The Pensieve

These silvery threads form some sort of pattern:

• DailyKos is now asking non-Obamaphiles to pre-admit their guilt (for supporting someone other than Obama) and check a box agreeing that their previous post was Muslim-baiting or racist or some other damn thing, before they are allowed to continue posting. I swear to God, when I went to YearlyKos06, none of this $%#^ was in evidence. It was like one big family reunion. That started to change at YearlyKos07 when Edwards started rolling out the big guns against Clinton. I understand why he did it. It was nothing personal. Just politics. He got caught unprepared when the Obama juggernaut started up ao he went after the base with hard hitting and not always fair anti-Hillary screed. She was the biggest corportaist, triangulating, establishment loving, lobbyist ass-kissing senator that ever lived. That’s when he thought Clinton was his biggest threat. If he had more clearly seen the threat from his right, all of these accusations would have been hurled at Obama, with slight variations, and it would have been a lot more accurate. But nevermind, his supporters were genuine, maybe a little too pure but their hearts were in the right place. Many Edwardians are still struggling and that’s OK. Give them a little breathing room. But Obamaphiles are a completely different breed altogether. So, Kos isn’t even pretending there is anything approaching objectivity with the frontpagers. I think we can be pretty certain that KagroX is the grand poo-bah of Obamamania. (Yeah, I never liked you either, KX) DailyKos is in the grip of something transforming. And not in a good way. At one point, it was taken seriously, presidential candidates spoke to it, Kos was featured on PBS Frontline specials, we gave David Brooks fits. Not anymore. Now it has become the parody that Brooks once claimed it was. It is full of rabid lambs- feckless foaming at the mouth fanatics. How the mighty have fallen. Kos may think we will come back after the primaries but that would be like hanging out with people who now run with a different crowd. One that does some pretty hard #$%^ and drive recklessly and don’t do their homework anymore and are in danger of dropping out of school to work as itinerant gas station attendants. There but for the grace of God go I.
• The same weirdly annoying thing is happening to Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo. Today, he has a piece up about John Lewis retracting his support of Hillary as if this is an earth shattering event instead of further evidence of Barack Obama’s solidification as an African-American candidate. He has now successfully cornered that 15% of the population. His campaign strategy is to try to win large urban areas of the remaining states. Jeez, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what’s going on here. If anything, Lewis’s defection is more evidence of Clinton’s strength as a candidate. Then, there is the title of another piece, “Top Hillary Advisors Repeatedly *Griped* about MSNBC’s Matthews” but if you click on the original post at The Horse’s Mouth, Greg Sargent uses the word “complained”, not “griped”. Complain is something we as consumers do when we want to report a problem. Gripe is what we do around friends and family and sounds a lot like “bellyachin'”. Surely Josh knows these words connote two different things, one more legitimate than the other. Now, I ask you, is this the way a mature, soon to be father of two should behave? As if the news is somehow malleable and can be molded to shape you preconceptions? I thought that was what the mainstream media was all about. Who can you trust anymore if you can’t trust TPM?
• Oddly enough, DailyKos is not in FireDogLake’s blogroll anymore. Yep, and neither is TPM. I can’t hardly say I blame Jane, Christy et al. They got dissed by the big boys even though their coverage of the Libby trial puts them in a class by themselves. They’ve also taken great pains to be objective journalists. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been passionate or that they haven’t made mistakes. But in their coverage of the primaries, they appear to be holding the candisates to higher standards and are avoiding the hagiographic tributes to one over the other. Classy!

One other thing: In the month that The Confluence has been in existence after my tragic exile from Dailykos (Narf!), we have had over 10,000 hits. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d have so many people reading anything I’ve written. If I’d known this would happen, I would have taken more writing classes and paid more attention to sentence structure and editing. But you guys put up with my mismatched subjects and verbs and I thank you for that. I hope that in the NEXT month, a few of you readers will take me up on my offer to collaborate. RonK is a fantastic writer and his posts are very informative so I hope he finishes his touch-ups on the ones he has planned. But there is always more to do. There is a void that needs to be filled and I can’t do it all by myself. So, let me know if you think you would be a good fit here, where politics meets, philosophopsychofeminadatamixology.