i didn't even know

I've been following a story about Kos and some of the other major bloggers, and the gist of it is that Advertise Liberally, the ad network started by, though not run by, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com, is used as a kind of payola to orchestrate what bloggers say on the liberal side of the blogosphere. Its total horseshit, of course, just another attempt to smear the world's largest political website, but you'll be hearing it more and more.

The funny part is that the story basically says "liberal weblogs are an echo chamber". The juijitsu necessary to call liberal blogs an "echo chamber" is stunning. The echo chamber analogy is basically what the entire right-wing media machine is based on, and it's been tremendously successful. Read Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative by David Brock (founder of Media Matters, which Bill O'Reilly calls a "left-wing smear site", as ringing an endorsement as you're likely to get). Brock also penned The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. There's numerous other publications as well.

The common right-wing attack, prevalent in attacks on abortion rights, privacy rights, science education, and anything else they want to knock down is to take their own position and put it on the other side. If they're against clean air and water, they claim the other side is against it. While it is plainly utterly stupid on its face, it forces people to correct them and waste time not advancing their position. Maybe juijitsu is wrong. It's more of a brutal cudgel.