A blogger energy crisis?

Interesting commentary posted today by Ari Melber of The Nation, discussing the recent John Edwards blogger beat-down and how "Democrats should focus on tapping bloggers' energy while managing their passion ...."

The fight was not so much about religion or online obscenity as power. The netroots are the most aggressive, ascendant force in progressive politics, wielding more members, money and media impact than most liberal organizations. In the 2006 election cycle, MoveOn alone spent more than every other liberal political action committee except the prochoice EMILY's List. According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, online donors gave Kerry $82 million in 2004, and Democrats expect much more in 2008. (Bush pulled only $14 million from the web.) And now top bloggers--like Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas and Glenn Greenwald--have hundreds of thousands of readers, successful books and a bully pulpit in print and broadcast media.

Republicans cannot stop the donations or pressure the media into ignoring liberal bloggers. Instead, the GOP has tried to drive a wedge between Democratic leaders and the netroots by attacking bloggers--and their readers--as an extreme vitriolic embarrassment. During the midterms, the Republican National Committee repeatedly attacked Democratic candidates for accepting netroots donations and working with bloggers, even distributing a six-page "research" brief maligning Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos. Conservative operatives recently floated smears of anti-Semitism at MoveOn [see Eric Alterman, "No Comment," October 30, 2006], Republican donor Bob Perry sank $1 million into a new group devoted to battling MoveOn and Bill O'Reilly regularly denounces the "far left websites." The strategy is to scare Democratic politicians away from tapping their motivated base.

Some Democrats are falling into the trap. Reviewing the Edwards affair, a former aide to Joe Lieberman advised the party to refuse bloggers access and "deny them jobs that confer party approval." Somewhere, Bill Donohue was smiling. As it turned out, the netroots were not upset with Edwards, but plenty of Democrats were upset with the netroots.

Of course, the staffers' blog entries were uncivil. [Catholic League president and certified asshole Bill] Donohue used them precisely because they were offensive to disinterested people. But the same goes for Donohue's past slurs, or Vice President Cheney dropping f-bombs on the Senate floor. Political debates are fierce, online and off.

I'm not sure I'd agree that "the staffers' blog entries were uncivil," at least not by the standards of the blogosphere. Indeed, I think most disinterested people would find Donohue's statements (such as "Hollywood likes anal sex" and that Catholics who vote for John Kerry "cooperate in evil") even more offensive.

Here's the thing: like all media, you tailor your message to your audience. I and many other liberal bloggers operate in an environment where it's okay to say "fuck" and to call people like Donohue an "asshole." In short, we are adults, and if you don't like what you read here, go somewhere else. Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan surely wouldn't have written on Edwards' blog in the same manner as they did on their personal blogs, nor would I in a similar situation.

In short, what Donohue was doing, and what Edwards tacitly (or not so tacitly) supported, was censorship ... not prior restraint per sé, but certainly the bloggers were punished (Don't tell me "they resigned, they weren't fired." You know that dog won't hunt.) for views they had expressed before there was even a scintilla of suggestion that they would be working on Edwards' campaign in an official capacity. Sure, it may have been politically motivated, but censorship is censorship, regardless of the impetus.

Where were all the pearl-clutchers when Cheney told Patrick Leahy to fuck himself? Or when Drunky McStagger called a reporter a "major-league asshole?" The purity gauge cuts both ways, doesn't it? Or is it okay if you're a Republican?

While I don't agree with everything Melber says, I do share his basic premise, which I interpret to be that the benefits of bloggers supporting a candidate or an issue outweigh the negatives, and that Democrats -- who historically have made far better use of blogs and bloggers for issue advocacy and fund raising than have Republicans -- ought to stop bowing to right-wing pressures and, as Melber puts it, "disregard the self-serving complaints of their opponents."

Thus does Melber write for his audience. On the other hand, I would word it differently, for my audience: Democrats need to strap on some balls and stop taking it up the ass from the Republic Party.

(Well, there goes my chance to be a campaign blogger.)