
We have a complete right-wing tilt in media. Want proof? A real left-wing perspective…main stream liberal perspective…is on display at PBS whenever Bill Moyers takes to the air. Have you seen anything like Moyers on cable news or the Sunday morning talk shows…ever?
And Markos won’t change that. He’s not a mainstream liberal. You won’t see mainstream liberals’ views represented in Newsweek. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s not a knock on Markos or on Newsweek. It’s just true. If you want to see a mainstream liberal voice in a major news weekly, you have many options: Digby, Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, Pam Spaulding, Meteor Blades, etc.
FOX News is committed to the fiction that Markos is a far-left bomb-thrower and that MoveOn.org is a radical group. But it’s not true. And one more thing…why shouldn’t the far left have a voice in the national dialogue? What’s wrong with that.
Because then the straw man of “the radical loony liberal crowd”, which has been so very meticulously and painstakingly constructed for the last twenty years by the right wing blow-hards such as Hannity, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, risks being exposed for what it truly is, a grand and glorious illusion.
They cannot and will not risk this happening. The possibility that anyone even within an arms length of being a liberal would be allowed to feast at the table of the Village Idiots and the Serious, Serious People of the Beltway is anathema to them.
It’s no different than the ripple effect that was seen in earlier days of yore when someone in the White Man’s Country Club set were informed they had to let those “uppity blacks”, “nasty Catholics” or “money-grubbing Jews” into The Club. Markos contaminates their genetic pool because he’s not perceived to be one of them.
I don’t know if it is glorious, but it certainly is grand.
This is a great essay until it goes way wrong, by calling Markos a liberal. Markos is an opportunist that just happened to click on the right formula to entice people to join a political community so that he could eventually make a living off its advertisements.
His rule of Daily Kos shows that he will do anything to maintain Big Orange as a money maker, and that means conforming to mainstream Democrats. Who? Yes, the mainstream DLC-AIPAC gang who we seldom if ever hear got canned by the left wing Kos censors.
Markos’ acceptance of a pundit job anywhere is merely another upgrade in income, which is why M got into this business in the first place. Not bad for a Silicon Valley failure who did not give up. Now we are supposed to believe that he knows something about politics. More than me perhaps, but that is nothing. Newsweek will come to learn the truth, the ghostwriters of Daily Kos. Maybe Hunter, the failed junior high English teacher, who found a home at Daily Kos, for multiclause sentences that say nothing.
He’s a fucking libertarian.
And yes, next to spelling and history, comprehension has been a problem. That’s why I’m here.
your lean is showing.
Heavily. In this case, I join FOX even if that would get be banned, although not for the same reason. The fuckhead decided he could make more money if he moved a bit toward DLC-APIAC middle. I have checked and the daily visits to Daily Kos have been stagnant for some time now, and the sports blog investment is not working out.
The entrepreneur mind never rests. If Kos has to delve in dog underwear to make more money, he would. The left wing of the party has been snookered. Imagine that.
this hostility to entrepreneurs is frankly more than a little disturbing.
Markos is going to be balanced by…wait for it…Karl Rove
Just fucking kill me now.
.
link
Calling Markos a ‘liberal firebrand’ is almost ludicrous and proves again how insanely out of touch the mainstream media really is….besides apparently being unable to read. If they really read or listened to him they’d know he’s not some wild eyed liberal…then again maybe to them he is.
Firebrand? Well, sometimes. Liberal? He describes himself as a Libertarian and has long been associated with the centrist NDN. However, the Overton Window has shifted political discourse so far to the right he may look liberal. Whether he thinks of himself as a Liberal or not, I haven’t seen Kos afraid of being associated with the “L Word”, like so many Democrats. I expect Kos will be more willing to combat Rove’s crap than several of the pundits Time might have chosen who describe themselves as liberal. (And who knows whether working with an editor will help him avoid some of those gaffes, like “women’s studies set,” that have created havoc on his site with some of its more liberal members in the past).
Starting his own blog meant he didn’t answer to anyone(especially the women’s studies set) so I wonder how he’ll do in the corporate setting where someone can edit his words for a change? I imagine it will all come down to how big his ego is and how much he wants the paycheck.
It should be interesting to watch. The process of writing his book has already exposed him to working with an editor. Working for a weekly publication will be a new challenge. I have no idea whether his stint with Newsweek will help the general perception of the blogosphere or the netroots; but I doubt it will do any damage.
Markos has already shown many times that he is in it for the paycheck. Everyone wants a paycheck, but what will you do to get it? That’s the character question.
As for letting his doppelganger from the right be Karl Rove, is that a statement of Markos’ ego at work, or is he content to let the public think he is Rove’s counterpart from the left – an unprincipled dirty trickster from this side of the fence?
Not good, no matter how you slice it.
Fox attack class 101 – slime the messenger to slam the door shut on the message. That’s their instinctual first strike at Markos and as we all know, Markos doesn’t go away so good. He’ll win some, he’ll lose some but the door will be open for more voices and that’s a good thing.
You misunderstand the media , Booman.
It is dedicated to mediocrity.
Mediocracy.
THAT’S why they chose Little dKos over the real thinkers.
And that’s why Rove will be there too.
They are the talking versions of the celebrity open snatch images so treasured by the same mediocracy.
Keep everything down to a slow, trance-producing simmer on top of the stove in full view and you can cook pretty much any damned thing that you want to cook in the secret stove below.
Guess what the next “new reality” is going to be?
My guess?
National emergency. Possibly Pakistan-driven. Just before or just after the conventions. Unless Obama wins big in the primaries and knocks The Chosen One offa the perch upon which she has been (apparentkly fairly tenuously) placed.
Then…sooner.
Yup.
Watch.
AG
Sometimes, Arthur, you get the bull right by the goddamned horns.
As do you.
AG
I’m sure that you’ll disagree at great length, but they mighta been thinking that this will steer a whole new crowd toward Newsweek. Surely you realize that most people have never heard of Markos.
The more they haven’t heard, the better. Can’t imagine what kind of shit he will put out there, claiming to represent the left wing of the Democratic party. Disturbing.
I find it strange how strong the feelings get re: Kos. I often disagree with him, but I respect what he has done to elevate the blogs toward political relevance. Compared to most of the pundits (low standard, I admit), his analysis is thoughtful and thought-provoking. The fact that he can make a good amount of money for his political analysis doesn’t diminish his views. I actually look forward to the exchange between Rove and Markos as an interesting window on the political circus.
Please forgive the crudiness of my response, but nothing else quite so well expresses my reaction to the thought of these two lame hustlers sitting there cooperatively warping the minds of innocent (innocent of the brains with which they were born at the very least) Omerticans.
Really.
AG
Given how many un-lame non-hustlers being offered by Newsweek, I’m guessing that there will be a lot of barfing for you between now and election day.
going on if I took the media at all seriously.
Luckily…I do not.
Plus…I have an iron stomach.
I mean…I pretty much know the game, and there’s not a damned thing that I can do about it except to try to warn the few who have the ears to hear.
Which I do…
And then I return to my previously scheduled program.
Which at the moment is practicing my doubles. (The instruments that I play but in which I do not specialize.)
Bye now…
AG
Wow, what a surprise this is!!
Karl Rove Hired As Newsweek Contributor To `Balance’ Markos
Another good reason to not subscribe to Newsweek. But do you really need a reason??
Spell it right, goddamnit!!!
Spell it like it is.
AG
Hey, Markos ain’t no journalist, haven’t I read that all of those Fox News people are college drop outs? Rush too.
with the labels. Have you not figured out the formula yet?
Debate between “left” and “right” however you may define either one generates ideas, policy, procedural crap. Then all is thrown into a big hat. Bits and pieces are put together based upon the following theme.
What will destroy America the fastest.
And that is what passes and becomes “legislation”.
There’s nothing wrong with having a far-left voice on the punditry circuit. That would be very welcome.
But Markos is not a far-left voice. He’s a very centrist voice.
There’s merit to the comment that he doesn’t have a journalistic background. I fear he will say stupid things, as he has already done, that will only serve to discredit the left.
If I could have chosen someone to be the voice of the left, I’d have picked Jeff Cohen, the former leader of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Or Zach Sklar, a noted author and editor who has worked in the trenches with figures from history. Or Robert Parry, who is an incredibly literate speaker as well as writer.
Choosing Markos is a slap in the face to the left, as I see it.
Wondering now if that wasn’t the point. Choose a centrist to represent the left. Stabbed in the back.
in the grand scheme of all things media, kos is just another pawn…a cog in the machine…l really don’t care whether he has a platform to espouse his view at newsweek or not. the fact that he’s being balanced by karl ‘the brain’ rove speaks volumes regarding the motives.
his opinions have no relevance in the particular reality that l inhabit, and frankly, l have no expectations other than that he’ll provide me, and now many others, with more than ample evidence of his irrelevance and less than grandiose stature. furthermore, it’s not unlikely that karl will hand him his ass; a massive intellect kos is not. given what little l have seen of him on the talking head circuit does not instill any confidence that he will be perceived in any other light than as the definition du jour of an ineffectual. babbling, left-wing liberal moon-bat [right, wrong, or indifferent], which frankly, bodes ill for the immediate future.
there was a term for this, back in the 60’s and 70’s: co-opted, generally followed with a variety of terms that roughly translated to sell-out. that he is apparently reveling in this promotion merely reinforces the opinion that his ego, and the subsequent boost in his net wealth, not to mention the opportunity to join in the cocktail weenie circuit, will override, and ultimately undermine, whatever relevance he may have once aspired to.
he will be unceremoniously discredited and discarded when it’s convenient…as in proven to be a loser…much to the chagrin of his sycophantic followers.
everybody gets their 15 minutes, eh.
…a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
macbeth
lTMF’sA
dude…that’s harsh.
perhaps. the truth hurts.
this will, at the end of the day, be used to discredit real progressives/liberals.
just my 2¢, your milage may vary.
lTMF’sA
I’ll be interested in his performance in Newsweek. The wife subscribes. I imagine I will read his offerings for the first few weeks, which contrasts with my behavior when I visit kos. When I’m over there, I very rarely read him. I generally scan most recommended and most recent to see what’s brewing that day. I’ll pick three or four that interest me to read. kos is a bit right of where I would like him to be. I don’t believe he handles criticism well. He was underwhelming on Bill Mahr a couple of weeks ago IMO, so I don’t expect much good to come to “progressives” from his involvement with Newsweek. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised…maybe.