Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Guest Post

Bush’s Head

by Poputonian

James Wolcott’s recent reference to Digby’s blog as “a Paul Revere gallop through the pitched night of the Bush years” reminds me of this passage from Paul Revere’s Ride, a 1994 book by the great historian David Hackett Fischer. The passage seems relevant to the recent discussion (triggered by the Kos article in WM) about the role blogs play in political discourse. Fischer sees Revere in relationship to the overall Revolutionary movement and debunks the myth that he was a “just a messenger.” He describes Revere as an important cog *in a liberal movement* that was “open and pluralist” and made up of “an alliance of many overlapping groups.” Revere was a silversmith by day, but away from his trade he was doing much more for the rebel cause, and it was more than a poetic midnight ride. This has a feel to it, like maybe this is what bloggers did before computers, in a day when everything was closer, within physical reach, and people did their politics face to face.

Paul Revere’s Role in the Revolutionary Movement

The structure of Boston’s revolutionary movement, and Paul Revere’s place within it, were very different from recent secondary accounts. Many historians have suggested that this movement was a tightly organized, hierarchical organization, controlled by Samuel Adams and a few other dominant figures. These same interpretations commonly represent Revere as a minor figure who served his social superiors mainly as a messenger.

A very different pattern emerges from the following comparison of seven groups: the Masonic lodge that met at the Green Dragon Tavern; the Loyal Nine, which was the nucleus of the Sons of Liberty; the North Caucus that met at the Salutation Tavern; the Long Room Club in Dassett Alley; the Boston Committee of Correspondence; the men who are known to have participated in the Boston Tea Party; and Whig leaders on a Tory Enemies List.

A total of 255 men were in one or more of these seven groups. Nobody appeared on all seven lists, or even as many as six. Two men, and only two, were in five groups; they were Joseph Warren and Paul Revere, who were unique in the breadth of their associations.

Other multiple memberships were as follows. Five men (2.0%) appeared in four groups each: Samuel Adams, Nathaniel Barber, Henry Bass, Thomas Chase, and Benjamin Church. Seven men (2.7%) turned up on three lists (James Condy, Moses Grant, Joseph Greenleaf, William Molineux, Edward Proctor, Thomas Urann, and Thomas Young).

Twenty-seven individuals (10.6%) were on two lists (John Adams, Nathaniel Appleton, John Avery, Samuel Barrett, Richard Boynton, John Bradford, Ezekiel Cheever, Adam Collson, Samuel Cooper, Thomas Crafts, Caleb Davis, William Dennie, Joseph Eayrs, William Greenleaf, John Hancock, James Otis, Elias Parkman, Samuel Peck, William Powell, John Pulling, Josiah Quincy, Abiel Ruddock, Elisha Story, James Swan, Henry Welles, Oliver Wendell, and John Winthrop). The great majority, 211 of 255 (82.7%), appeared only on a single list. Altogether, 94.1% were in only one or two groups.

This evidence strongly indicates that the revolutionary movement in Boston was more open and pluralist than scholars have believed. It was not a unitary organization, but a loose alliance of many overlapping groups. That structure gave Paul Revere and Joseph Warren a special importance, which came from the multiplicity and range of their alliances.

None of this is meant to deny the preeminence of other men in different roles. Samuel Adams was especially important in managing the Town Meeting, and the machinery of local government, and was much in the public eye. Otis was among its most impassioned orators. John Adams was the penman of the Revolution. John Hancock was its “milch cow,” as a Tory described him. But Revere and Warren moved in more circles than any others. This gave them their special roles as the linchpins of the revolutionary movement — its communicators, coordinators, and organizers of collective effort in the cause of freedom.

Another list (too long to be included here) survives of 355 Sons of Liberty who met at the Liberty Tree in Dorchester in 1769. Once again, Paul Revere appears on it. There were at least two other Masonic lodges in Boston at various periods before and during the Revolution; Paul Revere is known to have belonged to at least one of them. In addition to the North Caucus, there was also a South Caucus and a Middle Caucus. Paul Revere may or may not have belonged to them as well; some men joined more than one. No definitive lists of members have been found. But it is known that Revere was a member of a committee of five appointed “to wait on the South End caucus and the Caucus in the middle part of town,” and that he met with them (Goss, Revere, II, 639). Several Boston taverns were also centers of Whig activity. Revere had connections with at least two of them-Cromwell’s Head, and the Bunch of Grapes. The printing office of Benjamin Edes was another favorite rendezvous. In the most graphic description of a gathering there by John Adams, once again Paul Revere was recorded as being present.

In sum, the more we learn about the range and variety of political associations in Boston, the more open, complex and pluralist the revolutionary movement appears, and the more important (and significant) Paul Revere’s role becomes. He was not the dominant or controlling figure. Nobody was in that position. The openness and diversity of the movement were the source of his importance. Appendix D, page 301, Paul Revere’s Ride, by David Hackett Fischer, New York, 1994.

People will use blogs as they wish, but their important role in directing the actions and messages of a political movement is becoming more and more undeniable. The liberal blogs that I read *usually make their assertions* in an open and pluralist way, not in a top down hierarchical fashion; independent and distributed, yet coordinated and overlapping. This is quite the opposite of our *conservative* adversaries. [I changed rightwing to conservative because the real conservatives hate to be painted with the Bush brush. Tough shit.]

Fischer’s description of Revere as a ‘linchpin, communicator, coordinator, and organizer of collective effort’ seems also seems apropos (heh). It’s pure teamwork, where each role is small, even miniscule, but in the aggregate can lead to an essential outcome, which in today’s political environment is the shedding of authoritative conservatism in favor of an open pluralism.

And wouldn’t you give just about anything to sit in a place called, Bunch of Grapes? Or how about The Green Dragon Tavern or Cromwell’s Head? With luck, maybe someday there will be an establishment called Bush’s Head.

.

Radioactive Muslims

Glenn Greenwald sees through the new “leak” about the government being forced (gosh darn it to heck) to monitor Muslims for nukes. Similar to how the convenient color coded terrorist warnings leading up to the election last year were designed to keep the president’s poll numbers from falling, this one is designed to muddy the waters of the NSA spying scandal. After all, if Muslims are suspected of building nuclear devices right in our backyards (God Save Us ALL!) why in the hell are we worried about a little harmless phone tapping?

The Administration’s purported efforts to find radiological activity in Muslim mosques is now supposed to be thrown onto the pile along with its lawless NSA eavesdropping program, so that the whole confusing controversy is aggregated into nothing more than the same tired, irrational terrorist-defending fetish of trying to impede George Bush in his valiant crusade to protect us from The Terrorists. And sure enough, like puppets on cue, the most blindly loyal of the Bush defenders are spitting out exactly this scary tale.

And with the images now darkly dancing around in our heads of Muslims hiding in their mosques in Los Angeles and Queens and Georgia suburbs and maybe in your own backyard, standing over a toxic brew of radiology and TNT ready to zap us all with their mushroom clouds, all of this annoying chatter about FISA and the Fourth Amendment and the NSA is supposed to meekly fade away, drowned to death by nightmares of our children with their hair on fire and glowing in the dark and George Bush trying to save them.

He asks if they will get away with it again. I dunno. At some point you have to wonder if the citizens of the US will tire of playing this little fantasy of being a nation under seige (while they shop til they drop) and want to switch the channel to little “Morning in America.”

I heard a stranger in a line at the book store say the other day that he was tired of hearing the president talk about “protecting us” like he’s some kind of super hero. It’s possible that they’ve gone to the well with this one too many times. We’ll see.

Update: I see that I was unclear. (Eggnog?) This looks like it was leaked because it is the kind of thing that some people will find reasonable. (I doubt that it’s any more effective than making grandma take off her slippers at the airport, but whatever.) The point is that the administration likely leaked this themselves for the purpose of obscuring the seriousness of the NSA spy scandal.

If this is true, it is another case of the administration leaking classified information for political purposes. How surprising.

.

Little Red Data Miner

It turns out the Little Red Book Story was a hoax. Thank Goodness. But lest anyone think that this means anything, check this out:

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

[…]

“There was a lot of discussion about the switches” in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. “You’re talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that’s on a switch that’s carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that.”

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.’s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

That’s what we all thought. TIA Redux. Which means they have likely been sifting through millions of Americans’ communications, with the acquiescence of your friendly neighborhood phone and internet provider, looking for keywords, patterns … well, we don’t know, now do we, because it’s all done with no oversight. They could be looking for signs of illicit blow jobs, which is, as we all know, a major threat to the republic.

I would not expect that this mining is quite as sophisticated as we might like. After all, we are surveilling Quakers and PETA because they are terrorist threats so I wouldn’t look for the NSA to have some mind boggling, science fiction level capabilities to sort out the person who is discussing current events from the terrorist trying to kill us all.

Oh well. If you don’t want to be a suspect, just don’t use your phone or computer. Or the US mail. Or an airplane. Or a library. And if you do use those things, just don’t say anything that a computer might interpret to be a threat. Is that so hard? Use your heads, people. This is what we have to do to preserve our freedom.

.

Meme of Fours

by digby

Kevin passes the torch of this new meme to me thinking that it will reveal something interesting about me. I doubt that it will, but here goes:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: pizza cook, Alaska pipeline worker, medical transcriber, VP of business affairs.

Four movies you could watch over and over: The Godfather, Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, Dr Strangelove.

Four places you’ve lived: Fairbanks Alaska; Ankara Turkey; Bangkok Thailand; Bay St Louis, Mississippi.

Four TV shows you love to watch: The Daily Show, The Family Guy, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Mykonos, Greece; Chitna Alaska; Pismo Beach California, Avignon, France

Four websites you visit daily: Atrios, Firedoglake, The Sideshow, Alicublog (and gawd knows how many hundreds of others …)

Four of your favorite foods: sourdough bread, salami, soft cheese, chocolate (and Zocor)

Four places you’d rather be: Amsterdam, Kauai, San Francisco, Lake Como

Peter Daou, the ball is in your court.

Update:
Here it is.

.

Something To Believe In

the digby

Lots of people are discussing this article about Kos in the new Washington Monthly and wondering whether we need more wonkery and less partisanship in the blogosphere.

It seems to me that there is a lot of great accessible policy analysis in the left blogosphere. Max Sawicky notes that that wonkery rises to the occasion when needed, as in the social security debate (and, I would argue, Juan Cole and other foreign policy specialists when Iraq debates have raged.) Specialists abound. There is political wonkery in the form of analysts like Ruy Teixeira at Donkey Rising. Nathan Newman is the go to on labor issues. PZ Myers and Chris Mooney on science. Economists and lawyers abound, Maxspeak, Angry Bear, Balkinization, Talk Left, Scotusblog, the list goes on. TPM Cafe is a salon devoted to wonkery.

And within the wonkosphere there are generalists and specialists, more often the latter, for obvious reasons. Kevin Drum is a generalist wonk. He has many interests that he enjoys exploring with graphs and data. Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias do too. Most blogwonks aren’t like that. (You’ll notice that all three of those guys are employed by liberal magazines that specialize in popular wonkery.)

These and the many great blogwonks are essential to the left blogosphere. They are a tremendous resource that I (a card carrying partisan crank) treasure and I link to them more often than anyone else. They are often compelling writers who effectively convey complex information to the lay reader and offer excellent analysis. So I’m not sure I see the beef. I rarely find it difficult to get educated on any number of subjects when I need to (which is often.)

Having said that, I disagree that the rest of the blogsphere is a bunch of screaming hysterics who engage in nothing but “agitation” or partisan catcalling. They all discuss politics — you’re not a member of the left blogsphere if you don’t — and they discuss the subject in different ways with analysis, humor, polemic, grassroots activism, criticism and historical perspective. The big blogs like Kos and Atrios have created virtual communities within the larger community for people to gather and talk about the issues of the day. And that, believe it or not, is the essence of politics.

In the Politics Aristotle said:

“That man is much more a political animal than any kind of bee or any herd animal is clear. For, as we assert, nature does nothing in vain, and man alone among the animals has speech….[S]peech serves to reveal the advantageous and the harmful and hence also the just and unjust. For it is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and other things of this sort; and partnership in these things is what makes a household and a city.”

Politics is way more than wonkery, although wonkery is essential. And the partisan catcalling is a natural part of it, particularly in highly polarized times such as this. It’s human, for better or worse. People need to find solidarity and they need to express their fears, frustrations, desires, needs and beliefs. People turn to bloggers and each other to connect the dots and connect to others.

Wonkery is reason. The comaraderie we find among those of our online political tribe is heart. Successful politics requires both. I’ve often felt that one of the problems with liberalism is that we lost touch with that side of ourselves — as Ezra has called it, our “inner RFK” — the part that gets inspired (or angry) because we deeply believe in something.

Our technocratic side is far superior for actual governance, as we’ve recently been shown in spades. But it is a grave mistake to think that politics is, or ever has been, fueled by a concept like “competence.” It’s fueled by much bigger concepts like “leadership” and “inspiration” and “committment.” We need some of that stuff, badly.

So I say hooray for the wonkosphere and the crankosphere. I know that each side sometimes offends the sensibilities of the other but we should warmly embrace our bretheren no matter what our temperaments incline us to. Robust progressive politics requires both.

.

He Said/She Said

by digby

Speaking of media malfesance, here’s a barn burner of a post by Avedon Carol on the alleged “even-handedness” of the press.

The so-called “objectivity” we are seeing today is very different from what we saw 30 years ago, for the simple reason that when you refuse to acknowledge that one side is telling the truth while the other is lying, that’s not objective. Objectively, Bush lied and Gore didn’t, but you’d never have known that from the mainstream media’s coverage of the 2000 campaign. Objectively, there is no more important thing to do in an election than make sure everyone can vote and then count all the ballots, but you wouldn’t have known that, either.

In that regard, I have to give some props to Andrea Mitchell today sitting in for Chris Matthews. She actually did call glassy-eyed Governor Bill Owen of Colorado out on his RNC mandated stream of consiousness blather about “Aldrich Ames – Brooklyn bridge – Jamie Gorelick – known terrorists – protecting America – 9/11 – Clintoncarterdemocrats.” She said outright that what he was saying wasn’t true.

The problem is that the Republican machine is like the Borg. They only have one brain. Owen did not compute her factual rebuttal; he just repeated his mantra, calmly and cooly, because he doesn’t really know what he’s saying — he’s just reading from the approved script. He has no idea what’s true and what isn’t and he doesn’t care.

I’d like to welcome Andrea Mitchell into the reality based community. Maybe she’ll stay awhile.

.

Down Boy

by digby

Commenter francesangeles spotted this article by Richard Morin, the angry WaPo pollster, from just the other day:

Finally, an explanation for why bar bets sometimes escalate into bar fights: Levels of a “high-octane” form of testosterone soar when men think others don’t trust them.

When I saw the picture attached to the article, I realized that I had seen Richard Morin interviewed by Fox’s Bill Hemmer yesterday about the president’s exciting new poll numbers. I commented to the cat how bizarre it was that the guy appeared to be so happy, almost giddy, about it. (Fleaber agreed that the guy’s affect was downright euphoric.) If anyone has footage, let me know.

I think we might be dealing with a straight-up kool-aider.

.

.

Protect Us

by digby

For a connect-the-Bush-atrocities, with heavy linkage, check out this post at HuffPo by Joshua Bearman. It makes a nice Christmas e-mail for your Republican relatives:

It would be one thing if we were safer. But our modern day Sun King cloaks his seizure of power in so much poll-tested national security language despite that he is not, in fact, protecting us at all. The residents of the three cities Bush cited voted overwhelmingly against him because they rightly sensed that Bush’s reckless foreign adventures and lack of a real domestic security policy MAKES US ALL LESS SAFE. It doesn’t take much critical analysis to figure out why. Here is a guy who, after September 11, failed to increase funding for nuclear non-proliferation, which the non-partisan commission the President himself appointed called the single greatest threat to our safety. Collecting the world’s loose nukes was the first thing on my mind on September 12th, 2001, so I’m a little confused as why it’s taken the President four years to catch on.

Then there’s Iraq, where Bush has decided to throw away $200+ billion — money that could have paid for an entire wish list of domestic security programs. Right now, our own military, fueled by Bush’s swaggering cowboy routine has become the most effective recruiting tool for anti-American sentiment and insurgents in Iraq. If you find that to be a subjective assessment, here’s a joint study by the Israeli and Saudis (!) that quantifies the Iraq Effect. And who doesn’t recall Rumsfeld accidentally wondering aloud if the insurgents weren’t replacing their numbers faster than our troops could ever kill them?

“To protect us”?

Is that why the 9/11 Commission’s report card earlier this month had a single “A” out of 41 categories, while the bottom was filled out with 12 “D”s and 5 “F”s? The President got a “D” on Securing WMD’s, the supposed reason we’re stirring up the hornets’ nest in Iraq. Commission member and former republican governor of Illinois James Thompson said it straight: “Are we crazy? Why aren’t our tax dollars being spent to protect our lives?”

.

Repentant Republicans

by digby

Last night I wrote post called “Adults Wanted” and a reader sent me a link to this essay called “Confessions of a Repentant Republican” which is an extremely cogent, precise and lucid critique of the current administration’s policies from the perspective of someone who understands the enlightenment principles that undergird our system. He speaks in terms that transcend politics and go far beyond our current partisan obsessions.

Here’s an excerpt:

Americans, with broad bipartisan support, have not only embedded our unambiguous rejection of torture into American law (establishing legal constraints which the Bush administration is now determined to dismantle), but have for generations been in the forefront of establishing such standards worldwide through treaties including the Geneva Conventions.

Similarly, previous generations of Americans – left, right, and center – have been unified in the belief that not only is such conduct essential for the safety of our own captured servicemen and women, but that any nation which does not adhere to its own basic values (regardless of any self-proclaimed virtue) would cease to possess the moral prerequisites for genuine success.

Our present need for “the decent respect for the opinions of mankind” is no less compelling than it was for our founders. But the primary need for realigning our actions with our values is not improved public relations. The most compelling need is, for the benefit of our own society, to reaffirm moral constraints upon our actions, individual and collective, without which the character of our nation will be diminished.

Accomplishing this can only be done by reframing the issues in a manner which befits our Judeo-Christian and American values.

This will be contentious. The unifying values implanted by America’s founders – values of liberty, non-aggression, and antipathy to authoritarian government; have historically prevailed only despite significant opposition from Americans with less honorable priorities. Indeed, the very eloquence with which Jefferson, Madison, and other founders defended civil liberties and warned repeatedly of the dangers of unrestrained executive power and the pernicious consequences of war and empire is primarily because their views were not universal. Their beliefs in liberty, defended by non-aggressive, anti-imperial foreign policy, and the right of dissent have survived to become the “common ground” of the American civic vision only after bitter and divisive political battles. During such times these cherished principles – now universally claimed (even those whose oppose the substance of their beliefs claim them rhetorically as their own) and taken for granted have not infrequently been severely threatened.

Today the rhetoric of this consensus American vision of liberty and non-aggression remains unscathed. But the substance of the beliefs of our founders (which constitutes the basic common ground of our political compact) is under assault. Certainly no one overtly challenges our commitment to liberty and democracy. Yet we witness proponents of freedom at home and abroad advocating perpetual military occupation, rationalizing permanent detention of American citizens without charges or trial, and those who claim to respect the rule of law remaining silent while administration lawyers concoct methods for the president to evade American legal prohibitions of torture and promote the legal theory that the president has the inherent authority to set aside American law.

This being the web, it’s always possible that this person is a Democrat in disguise but I don’t think so. His critique hinges on the idea that isolationsim is inherently American, and that is bedrock conservative of the old school, not liberal of the new school.

His critique is something that I had expected more “adult” Republicans to come to by now, to tell you the truth — the people I think many of us expected were peppered throughout the ruling class and who would step up if the kids got out of hand. Sadly, it seems that most of them are either dying out or have become consumed by the partisan war that saps so much strength from all of us.

I urge you to read his entire essay. Even though he considers himself part of the “anti-war” majority, progressive intellectuals will undoubtedly disagree with some of it. But he lays out the argument around which people of good will who value the basic fundamental principles of our constitutional system might be able to find consensus. I just don’t know how many of those people are out there.

.

Public Scorn

by digby

Following up the post below about the White house polling operation, Paul Lukasiak in the comments notices another dimension to this problem that I missed and it’s very interesting:

The Post had no problem asking this question as far back as March 2005

17. (IF DECREASED, Q16) Should all U.S. forces in Iraq be withdrawn
immediately, or should they be decreased, but not all withdrawn immediately?

Now, at that time (and to this day) NO Democratic Congressional Leader or Serious Presidential Candidate was advocating “immediate withdrawal” — this was just the Bush “cut and run” straw man representation of the Democratic position.

The Post does not bother to formulate questions based on proposals advanced by leading Democrats — there is no question about Murtha’s actual proposal (phased redeployment over 6 month period when “practicable with a significant “over the horizon” presence) or withdrawal formulas offered by people like Kerry (withdraw 10,000 american troops for every 30,000 Iraqi troops that are trained.)

Furthermore, the Post is quite comfortable advancing White House straw man arguments using the “some people” method, as in this question asked starting in August…

“18. Some people say the Bush administration should set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further casualties. Others say knowing when the U.S. would pull out would only encourage the anti-government insurgents. Do you yourself think the United States should or should not set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq?”

This was a truly insidious question — “some people say” that the presence of US forces only exacerbates and strengthens the insurgency, and that apparently includes the vast majority of Iraqis who want us out. But you don’t get that information in the question — the only “reason” for setting a deadline is “reduction of casualties.” (Not to mention the fact that no Democratic leader was saying “set a firm deadline” in August 2005….)

The reality is that the Post doesn’t ask about impeachment because asking the question legitimizes the idea of impeachment — and the Post is too beholden to the White House to permit that to happen.

This cuts to the heart of the matter. When the Washington Post (or others) ask a question, it legitimizes the question. Back in that poll in 1998, just five days after the story broke. The imnpetus for taking it was not that “serious” people were talking impeachment, it was just that “some” people were talking impeachment. And those people, with te exception of the silly George Stephanolopulos, were beltway Republicans.

Matt at MYDD today notes another example of egregious WaPo polling:

From the Washington Post’s polling director Richard Morin’s online chat yesterday:

New York, N.Y.: When a newspaper like The Post commissions a poll, it gives the result prominent play, usually on the front page. But when a different organization conducts a separate poll, that poll’s results are given much less prominent play, and often not mentioned at all. The implicit assumption is, “Our poll is better than theirs.” Is this sound journalism?

Richard Morin: See the last answer. It would be unsound journalism to ignore other survey results, particularly if they offer insights your own may lack. But to give them as prominent play? No, and I think it is unreasonable to expect us to

.

The Washington Post put on their front page a story by Richard Morin titled ‘Majority of Americans Support Alito Nomination’. A Fox News poll just showed Alito with cratering approval ratings. Morin’s story clearly ignores other survey results which present completely different findings, something he just called unsound. It’s clear this is not an isolated incident – Chris just documented Morin’s failure to live up to standards he sets for himself.

The Washington Post polling operation has a problem. They are clearly responsive to GOP pressure in their questioning and yet they get angry at what they see as coordinated Democratic pressure. Morin even insulted a member of the public for using a copy and paste e-mail to complain about polling.

Most recently, a psychology professor from Arizona State University sent me the copy-and-paste e-mail, not a word or comma was changed. I only hope his scholarship is more original.

We first laughed about it. Now, four waves into this campaign,we are annoyed. Really, really annoyed.

Some free advice: You do your cause no service by organizing or participating in such a campaign. It is viewed by me and others with the same scorn reserved for junk mail. Perhaps a bit more.

First they laugh and then they get angry. Does he assume that these aren’t real people, that they are fakes, paid shills, that they don’t believe what they are saying because the language has been cut and pasted? If each e-mail were originally composed would it make a difference? It doesn’t seem so. It’s the fact that a web-site encouraged average people to complain to the Washington Post about something those people clearly agreed was a problem. Why is that deserving of laughter and annoyance? Did he take the time to think, even once, about the substance of the complaint? If it had been lodged by a high level Republican would he have laughed and then been annoyed?

A parade of operatives and politicians go on television every day spouting robotic talking points ad nauseum and nobody says that they are illegitimate. And nobody does it more effectively than the GOP. Frank Luntz proudly and openly discusses the fact that he tells his GOP clients exactly how to phrase things. Newt Gingrich wrote the book on repeating emotional phrases over and over to paint the opposition in derisive terms.

It’s quite obvious that the Republicans have staged a quarter century “campaign” to sway media coverage. Now that they are in power they marshall very heavy hitters to lodge complaints and they go right to the top. John Harris and Len Downie admitted last week that high level Republicans and the White House complain all the time and they go out of their way to allay those complaints.

I*’ll use the same example of how this works that I used in a post last week. I’m sure the same thing happens at the Post:

Russert: Libby called me to complain about something he had seen on MSNBC…

Imus: What did he complain about on MSNBC, do you remember?

Russert: I haven’t gone into it,–you know-publicly-cause I just didn’t want to get involved with all that viewer complaints, but I do remember it because of his language that he chose and that’s why- I actually called Ben Shapiro, the president of NBC news and said I just gave your direct line to this guy named Lewis Scooter Libby, who is upset about something he watched on TV and you may hear from him.

So when a “viewer” from the White House complains it gets referred to the president of NBC News. WaPo editor Len Downie says “We want to make sure people in the [Bush] administration know that our news coverage by White House reporters is separate from what appears in Froomkin’s column because it contains opinion.”

Yet when readers and viewers from around the country complain via a web campaign, the recipients view their complaints with the “same scorn that is reserved for junk mail, maybe more.”

It’s quite clear that the mainstream media think that their readers are irrelevant when it comes to political coverage. Perhaps this explains why so many people find the mainstream media increasingly irrelevant.

Update: Here’s the link to the Democrats.com post that asked people to contact the major media outlets and ask why they were refusing to ask the question when the Rasmussen and Zogby polls were showing a rather large number of Americans supporting impeachment. I don’t know why this should be considered illegitimate — especially when political editor John Harris uses a friend’s enjoyment of Dan Froomkin’s column as evidence of Froomkin’s liberal bias.

.