Bloodless Coup

BoBo accused the Left of being directed by Kos (of course, he should have know where The Left really resides). What Kos did was suggest in a listserve/email group to starve a story of attention on lefty blogs. Various and sundry clique and anti-clique behaviour ensued.

Close?

There's more backstory than that.

Kos's best buddy, Jerome Armstrong, turns out to have been busted by the SEC for, basically, posting lies on chat boards in order to entice people to buy certain dot-com stocks back during the boom. Jerome is now a Dem political consultant. There was an accusation (credible or not, I dunno, I haven't followed it that closely) that paying Jerome for consulting services would ensure favorable coverage on/an endorsement from dailykos. Kos reacted to this story by posting a "please don't give this story any oxygen" request to a semi-seekrit mailing list full of allegedly elite liberal bloggers. TNR got hold of Kos's post and a few of the responses and published them on one of their blogs. Kos reacted as Kos does. Hilarity ensued.

Right, though I could care less about the backstory. One of the more interesting parts, is that some of the emails posted by TNR were false (the Steve Gilliard thing).

I'm no fan of Kos, and de-blogrolled him a long time ago.

Then again, I am not an A-lister on the secret list.

Ah. I see. I'm not a fan of Kos (we don't blogroll him, and I read him once a month, at most). It seems somewhat reasonable Kos for to ask others not to talk about something he disagrees with. It seems somewhat unreasonable for those others to listen to Kos, and fail to make their own minds up about the issue. One can understand why Kos would be upset/angry about the story: given the legion of Kossacks who fervently believe in all things Kossy, any accurate and substantiated account of influence for money at would ruin his site (and him). Doesn't mean he did (or didn't) do anything, but does explain why he reacted how he did.

I think there are other things that explain why he reacted the way he did.

I root for whoever annoys Kos, regardless of ideology.

Puts me in mind of something mama says: if you didn't react, they wouldn't have such fun teasing you!

Heh. Indeed.

Binky makes an excellent point - my take on all this is (or most of it) is that it's a bunch of people who should know better taking themselves far too seriously.

Though I'm also VERY highly amused at the concept of a SECRET listserv (wtf? why not hire a blimp billboard while you're busy spreading SECRET information).

Is it really secret, or not public(ized)? There are lots of non-public listserves and mailing discussion groups out there. It doesn't necessarily mean they are secret. They might be private (witness the whole Juan Cole/C. Hitchens dust up of a month or so ago).

from what i can glean, the reason to starve the story of oxygen, as Kos put it, was in part due to the fact that Armstrong, who apparently is subject to another inquiry (and he settled, which is a little different than "was busted"), cannot respond at the moment because to do so would violate an order or compromise his legal position.

that's a legitimate position in context, and i can see where one would rather not walk into a shitstorm without being able to fling anything back.

overall though i agree that this seems a tempest in a teapot, and there's an awful lot of overreacting on all sides.

as for brooks, his tone is insulting to the point of what-the-hell-were-the-editors-thinking? he refuses to take Kos half as seriously as he would take any hack with access to regular column inches in a physically published periodical, notwithstanding that Kos's audience, influence, and (overall) credibility, far exceeds that of an awful lot of old-school journalists. one can't help but wonder whether brooks is a tad jealous of Kos's overnight success. and in any event, his insistence in treating Kos and all things "new media" like precocious children, here today gone tomorrow, does nothing for his credibility as a cultural critic. with each day, it seems, he falls further behind the times.

oh, and a little something else:

"any accurate and substantiated account of influence for money at would ruin his site (and him). "

too bad the same isn't true of congresspeople.

Most everything you say is true, Moon, and yet Kos is still a bully and an asshole who has made a sizeable contribution to the coarsening of discourse in this country, and I (and legions of others) look forward to his eventual smackdown.

I have no comment on Brooks's tone, as I'm unwilling to pay for TimesSelect and haven't read his piece.

PS: Moon, haven't you ever encountered or followed an SEC enforcement action? Nearly everyone who is guilty (and some who aren't) "settles" with the SEC. Such settlements nearly always involve an admission of guilt and a large fine. He did something illegal, got caught, and suffered a sizeable federal penalty. I think your protest over "busted" is misplaced.

the fact that the feds enjoy a tremendous conviction rate across their various areas (the same is true of u.s. attorneys, IRS prosecutors (as opposed to revenue agents, who audit and often come up with very little if anything), and so on) is hardly conclusive evidence of guilt of the parties so convicted.

if you think that that rate has everything to do with guilt or innocence and nothing to do with the resources of the federal government (especually nasty if imprisonment is off the table, since then you may not be entitled to an attorney, and anyway, you want to try to defend securities fraud either with a federal defender or with the sort of defense attorney you might retain for $10K or so including expenses?) than you must also believe that everyone who walks in criminal cases is innocent.

the system is imperfect. sadly, sometimes the writing is on the wall. it's true in a great deal of class action litigation as well. do you really think all of the companies and brokerages that have settled class actions in the very same context we're talking about did the alleged deed every time? hell, i'm an anti-corporate pinko and i'm not so foolish. it's no different in the individual context -- a responsible lawyer will sometimes recommend settlement even when he believes the defendant is innocent, if the case looks bad enough and the offer is tolerable. sometimes people fight as a matter of principle, but life isn't like the movies on this stuff -- your average defendant, no matter how outraged, is scared out of his mind and looking for advice.

i'm not saying armstrong is innocent. frankly i don't give a damn. if a securities fraud settlement were enough to kick one out of the public square, i suspect it'd take a while for everyone to pack and move, and even longer to replace them. and mind you, those who would fry armstrong by and large defended martha stewart for conduct proved in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt.

btw, i wouldn't pay for TimesSelect either. i just happen to subscribe to the physical paper on the weekends, which is enough to get access.

If you think I said that "the fact that the feds enjoy a tremendous conviction rate across their various areas" somehow means that the convicted are all guilty, then you didn't read my comment very closely, though I admit that I might have worded it better. I am possibly the last person on Earth who would make that argument, fwiw. That said, I still think that "busted" is a fair term, even if shilling is kind of a stupid crime.

Oh, and the fact that someone (who you don't name) once said something hypocritical doesn't a) discredit everything they ever said or b) make me a hypocrite because I am arguing a point similar to something they once said. Let's leave leaps like that to Morris, OK?

yet Kos is still a bully and an asshole who has made a sizeable contribution to the coarsening of discourse in this country

And lest we forget, he thinks "women's issues" and women in the democratic party are expendable, and when called on it quite pissily ranted about the "womens studies' set.

It's all about him.

i'll humbly apologize for the leap, chastened by the comparison to our favorite local windbag. {hey morris -- what's the emoticon for an elbow to the ribs?}

i care about as much for this as i do for Kos, and my frequency of visits to Kos's little kingdom is even smaller than baltar's. i'm not a huge blog reader of late generally, but even when i was avid and blogging far more political material (or any material) myself, i paid very little attention to Kos, who got so big so fast that he seemed to me the primetime [pick your big-3 network] news broadcast of the blogosphere, and precisely as interesting.

that hasn't changed.

i still think brooks is a pissant and can't possibly justify the unaccountable disdain he consistently shows toward new media types. what's he afraid of? he's got his real estate on the Gray Lady's Opinion Page, continues to appear on Lehrer, publishes bestsellers, etc. if he's still looking over his shoulder, someone ought to clue him in to the fact that he's arrived.