7/21/2005
Howard Kurtz, who publishes an online column which I highly recommend called Media Notes at WashingtonPost.com, noted this very interesting occurrence on the day President Bush announced John Roberts as his nominee to the US Supreme Court:
At1:27 a.m. yesterday, the Guerilla Women of Tennessee weighed in on President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee.
“John Roberts: Married to Anti-Choice Org VP,” the group’s Web site blared. Another site, A Liberal Dose , asked: “Why does John G. Roberts Hate Our Soldiers?”
And Feministing.com made no attempt at subtlety: “Why John Roberts Sucks.”
The lightning-quick attacks came after 50 top liberal bloggers joined in a 45-minute conference call Tuesday night. “On the left, we’ve always talked about the need to have an echo chamber,” says John Aravosis, a Washington lawyer and gay activist who writes at Americablog.com . “We believe the right has a whole media network, from talk radio to Fox News to Matt Drudge. The left doesn’t have that because the left doesn’t play well with others…”
Such coordination seems to defy the image of bloggers as iconoclastic lone rangers, pounding the keyboards in their bedrooms and basements without regard to interest-group politics. Bloggers, after all, come from all walks of life, building a following on the strength of their words and ability to draw attention from other Web diarists.
I agree. At the same time, I’m not at all surprised. As a matter of fact, I mentioned this possible new trend back in mid-February and Mr. Kurtz wound up pulling a quote from that same post for his show on CNN.
The whole point of that original post, “Bloglust,” was to express my concern regarding this growing sense of power among liberal and conservative bloggers. Blogs have REAL influence, and they’ve demonstrated that influence over and over again. But I was concerned then and now that Blogs might try to, in a sense, ‘unionize’ and create false issues in order to help a particular party or candidate.
The mainstream media already does enough of that. It would be better, in my opinion, if blogs simply stuck to whatever mattered to them rather than what matters to some politician and/or interest group in DC.
The influence of the Blogosphere is most apparent when bloggers move away from their random comments and articles and move suddenly into alignment on what are often unexpected issues. Such alignment, as most of us in the Blogosphere know, is called a “Swarm,” and swarms should occur naturally, because bloggers CHOOSE to highlight an issue rather than PLAN to highlight an issue.
Joining a conference call in order to hear certain groups or politicians offer their opinion is fine. Joining a conference call, however, to plan a central blogging strategy in order to create an artificial swarm is just plain silly. And fruitless if you ask me.
I love blogging because I love writing about what I want to write about. If I suddenly had to align myself to someone else strategy, that would just suck the fun right out of all of this. And it is for that reason that artificial swarms are likely to be ineffectual in the long run… Most bloggers just don’t enjoy reading from a script.
Just so you know, I like the swarm concept. That is, I like it when it’s about REAL issues, real deception, real media or political BS… As opposed to what we have in the case of Roberts’ nomination, which is more of a “duhhhhh!” than anything else.
Of course President Bush is going to nominate a conservative judge for the Supreme Court!
If you are shocked by that, then go get yourself a real education. However, if you want a better issue to harp on, just read through Kurtz’s column. Here’s a good one:
Did the Bush team put out misinformation on that crazy Tuesday to steer reporters away from John Roberts?
We can’t answer the question definitively because the journalists involved have a Matt Cooper problem — they promised their sources anonymity, regardless of motive. But I can tell you that some of them are ticked and feeling misled…
Now THAT’S interesting!
Why? Because even some conservatives who have close connections to the White House are ticked over this whole thing. The last turnaround that seemed to shock the Washington establishement as much as this one came on November 2, 2004, when everyone was so sure that Senator Kerry was about to win the presidential election.
Liberals love to paint the President as a simpleton. Then something like this happens and everyone does a double-take; which Kurtz highlights for us in his article:
It all could be very innocent — the typical Beltway gossip game where reporters trade information with supposedly wired sources who don’t really know but like to give the impression that they do. Then the media types blurt what they’ve gleaned on television and online and — d’oh ! — look silly when they’re wrong…
The reporters in question relied on outside Republican advisers who work closely with the White House. These advisers, at least one of whom is said to feel used, were saying it was Clement. But the administration had asked Roberts to return from London for a possible announcement the day before , on Monday. Maybe the president was just keeping his options open…
However you slice it, the administration had a good rollout.
I would call Kurtz’s last line a bit of an understatement. The fact is, Democrats in Washington were so thoroughly surprised by the President’s pick that they STILL seem to be a bit off-balance.
This has given the public a chance to see Roberts through perhaps a clearer lens than might otherwise have been the case. The press, not knowing what to say about the guy, has spent the first couple of days after the announcement just showing him to the public. And Roberts cleans up nice, doesn’t he?
All this is a huge advantage for the President, because if Roberts’ nomination goes well and smoothly, it will give the President an advantage when it comes time to replace Rehnquist.
By the way, am I the only one who understands that Roberts’ nomination as an Associate Justice makes it very likely that the next Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court will be a woman? Can you imagine how silly Democrats in Washington will look trying to “Bork” a woman who has been nominated to be the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in US history?
Is this President good or what?
David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com
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