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Granted, this whole Jason "I write Steve Gilliard’s emails so he doesn’t have to" Zengerle flap has been flogged by both sides of the issue to the point that surely, everything that can be said has been said.  To me, it seems safe to say that we can leave this matter to the paste-addled Lost Boys of the Right to hash out indefinitely.  But before we abandon the topic altogher, Billmon has weighed in on the issue, and the points he makes are worth repeating.

It sure has felt like We Hate Blogs Week between Zengerle, Brooks, Siegel, and the like.  Billmon seems to know why:  

OK, so now I’ve given you all my disclaimers. But I still haven’t explained why I’m even talking about this stupid crap. The reason is what happened over the weekend: i.e. the major slime job in Newsweek, and David Brooks’ ridiculous column in the New Pravda. The campaign against Kos, which I’d originally dismissed as just another pissy TNR vendetta, is starting to look more and more like a coordinated effort: a Swiftboat operation. At the very least, it’s snowballing into a more systematic media attack on Left Blogistan, which makes it my fight as well as Kos’s.

I’m not suggesting Karl Rove (or some other GOP mastermind) is behind this, or even that there is some kind of cabal of neocon/dino democrat-leaning journalists orchestrating it. But the m.o. very much resembles the classic Swiftboat strategy: start some vague, unsourced allegations echoing in the blogosphere, then persuade your ideological allies in the corporate media to start firing on target — based on the flimsy excuse that "people are talking" about the "issue." Rinse and repeat.

(snip)

But none of this seething animosity would have mattered, or made it into print, if Kos hadn’t committed the mortal sin of becoming too big and too visible to ignore. When you combine the relatively successful launch of his book — which took a sawed off shotgun to the leeches attached to the Democratic Party’s flabby underbelly — the huge media coverage of this month’s Yearly Kos convention, and (last but hardly least) the role of the netroots in boosting Ned Lamont’s primary challenge to the TNR’s pride and joy, it’s clear that Kos has turned into a much more formidable opponent than the Dino Democrats bargained for.

Maybe it’s just a coindidence that the media attacks started almost as soon as Yearly Kos ended, but I doubt it. Either all that favorable media coverage pushed the pretty boys at the TNR and the Times over the edge, or somebody, as they say in Godfather II, pushed a button.

(second snip)

Really, this is a pathetic excuse for slander. The TNR brigade should have taken their lead from Instapundit, and stuck to slyly relaying spurious rumors about Kos’s sexual orientation — while pretending to disparage said rumors. That’s how you get to be a big name smear artist.

The real question in my mind is what the attack puppies are trying to accomplish. Surely they must understand that in the end, there is no such thing as bad publicity for a blogger. Ann Coulter has built an extremely lucrative career out of being attacked in print by her opponents. Does the TNR really think Daily Kos’s traffic and ad revenues are going to do down because of this? If so, it may explain why the fucking rag is withering away: an absolute lack of business sense.

(final snip)

Whether that’s good or bad for the Kossaks I don’t know — I suppose it depends on how much credence you give to Gandhi’s old saw: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." In the real world — and in imperial America, too — the truth is that sometimes they ignore you, then ridicule you, then fight you and crush you like an overripe eggplant. We’ll see if that’s true this time. Either way, though, it looks like the battle between the netroots and dino Dems is going to get very down and dirty indeed.

(Posted by billmon at June 26, 2006 08:09 PM)
 
Well said, Mr. Billmon.  Well said, indeed.
 
And this, of course, is the crux of the whole matter.  If we were sputtering and fuming in deranged, but basically harmless obscurity like most of the Pajamas Media roster, you’d be seeing as much about us in the mainstream press as you do about right wing blogs these days, i.e., nothing.
 
So, take it as a compliment.  We are striking fear in the hearts of all the right people.  We’re coming over the barricades, and their misguided attempt to strike down the man they presume is our "leader" just demonstrates how little they truly understand why we’re here doing what we’re doing. 
 
Our name is Legion.  For we are many.
 
Take my story.  Six months ago, I was just a completely unknown radio host with a blog that nobody read.  I came here, read and commented, eagerly accepted an invitation to guest-post, and now I’m lucky enough to be a regular, posting my thoughts for thousands of you nice people to read at a throw.  And that’s entirely absent of high-level connections, a degree from one of The Right Colleges, or any means to rub elbows and shmooze with the mighty.  I got here purely on good manners and the best writing I could offer. 
 
Which is precisely what scares the wee-wee out of the entrenched Opinionati at TNR, the NRO, the Times, and all the rest of the bomb-throwers who have come boiling out of the woodwork since YearlyKos.  This, our movement, is a democracy, a real honest-to-god populist uprising.  It doesn’t matter here who your parents are, how many millions you have in trust, or whether your kid plays field-hockey with Nancy Pelosi’s kid.  All that matters is what you bring to the discussion.
 
Intellectual parvenus like Lee Siegel may dismiss us as "blogofascists", and those brain-donors at the Lieberman campaign may call us "terrorists" and accuse us of mounting a "jihad",  but the truth of the matter is that we are the real patriots.  We’re here because we love our country and believe that it can be restored to greatness and we’re willing to work together to make sure that it happens.
 
So, listen up, you spoiled little cretinous blog-hating lapdogs.  We’re not going away.  There are too many of us for you to take out altogether.  Strike one blogger down, and fifty more will rise up to fill the void.  We’re here and we’re coming in.  We’ve got talent.  We’ve got passion.  And we’ve got your number.  You can move forward with us, or get dragged behind us.  The choice is yours.

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