We have 1110 users. When I posted my defense of Markos we had just passed 1000. That’s a 10% jump in two days. I never expected that you all would be so kind as to reward me for racing to Markos’s defense, when many of you were angry with him.
Update [2005-6-7 14:26:44 by BooMan]: We have 1125 users. In the time it took me to write this article we gained 15 more newbies.
But, it shows two things. One, you all read my defense for what it was: a defense of all front-pagers at community blogs, not just Kos. We write a lot of things, we throw a lot of opinions out there. Many people in our audience are more informed than we are. How can I write confidently about education when there are teachers, who live education everyday, that know more about the subject than I ever will? The same is true for environmentalism, foreign policy, women’s issues, etc. When we write our stories we are taking a big risk, we are subjecting ourselves to correction, ridicule, and worse.
:::flip:::
The second thing your response shows is that you were willing to accept that I didn’t know all the facts when I wrote the defense. And I appreciate that. In my book, Markos deserves a lot of credit for everything he has accomplished. He puts his ass on the line everyday with the whole world watching, and the wingnuts and the MSM looking to pounce on every minor error, every slip of the tongue. That was what I wanted to point out.
But he invited people to leave. And for that, he must take full responsibility for anyone who decided to take him up on the offer. And I am sure he does.
I think he took the wrong tone in his pie-fight article and created an unfortunate rift. I have become much more aware of the prelude to that rift in the last two days. I still stand by the fact that we should be forgiving of each other, we should let a person make a mistake and give them time to correct it, or learn from it. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves. So, let’s try to heal our wounds and concentrate on why we are all here. Our opponents control all the levers of power. We must regroup and move forward, with unity.
