Kos: Anonymity is for Cowards

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

After days of grandstanding on Daily Kos about Armando's God-given right to be an anonymous blogger. After all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the villainous National Review, who outed his "secret identity" as an attorney, The Great and Powerful Kos has offered a pronouncement:

The poor gazillionaire consultants in DC are too cowardly to make their criticisms publicly, so they hind behind a cloak of anonymity....

They cowardly hide behind the blind quote, lest they be called on their bullshit. I have no problem attaching my name to my criticisms. Why don't they?

I don't know Markos. Why doesn't Armando? And why do so many of your loyal kossacks think it's positively noble to hide your true identity. Well, at least until some anonymous person goes after their beloved Markos. As I said before, it's the hypocrisy, stupid.

Note: Special thanks to Simon Malthus for bringing this to my attention.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

kos responds to charges of hypocrisy:

Update: There's a difference between complete anonymity and using a pseudonym. When Mystery Pollster first started blogging, he used just the pseudonym. We didn't know his real name. Yet he was still accountable for what he wrote in this battleground of ideas. Polman's cowardly anonymous consultants are not. And that's a huge difference.

well, i'm convinced. can't argue with huge.

if these consultants employed a pseudonym they'd be courageous?

the issue here is that real persons have tangible interests, and so knowing an identity provides one with the possibility of judging what that person says relative to their tangible interests and actions.

as virtual people, bloggers have a veneer of objectivity that might be destroyed were the virtual person to be connected to a tangible person. and you know that's what kos is looking for here. if he knew who the consultants were he could expose their tangible interests and vilify them in that light.

kos' argument is basically to say that bloggers like mystery polster are nobodies - persons whose interests are irrelevent. no one cares what AverageJoe's (or Simon Malthus') real name is. why? because AverageJoe's interests are already presumably known and accepted. of course it's an inane argument given what just went down with Armando.

Curmudgette said...

Comical. You'd have to be an unquestioning sycophant, incapable of critical thought, to accept that sad bit of sophistry. Fortunately for Kos he has a site full of them.

Anonymous said...

in this case he's had a hand in his own good fortune. he's bred for sycophants, and through diligence (weeding, watering and so forth) has been blessed with a bountiful harvest.

Curmudgette said...

Crackin' me up, Simon. Diligence indeed. The weeding, in particular, has been very effective.

Funny thing weeds. The pernicious dandelion, for instance, is one of the most nutritious plants in existence.The stinging nettle is another nutrient packed wonder, if you can stand the taste and texture. But if you want your lawn to be smooth and uniform -- to exhibit that desirable shade of monochromatic green -- you want to whisk those troublesome, wise, and wild plants out by the roots.

Anonymous said...

excellent point. kos does seem to have the lawn aesthetic.

in case you missed it, this will give you a laugh.

Anonymous said...

he's got other reasons to hide -- and did you wonder why multiple diaries showed up about "progressives" and money yesterday?

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=21086

Curmudgette said...

Thank you for the link, anonymous. I'm traveling this weekend, but I look forward to poring through this when I have more time. I've long thought there was a payola scandal waiting in the wings. One of the few issues Kos gets all het up over is financial disclosure for bloggers. Amazing how "ideological" he gets when he's arguing with Russ Feingold over astroturf blogging.

Anonymous said...

Oh, you MUST read this:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/18/102945/512

"NY Post: Jerome Is A Crook"

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Kos has been reduced to making shit up (i.e., telling lies):


Warner isn't a DLC candidate (4+ / 0-)

Recommended by:
Ducktape, cookiebear, sidnora, ademption

They're riding Vilsack and Hillary. Both of those candidates are part of the DLC's leadership (Vilsack chairs the joint). Warner is not (nor has ever been).

I'd love to see where this "Warner is the DLC candidate" bullshit came from.

by kos on Sun Jun 18, 2006 at 09:43:30 AM PDT

[ Parent ]

*
ACTUALLY, Warner is a DLC member and has been for years.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/18/102945/512

Curmudgette said...

Sorry anonymous but I'd rather not violate NYTimes policy on this blog. It does not please me that they've put their content behind the wall, but they have. Anyone who is interested in reading TimesSelect has the option of joining My Left Wing and enjoying the generosity of the proprietress, Maryscott O'Connor who graciously hooks her members up with access to her account.

Here are some excerpts from article I deleted and a link to the original.

Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is deemed a darling of the liberal blogosphere — and the “runaway winner” of the “pre-Iowa caucus” that was the YearlyKos convention, in the words of Arianna Huffington — largely because of his relationship with Jerome Armstrong, a pioneer among Democratic bloggers who founded MyDD.com and who inspired Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos to become a blogger. Warner hired Armstrong to serve as his liaison to the Democratic “netroots,” and it seems to be working.

But many observers have pointed to the relationship between Moulitsas and Armstrong — they once formed a political consulting firm together, and they co-authored the recent book “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics” — to explain why the antiwar Moulitsas speaks so highly of Warner, who is a blank slate on the Iraq war and who is affiliated with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that Moulitsas claims to loathe....

Moulitsas dismissed Teachout’s posting as a “non-story,” and he noted that he posted a disclaimer on Daily Kos stating that he worked for Dean for the duration of the contract. Armstrong, for that matter, quit blogging while he worked for Dean. But their disclosures were somewhat haphazard — posted on separate pages like this one — and after the campaign ended, they didn’t always disclose their past financial relationship with Dean, leading some people to compare the blog boomlet they helped create for Dean to the work of online bulletin-board posters who touted dodgy Internet stocks during the boom market without disclosing that they were being paid for their words.

Which, interestingly, is precisely what the Securities and Exchange Commission, in court documents filed last August, alleges that Jerome Armstrong did in 2000. (The original S.E.C. complaint is here.) In a subsequent filing, the S.E.C. alleges that “there is sufficient evidence to infer that the defendants secretly agreed to pay Armstrong for his touting efforts” on the financial Web site Raging Bull.

Without admitting or denying anything, Armstrong has agreed to a permanent injunction that forbids him from touting stocks in the future. The S.E.C. remains in litigation with him over the subject of potential monetary penalties.


Those are the juiciest bits, imho.

I would also add that this looks bad and I consider it pathetic that the first thing kossacks do when confronted with this information is whine that the blogosphere is being "swift-boated." It may well be that there unsavory motives behind this sudden interest in Jerome's endeavors, but it isn't "swift-boating" if it turns out to be true.

Anonymous said...

I distinctly remember Chris Bowers & Kos discussing the anonymity issue during Q&A after a YearlyKos panel. Their chief assertion was that until a blog's traffic brings in enough revenue for the blogger to quit his/her day job, anonymity is important to protect the blogger from a negative employer response. In other words, anonymity is fine as long as you're using it to protect your revenue stream.

Oh, and I love this: "The Great and Powerful Kos" - thanks!

Anonymous said...

New dKos identity statement?

A democratic tent big enough for a putting green.

Anonymous said...

This right-wing blog has pulled all the current info together. Despite the source, well-worth a read, non-filtered.

Of course, that dreadful blotter booman is making another attempt today to soak up the 'noisy populists' from dkos. His site was created specifically for this purpose -- a holding pen.

Anonymous said...

I would also add that this looks bad and I consider it pathetic that the first thing kossacks do when confronted with this information is whine that the blogosphere is being "swift-boated."

Actually, the first thing they did was troll-rate any mention in desperation ... it was sitting in Hidden Comments late Fri nite ...

Anonymous said...

ACTUALLY, Warner is a DLC member and has been for years.

You will find him listed as a DLC governer in Wikipedia.