My Adventures In The Bloggodome

Hyperlinks'RUs
PixelDustVille


Last week Ben Shingler threw up an interesting, if somewhat superficial, post at The Tyee titled "Obama Faces Digital Destruction".

The comment thread was OK, but not overwhelmingly interesting, although I felt compelled to weigh in with some supporting context and links about the U.S. healthcare reform flap, mostly because I've really been paying attention to if for awhile now.

Funny thing, is that the hits kept coming in.....

So I went back and found the following, from Jay Currie, tacked to the end of the thread:

"I can't help but be amused as the Democratic agenda on Health Care and, increasingly, "cap and trade" is picked apart by, yoiks, grassroots organizing. ((And, yes, I have heard that there is money from assorted interests in behind that organizing - so what? Move-On was not exactly unfunded.)

Obama ran a huge internet operation in his election attempt. He and his people understand how powerful you-tube and blogs and tweets have become and how lame MSM has also become. But they were under the misaprehension that the left in the US had the same hammerlock on the 'net as it does the MSM.

They have been surprised by the strength of the right and populist push back. They shouldn't have been. There is a huge, successful and self-sustaining media/web matrix on the right in the US. As Bush was clueless about the net and the Republican Party barely grasped it, the right side has evolved without any gatekeepers or talking points. There is no "townhouse" list to keep the right on message.

Now, critically, the left side of the web has been - like many other elements in the Obama victory - hemorrhaging readership since the One was elected. But the right side has been growing fast.

Expect to see more tea parties and more populists all organized using things like Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Sort of community organizing for the 00's."

Now, normally I ignore this kind of stuff because I truly do believe that there are times when attempts to engaged in reasonable and reasoned discussion is futile.

But.

I've read quite a bit of Mr. Currie's stuff over the years and, while I very rarely agree with him, I do have some respect for his ability to be both relatively reasonable and to reason.

So I responded (and tried to set my snark meter as low as possible while doing so):

"Mr. Currie.......When, exactly, did you succumb to codswalloparianism?

Not to mention false equivalencies.

(You said....)

"....yes, I have heard that there is money from assorted interests in behind that organizing - so what? Move-On was not exactly unfunded..."

Two things.

First, the folks in MoveOn never hid their true intentions as is being done by the folks backing the wurlitzering of the deathpanel/beware nazi programs/they're gonna take away our guns! screamfests of the stoopid.

Second, the 'not exactly unfunded', but overwhelmingly truly grassroots, citizen-by- individual-citizen (majority of the) fundraising of Move On was never generated in ways that led to groups like this or this.

OK?"

.