[Marxism] Liberal blogs

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Magazine, September 26, 2004
Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail
By MATTHEW KLAM

Nine blocks north of Madison Square Garden, next door to the Emerging
Artists Theater, where posters advertised ''The Gay Naked Play'' (''Now
With More Nudity''), the bloggers were up and running. It was Republican
National Convention week in New York City, and they had taken over a
performance space called the Tank. A homeless guy sat at the entrance
with a bag of cans at his feet, a crocheted cap on his head and his chin
in his hand. To reach the Tank, you had to cross a crummy little
courtyard with white plastic patio furniture and half a motorcycle
strung with lights and strewn with flowers, beneath a plywood sign that
said, ''Ronald Reagan Memorial Fountain.''

The Tank was just one small room, with theater lights on the ceiling and
picture windows that looked out on the parking garage across 42nd
Street. Free raw carrots and radishes sat in a cardboard box on a table
by the door, alongside a pile of glazed doughnuts and all the coffee you
could drink. The place was crowded. Everyone was sitting, staring at
their laptops, at bridge tables or completely sacked out on couches.
Markos Moulitsas, who runs the blog Daily Kos, at dailykos.com, was
slouched in the corner of one squashed-down couch in shorts and a
T-shirt, his computer on his lap, one of the keys snapped off his
keyboard. He's a small guy with short brown hair who could pass for 15.
Duncan Black of the blog Eschaton, who goes by the name Atrios, sat at
the other end of the couch, staring out the window. On the table set up
behind them, Jerome Armstrong of MyDD worked sweatily. Jesse and Ezra,
whose blog is called Pandagon, were lying with two cute women in tank
tops -- Ezra's girlfriend Kate and Zoe of Gadflyer -- on futon beds that
had been placed on the tiny stage of the performance space. Their
computers and wireless mice and some carrots and radishes and paper
plates with Chinese dumplings were scattered between them. A month ago,
at the Democratic convention, Zoe had accidentally spilled a big cup of
7-Up on Jesse's computer, killing it. She and Jesse now looked as if
they might be dating.

Moulitsas pulled a 149-word story off nytimes.com linking Robert Novak,
the conservative columnist, to ''Unfit for Command,'' the book that
attacked John Kerry's service in Vietnam; the article revealed that
Novak's son is the marketing director for the book's publisher, Regnery.
Moulitsas copied and pasted the story, wrote ''Novak blows another one''
at the top and clicked Submit. A couple of seconds later, the item
appeared on Daily Kos, and his hundreds of thousands of readers began to
take note, many of them posting their own fevered thoughts in response.
Moulitsas read some e-mail messages and surfed around, trying to think
of the next rotten thing to say about the right. Beside him, around the
same time, Atrios was assembling a few words about Ed Schrock, a
conservative Republican congressman vocal in his disavowal of the rights
of gays, who had now been accused of soliciting gay love. A Web site
dedicated to exposing closeted antigay politicians had posted an audio
clip of what they said was Schrock's voice, and he had pulled out of the
race. A pizza-stained paper plate sat between Moulitsas and Atrios.
Together, they have more readers than The Philadelphia Inquirer.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26BLOGS.html

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