Some guy wrote to ED at his other gig, and throws out this comparison when discussing the media elite:
If they can’t tell the difference between Andrew Breitbart and (say) Ramesh Ponnuru, or even a more intelligent and thoughtful outsider among the conservative camp, then they’re going to walk into these landmines. Can you imagine hiring Markos Moulitsas as a serious political analyst? Breitbart is a provocateur, not an analyst.
ED’s correspondent is right about Breitbart, but wrong to lump him in with Kos. Kos has (at least) two projects: one is polemical (like his American Taliban book), and the other is a reality-based critique of the current political culture. Kos spends an impressive amount of money commissioning non-partisan polls, and he prints those polls even if they don’t look good for the candidates he supports. His goal is to give readers of his blog high-quality information, and also to counter the hunches and guesses that pass for political critique in the MSM with facts and data.
Like Kos, Breitbart’s output is part polemics and part media critique. But as Jay Rosen points out, his goal is simply to destroy traditional media and replace it with his brand of biased, false journalism. So, instead of commissioning polls in an effort to get to the truth of a political situation, Breitbart tries to bait the media into running false stories, and he twists every negative interaction with the press into a tale where he’s the put-upon victim. (Here’s one example: the editor of Big Hollywood was part of ABC’s broadcast election coverage, as a counterpart to Donna Brazile (!), yet Breitbart still claims that ABC violated his first amendment rights.)
When you compare Kos’ media project with Breitbart’s, it looks almost laughably quaint and naive. Kos mainly wants better political journalism. He thinks if there are more transparent facts out there, that people will use them, that the overall quality of political discourse will improve, and that will ultimately benefit his team. Breitbart just wants to discredit the mainstream media so he and his compatriots at Fox can feed conservatives more of their brand of bullshit. Truth is only part of the Breitbart project if it serves his larger goals, which include allowing someone like Sarah Palin to run for President while only communicating via the Fox/Breitbart media empire.
NobodySpecial
Please don’t defend Kos on this site, I’m sure it will lock up several of the posters as their brains freeze over the contradiction.
Tim F.
I disagree with the main point of this post. Bob Somerby wants more responsible political journalism. The point of Kos’s main site is to elect Democrats. It’s in their original mission statement. The differences between Kos and Breitbart are (1), Kos is more honest about it, and (2) Kos values his intellectual credibility.
Maude
What in the world is a news analyst?
Is it someone who explains what someone else meant to say?
Scott
I disagree with the idea that Bob Somerby wants more responsible political journalism. Mighta been the case once, but now it’s all “Stop saying bad things about teabaggers, snooty elitist Rachel Maddow!”
c u n d gulag
You can’t compare the two.
Markos is like a film auteur who want you to see his latest epic movie.
Breibart is that guy who edits the best parts of porn flicks, and charges you 25 cents for each sneak peak.
Tim F.
Of course the last thing that a political panel wants is someone whose main mission is more responsible political journalism. Remember Jon Stewart on Crossfire? Somerby would throw chairs. A panel of music criticis wants a dude who loves reggae and nothing else. His conflict with the ska guy is what makes the event fun to watch. They’d be morons to invite someone who lives to criticize music critics.
Charlie
The conservative strategy is to paint false equivalencies between their lies and liberal truths in an effort to ligitimize their lies. A lie and the truth are not equal.
mistermix
@Tim F.: I agree that the point of Kos’ site is to elect Democrats, just as Breitbart wants to elect teabaggers. I was trying to point out the differences in the media-influencing component of each of their respective projects.
Kos thinks the way to influence the media is to add more truth to the mix – to poll races that are usually ignored, for example. He thinks that, ultimately, the facts are on his side, and a media that reports the facts fairly will overall be a good thing for Democrats.
Breitbart thinks the way to influence the media is to engage them in a culture war that will lead to their destruction and replacement by biased outlets like his.
Comparing Kos to Breitbart as a political analyst has to at least acknowledge that Kos has a commitment to a reality-based view of the world, which is something that doesn’t happen when Kos gets slammed in the media.
El Cid
Well, you know, they’re all the same: one guy is on the right, which is ‘one side’, and he just happens to be a guy who continues to promote racist, fraudulent videos at least one of which’s open fraud prompted the destruction of the nation’s largest organization defending the interests of poor communities and homeowners / homebuyers / renters [and getting a long-time advocate for the rights of discriminated-against black farmers fired by another fraudulent racist video], and the other guy is just as much extreme by running a website for Democrats and writing a book harshly criticizing the nation’s backwards, patriarchal fundamentalists, i.e., ‘the other side.
You see? Both sides. That’s how it works.
Any liberal-leaning voice is no different than any right wing extremist or repeated public liar and fraudster.
cleek
i’ve seen worse
Comrade Javamanphil
@Maude: A news analyst is someone who tells you how what happened yesterday (regardless of what it was) confirms the world view s/he formulated years before. It requires special training, mostly the removal of brain tissue and ethics.
Maude
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Thought so. I was onto these types when I was four years old.
AB
Of course not, how could he be Serious if he’s a liberal?
vtr
“I couldn’t give a flying sh^* about politics and policy. Making a lot of money, now there’s a serious consideration.”
I think that’s pretty close to a quote of Beck’s statement.
Christin
Defending Kos while ripping apart that moran Breitbart is just embarrassing to read. I hate it when someone defends our side, and rips apart the other side. It’s embarrassing. Markos runs a business called Daily Kos that is not doing that well anymore. His site crashed in popularity, his book went nowhere. He needs hits on DK to make this work. Hence, he makes asinine ridiculous moronic statements throughout the years about Joe S. killing his intern, McCain’s yellow teeth, how Obama is a failure. He now tries to cater to this sad, small whiny group of progrssives who hate all Democrats on his site, who refuse to ever sign off. A group of 100 or so posts daily. And to entertain them, he posts stupidity. Anyway, he finally gets the boot for his JS moranishness, and we defend his stupidity. So, Kos gets banned from MSNBC, he’s not on CNN, Brietbart gets the boot from ABC. And it’s all good.
WereBear
@Tim F.: Yes, but I do appreciate the fact checking on Kos, even if they get a bit hysterical about it. He’s not about putting falsehoods out there; so I give him more journalism cred than, say, Brian Williams.
Truth is on our side. Problem is that truth is usually bound and gagged in a corner, trying to signal for help.
R. Porrofatto
If you click through, you’ll read that the guy is complaining about a “liberal” publisher in the “liberal” media who is conflating “conservatism” with Beck, Limbaugh, and Breitbart. In other words, if it weren’t for liberals enabling right-wing wackos as conservative standard-bearers the media would be filled with Daniel Larisons. Which is, you know, fucking ridiculous.
Is there nothing that conservatives will take responsibility for?
PeakVT
Somerby basically wants to gun down anyone who enters his field of view. I don’t think he has a goal beyond that anymore.
Fr33d0m
Christin,
“I hate it when someone defends our side, and rips apart the other side. ”
Thats all you had to say.
Bella Q
@R. Porrofatto:
Of course not. Their universe is self created, and has no connection to reality as the rest of us experience it; thus no need for inconveniences like responsibility.
geg6
@mistermix:
I’m with you. I think Kos is, mainly, a force for truth (even if his main goal is to elect Dems) and is willing to put it out there even if it’s not “civil” or politically advantageous to him or his site. I agree with him, mostly, and I certainly agree that the truth is on our side. My only criticism of his site is the diaries, which are full of the most idiotic bullshit and which I refuse to even read any more. The front page is usually pretty good and very informative.
And there simply is no lefty site that can compare in any way, shape, or form with the psychotic and sociopathic Breitbart’s.
El Cid
@Christin: What a bunch of horse-shit. Go actually look at Daily Kos and yes, there are plenty of diarists (remember that diarists post whatever they want and get whatever endorsement they get by other readers) who are the ‘whiny progressives’, and there are also plenty who are the most staunch defenders of Democratic policies and the Obama administration’s approach.
Jesus fucking Christ, it’s almost like no one fucking read the site for the past several weeks when half of it was entirely GOTV, fund-raising, you name it to re-elect Democrats.
I myself like mentioning the mysterious dead intern in Scarboy’s office by ‘falling backward into a desk hard enough to crack her skull open) with an autopsy done by a known fraudster, mainly because Gary Condit was hounded out of office on much, much flimsier suspicions about him killing Chandra Levy. I don’t actually believe Scarborough did it, though I think the desk-falling theory is utterly ridiculous, but then I don’t give a damn about mentioning it, either.
aimai
I agree with El Cid–what’s with the totally spurious attacks on Kos? Kos’s main goal is perfectly reasonable: more and better democrats. That’s neither liberal nor conservative, that’s merely partisan. But look at how he tries to do it and which democrats he backs? Unlike Breitbart and the tea partiers competence, intelligence, education, and honesty matter in Kos’s picks. I’ve never seen the site officially back anyone who was the kind of kooky asshole that the right wing has backed time and again. At heart Kos certainly believes *and acts* as though the truth will out–and there is a truth–about each and every candidate. Its really clear that Breitbart et al would back a republican candidate who was a child molesting wife beater–we know that because *they already do back those people.* Kos has never done so. The liberal part of Kos’s endeavour is the deep rooted belief that better information makes better voters makes better politics makes better policy. That’s a line of thought that is the exact opposite of the history of conservative thought and action with regard to voters and voting.
aimai
Odie Hugh Manatee
GOS is ok as long as you stick to the front page and skip the over the top diaries that are little more than an outpouring of the latest poutrage,
I do like his polling and his going where other pollsters rarely do.
Kryptik
Kos is a partisan. He doesn’t hide that. Breitbart is a hack and a partisan, and he pretends to be neither.
If nothing else, that is the main difference between the two.
tomvox1
To have a debate over whether Markos is like Breitbart merely accepts the conventional framing that “both sides are equally culpable & nefarious in their strategies to achieve their aims.” Which, of course, is total bullshit. Breitbart is, actually, evil, as in a really, really bad person who should probably be put down like a rabid squirrel. So are assholes like Geller, Jonah Goldberg, etc. Kos is just a big time Lefty who puts his money where his mouth is trying to get more progressive elected officials and policy as a result. And, oh yeah, he’ll write a curse word or two for effect–heaven forfend! When Kos edits some Republican appointee out of context to suggest, say, that they hate Jews, Latinos or African Americans or something like that, then give me a call.
As for the media aspect, just what is the fucking difference between having Markos as a political analyst and some giant partisan douche like Erickson or Castellanos?
Billy
Breitbart is a pornographer. I think that’s the best way to understand him. He trafficks in political and cultural arousal.
horseDave
Just to throw in my $0.02. I enjoy reading dKos. My main criticism of the site is that the diarist are often too emotional (poutrage) and leave out supporting facts. Occasionally there are good diaries where I learn new things. It was on dKos that I 1st learned about Donna Edwards who is now my rep. for MD04. As for the dead intern criticism, it was Kos using Scar-boy’s tactics against Scar-boy. Was it productive? Probably not as Repubs can’t comprehend hypocrisy, but it was mildly entertaining. I don’t know enough to judge the other criticisms. Also I found this place from a dKos link.
As for Breitbart I completely ignore him, probably at my peril.
matoko_chan
we are not the same anymore.
this country is increasingly divided into two camps….liberals on one side…teabaggers/conservatives on the other….increasingly segregated on age, education, cognitive ability, skin color and sex.
Conservatives embraced extinction on the day the elegant decarian math of Culture 11 died…ironically the same day Breibarts foul Big Hollywood blog sprang to stinking zombie pseudo-life.
It is in the medias interest to promote both camps as equal so they can sell product….the current media exists as fightpromoters, not as fierce watchdogs of truth and freedom.
Hob
The guy who wrote to ED thinks that Ramesh Ponnuru is an example of a serious (although not the most thoughtful) political analyst who should not be confused with Breitbart.
That would be Ramesh Ponnuru, author of Regnery’s thoughtful analysis of liberalism called The Party of Death. Uh huh.
El Tiburon
@Scott:
I will agree in that I really stopped reading Somerby when he got obsessed with the ‘Rachel the Rhodes Scholar’. I really don’t know what got up his ass about her, but it got up there good.
But I disagree in that Somerby definitely wants more responsible political journalism. He is obsessed with it (thankfully). Yet at times his obsession and demands for 100% “purity” in this regards can bog down his arguments. No one expects Olbermann or Maddow to be 100% accurate 100% of the time or not to hedge towards the liberal side. Yet as soon as they veer from this, Somerby pounces with the same piss and vinegar for the true liars over at Fox, et al.
@mistermix:
Nothing wrong with what Kos does. The difference is, on our side, we don’t put up with lies and propaganda. That is the quickest way to the bottom of the shit-pile. Look at FDL, they have the reputation (wrongly IMHO) so they get shat on relentlessly here.
Disagree with whatever you read over at Kos, but at least the attempt is always to base the argument or rational on the facts and truth. Breitbart and his followers, as we all know, car less about what the truth is. If something attacks liberals, then its lack of truthiness is irrelevant.
KevinNYC
My favorite story about Breitbart is when he was dining on the balcony of a fancy restaurant. Across the street a protest started.
Breitbart was photographed giving the protestors the finger. Later the a photographer emailed him and asked why he insult people protesting genocide, human slavery and the use of child soldiers in Uganda.
Jackass reflexively gave the finger to the wrong protest. Jackass!
KevinNYC
That’s not something I can imagine Kos doing.
dww44
@tomvox1:
Exactly, since when do actual liberals have an actual platform on MSM, other than Rachel and Keith, and I suppose Ed? Not Lawrence O’Donnell. His lib creds are about as deep as the coffee left in my cup right now.
Yeah, Erickson writes a weekly column in my local paper. The week before his election he posted his entire ballot that he’d just early voted on, to the effect that he was sending Washington a message. We elected nary a Dem at the state level. The Repubs ran the table.
I actually had to stop reading the editorials because there’s a local guy who’s far worse than Erickson featured weekly, along with the 5 to 1 (Eugene Robinson) ratio of conservatives over liberals of the syndicated variety. Among the 5 conservatives are 2 African American conservative ones. That’s a nod to the majority African American population locally, who makeup the only Dem organization that there is.
I can now go back to those pages as with the return to partial power of the GOP the crazies will have to start defending them and layoff the rest of us for just a bit. I actually read the pages today and there was a letter bemoaning the liberal press. You just gotta laugh at the stupid.
BGinCHI
This.
The biggest difference, as you imply here, is that the right (Fox, Breitbart, Drudge) feed their constituents misinformation, which is eaten up as confirmation of the set narrative. It’s purely ideological (by definition: seeks to get rid of contradiction and complexity). The left media, while imperfect, wants to get at facts and have arguments; it welcomes contradiction and seeks more discourse on issues.
What’s the endgame then? Where can the right go with this model?
cyntax
The difference between Kos and Breitbart is the same difference Novak articulated about Dems and Repubs: one is interested in the work of governance, the other in the accumulation of power.
Koz
The true value of Andrew Breitbart is his dogged muckraking pursuit of the sleazy facts of the associations among prominent liberals, eg Jounolist, and to that end he’s done pretty well.
The psychological equation for liberals in America is pretty simple, though it’s extremely difficult to get to:
Remorse = responsibility.
It’s the difference between a person’s acts and a person’s essence. Ie, once liberals can get over their illusion that life is something that happens to them, they can accept responsibility for the things they have done that have hurt America (and the rest of the world). But even though they have done bad things, those things don’t necessarily define them as a person and they are still free to do different things in the future.
BGinCHI
@Koz:
That is just about the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever read here.
Pop psychology posing as political analysis.
Congratulations, you fail.
geg6
@BGinCHI:
Well, when you’re the weakest troll among a very pitiful bunch here at BJ, this the kind of shit you produce. Koz is definitely the lowest of the low among the trolls here.
fasteddie9318
@Hob:
THIS.
Our national discourse really has moved into the realm of total fucking insanity. Ramesh Ponnuru is a thoughtful commentator. Holy Christ on a cracker, are we fucked.
fasteddie9318
@Koz:
Are you trying to troll or did you just have a grand mal seizure while typing? That seriously made no fucking sense.
MattR
@geg6: It took me quite a while to realize that Koz was a troll. His comments are generally so incoherent that I have no idea what (if any) point he is trying to make.
Church Lady
“… the overall quality of political discourse will improve.”
Are you on drugs? Uh huh, I think almost everyone would agree that writing a book titled American Taliban is improving our political discourse. Kos is every bit the bomb thrower that Breitbart is, it’s just that he’s throwing the bombs for your team.
MattR
@Church Lady:
This is pretty irrelevant to the conversation. The issue is not whether or not they are both bomb throwers. It is whether or not those bombs have a basis in fact. Breitbart’s don’t. Markos’s do.
Koz
Ok, what do you want me to explain?
The problem isn’t John Boehner or Andrew Breitbart or Sharron Angle or whoever we’re pissing on today.
The problem is you and your continued faith in liberalism and collectivism long past the point where they had any credibility in addressing America’s problems today (or at any time in the last thirty years really).
But the way to make progress from here is the ability to distinguish the bad things you’ve done from who you are as a person, and not allow those things to define your (and our) future.
fasteddie9318
@Church Lady:
Kos generally isn’t a fucking liar, unlike you and your boy Andy.
fasteddie9318
@Koz:
Are you just using a random word generator?
MattR
@Koz: Can you ennumerate exactly what those “bad things” are? That will really help us improve as people.
Koz
Wtf? The problem isn’t them, it’s you. Is English not your first language?
fasteddie9318
@Koz:
You keep writing stuff, but all that I see are sentences like “Watermelon diesel engine land shark. Scoff poker fish star.” Is it possible you’ve suffered a blow to the head recently?
fasteddie9318
@Koz:
You keep writing stuff, but it all looks like words randomly strung together. Is it possible you’ve suffered a blow to the head recently?
Koz
Mostly, the acts resulting from the folk Marxist mentality of liberals and other collectivists, ie, “All your base are belong to us.”
The most prominent one over the last couple of years is the health care bill, which commits trillions of dollars in government expenditures (to the extent that goes in force, which it may not). These expenditures, whether they’re funded by taxes or borrowing, are claims against the economic output of America in general, were enacted above the strenuous objections of the American people leveraging a momentary alignment of the political constellations (which has since been reversed of course).
Without going into the minutae of the health care bill, we can look at the mentality behind it. That is, if the political powers align, I’m entitled to use the entire capital base of the country for priorities that I deem to be politically or socially useful. And because that’s such an obviously dubious thing to do, I’ll avoid thinking avoid thinking about my actions in those terms, preferring to distract myself with bad thoughts about Sharron Angle instead.
The point being, this mentality is a choice not an inevitability. And just because you’ve made that choice in the past doesn’t mean you have to make it in the future. In fact the future prosperity of America significantly depends on that.
El Cid
@Church Lady:
If Breitbart were simply speaking using foreign perjorative terms about leftist extremists wanting to impose communism, it would be comparable.
Since he’s no more than a fraud-promoting, racist liar, who attacks organizations and individuals who are not anything even vaguely like the fundamentalist nutbags against whom Kos writes, there simply is no comparison.
bobbo
@Hob:
Thank you!!!
Ponnuru is just as much a hack as Breitbart, just less successful at making himself the story.
JGabriel
mistermix:
Slow news day? I mean, when you’re responding to someone else’s e-mail, which itself was responding to a post on someone else’s site …
I agree with most of what you wrote, it just seems like we’re wandering pretty far afield to get there.
.
JGabriel
@Koz:
They haven’t been tried for the last thirty years. Republicans were in charge of Congress or the Presidency, often both, for 26 of the last 30 years.
And tell us how well the Bush administration was again in addressing America’s problems? Because you may have a bit of a credibility problem of your own there…
.
MattR
@Koz:
Wait. Were you talking about health care or the Bush tax cuts or the war in Iraq?
fasteddie9318
@MattR:
Jeez, you managed to at least narrow the point of his gibberish down to three possibilities? That’s admirable.
Koz
Health care, of course. The other two were actually popular in the nation as a whole and therefore had a much stronger legitimate foundation.
Let’s also note that the Bush tax cuts were not a collectivization of the private capital base but just the opposite.
El Cid
@JGabriel: Reagan was a liberal collectivist, of course. Jesse Helms was a center-right moderate seeking compromise with the radical leftist Democrats.
Jay Rosen
Billy wrote: “Breitbart is a pornographer. I think that’s the best way to understand him. He trafficks in political and cultural arousal.”
That is good. That is really good. You captured something there.
Thanks for the link, mistermix!
Wile E. Quixote
There’s another difference between Breitbart and Kos; Kos spent three years in the Army and Breitbart is a chickenshit conservative chickenhawk. Thank God the Greatest Generation wasn’t a bunch of useless punks like Breitbart, James O’Keefe, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, P.J. O’Rourke, Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, et al. If they had been we’d all be speaking German today.
Gus
Koz is too hilarious. I say spoof.
Julie
mistermix:
What you said, plus the fact that Breitbart is a truly repugnant human being who, in other times would be one of those obnoxious carny guys who guesses the weight of passers-by.
@ Scott
I agree with you about Somerby. He has a giant bug up his ass about Rachel Maddow, but he knows his school issues. As a teacher, I find Somerby a useful source of information in that regard.
tomvox1
@Wile E. Quixote:
Fuckin A Amen, hombre.
Koz
That’s true. And depending on the circumstances it’s also fair to blame George W Bush, Tom DeLay or Ed Meese for this or that. But the point isn’t that conservatives or Republicans have never failed, it’s that liberals have never succeeded.
For our entire adult lifetimes (unless you’re reaaaallly old), there’s never been a big ticket item where the liberals accomplished something substantive for the benefit of America.
Koz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLawk9pd7Bs
Yeah, you can pull the “Can’t hear you, got my fingers in my ear” act if you want to but it doesn’t help. Like Joe Louis said, you can run but you can’t hide.
Nerull
It’s quite clear that you have failed at writing coherent sentences. Maybe you should reflect on that.
Jebediah
@Koz:
You mean the strenuous objections of all the people who wanted a public option? All the people who want single-payer?
Commit the entire capital base? Universal healthcare saves the country money, dicknozzle. Even if it didn’t, only a buttsquirt can look at sick people and say “fuck off, treating you might cost money.”
Your view is morally bankrupt and factually false, so you really ought to fuck off.
Nancy Irving
It is quite telling that when people try to come up with Breitbart’s “left-wing equivalent,” they fail.
There just isn’t any equivalent to Breitbart on our side.