Via OTB, I see that Kos has decided to rid his site of the lunatic fringe:
Today I did something I’ve never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I’d never had to do.
I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories.
I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones — Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can’t imagine what f—ing world these people live in, but it sure ain’t the Reality Based Community.
So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake — this is a purge.
The right wing of the blogosphere is agog, with the usual condemnations and/or statements “I used to read Kos, but…” I still read Kos. Every day. I even have a handle there- ‘John not Juan Cole,” for the obvious reasons. In fact, I read as many lefty sites (perhaps more) than I do righty sites, if only to keep up on what is going on on the other side of the fence.
Do I agree with Kos? On about one out of every 15 issues, he and I see eye to eye on things, and that hasn’t changed since back in the days when the Daily Kos was a wee tiny site and it was me, Tacitus, Steve Soto, Glenn Kinen (whatever happened to Glenn?), Kos, and a few others flailing away at each other mercilessly. Like James Joyner, I also wrote for Kos’s other site at the time, the Political State Report.
I stopped visiting both at some point, but went back a couple months after I went hopping mad insane at Kos for the whole “screw ’em” imbroglio. Other than the usual partisan vitriole I dished out during the election years, that was the one time I was so damned angry I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
At any rate, do I find the comments section at Kos to be a swirling fetid cesspool? Sometimes. Same goes for Little Green Footballs. And every damned forum I can think of, including here. But I don’t blame Kos or Armando or Hunter, and I don’t blame Charles Johnson. I do blame myself, because I go off the damned deep end too much.
The point of this post was not a trip down memory lane, but to just note that they are cleaning house over there. Good. One Democratic Underground, one What Really Happened (aka Jews Really Did It!), and one anti-war.com is enough. If you are a Republican, and you want to know what the other side is thinking, you should be reading the Daily Kos, and not just dismissing it as evil leftist trope.