Accidental Blogger

It is terribly dispiriting to see mainstream Democrats (MSD) run for cover every time someone has the courage to stand up to Republican bullying. Democratic insiders hounded out Howard Dean during the 2004 presidential primaries because he appeared too "angry." Angry? To me he sounded like a person who was telling it like it was – a refreshing change from the mealy mouthed rhetoric of the other contenders. In the ensuing year and a half, everything Dean had said about the war, the economy and the corruption of the Bush administration has been proven true.  Now that another election is looming on the horizon, the MSD and their spokespersons in the mainstream media (MSM) are once again getting queasy about truth telling. 

We are by now all aware of the deliberate obliteration of Stephen Colbert from the news by the MSM. A few years ago, with the MSM’s virtual lock on news coverage, it would have been an effective attempt at censoring. But thanks to bloggers, the "truthiness" was out instantly and the media biggies were caught red faced and flat footed.  Except for Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News, no other major news anchor has had the grace to admit that Colbert was ignored and that bloggers are now forcing the hand of the MSM on what gets covered as news. 

Richard Cohen of The Washington Post has addressed the Colbert matter twice – the first time when he took Colbert to task for not being funny and the second time when he responded to irate Colbert fans on the Democratic left. Both times Mr. Cohen was wrong.

In slamming Colbert and the blogosphere in the same breath, Cohen said:

"Stephen Colbert was not funny at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. All the rest is commentary.

The commentary, though, is also what I do, and it will make the point that Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person’s sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

On television, Colbert is often funny. But on his own show he appeals to a self-selected audience that reminds him often of his greatness. In Washington he was playing to a different crowd, and he failed dismally in the funny person’s most solemn obligation: to use absurdity or contrast or hyperbole to elucidate — to make people see things a little bit differently. He had a chance to tell the president and much of important (and self-important) Washington things it would have been good for them to hear. But he was, like much of the blogosphere itself, telling like-minded people what they already know and alienating all the others. In this sense, he was a man for our times.

He also wasn’t funny."

I’ll say to Mr. Cohen that Colbert did exactly that. He told the president and "self important" Washington what was good for them to hear not just what they felt good about hearing.  Cohen’s put down of Colbert enraged the left blogosphere and he heard in no uncertain terms from bloggers whom he calls the Digital Lynch Mob for their fury.

"I wrote about Stephen Colbert and his unfunny performance at the White House correspondents’ dinner. Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 — a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn’t know funny if it slapped you in the face") and ended with Ron ("Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER") who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you’re a genius

It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age — which I am — I am simply out of it, wherever "it" may be. All in all, I was — I am, and I guess I remain — the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation.

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble — not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before — back in the Vietnam War era. That’s when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The hatred is back.  I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America — the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that’s going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice — once because they couldn’t stop it and once more at the polls."

Yes, spewing uncontrolled rage and raw hatred at a person you don’t know, is an uncivil and unnerving thing – and it is far too easy to do so sitting at the keyboard in your own home, in pajamas. I too am disturbed sometimes by the incivility that passes for discourse on the blogosphere. But fact based anger and frustration at an administration that has repeatedly insulted, deceived and corrupted our public institutions is legitimate, both on the part of Stephen Colbert and the aggrieved Democratic bloggers.  Mr. Cohen ought to understand that these angry words and emotions were not perhaps wholly directed towards him as an individual. He in this case, was just the voice and the face of the powerful but lazy MSM who failed in their job as watchdogs and the ineffectual MSD who were busy cowering before the hectoring trio of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld. The very same groups that the angry bloggers feel have let them down twice – once by not boldly challenging the Bush administration when it took us down a disastrous path in Iraq and once more when they lost at the polls by not being sufficiently angry about it.