My take on it, anyway.

So the second annual Yearly Kos Convention is under way right now in Chicago. I really wanted to go and thought seriously about it, but decided I just had too much going on here. Too bad, because all the democratic candidates and most of the best minds in the progressive world are there for four days of really substantive discussion about the issues with members of the "netroots" movement. And deep dish pizza. Sigh. . .

Anyway, up until a week or so ago I never would have imagined that, as a result of attending Yearly Kos, I might have found myself defending it as something other than a festival of hatemongering and anti-americanism. What? How could that be? If you haven't heard, Bill O'Reilly, host of America's most watched prime-time cable talk show, has launched a smear campaign against the convention and the website that started it all, the Daily Kos. No, he doesn't have a specific quarrel with the site's political point of view or any of the hundreds of individual views on the issues that appear there everyday (it's really an online community). Instead, for the past couple of weeks, Bill has simply been ranting that it's a "far-left hate site" that's anti-American and promotes the violent overthrow of the government. I wish I were kidding.

Let's see. Who would label informed, articulate, rational criticism of the government (including the dems, by the way) hate-speech and anti-American? Hmmmm, I dunno. . . A fascist, perhaps?

I know, I know. Billo is an asshole. Most of us know that well by now. Lying on television is nothing new for him. So what's my point?

The part of this that I find particularly astonishing and disturbing is that he can go on the air, with the full support of his network and his advertisers, and continually repeat something that's not just untrue, but effectively the direct opposite of reality. O'Reilly's rants about this aren't just ironic, they're totally preposterous fiction. If anyone's promoting hate, it's him!

But I think there's more to this story. Bear with me for a moment on the bigger picture. . .

When the USA was founded, the main platform for public debate was the newspaper. Letters and opinion pieces were the main forum for debating the issues and influencing public opinion. Ideas lived and died on their merits. Obviously the print medium is still important today, but television dominates. It's a world of spin and soundbytes (I know a lot about soundbytes) and it's a much less democratic, one-way medium. It's also controlled by a small and ever-shrinking group of immensely powerful corporations and very rich men. Never forget, for example, that NBC is owned by GE, the largest defense contractor (also read: company that makes billions of dollars in profit off of war) in the world.

Not so with the internet. The rise of internet politics, and the blogosphere movement in particular, has to be one of the most exciting developments in the recent history of democracy. It's a pretty big deal now, and it has the potential to become a huge part of our national discourse if it continues to (and is allowed to) grow. Am I exaggerating? I don't think so. Because the Web opens up the national dialogue, the "marketplace of ideas" to everyone. (At least everyone with some access to the internet.) Half a million people read the Daily Kos every day. That's larger than the audience of many news shows. It was started for pennies by a dude in his apartment in San Francisco. It's just one of many similar sites.

And boy, does that make Rupert Murdoch mad. The Australian gajillionaire owns Fox News, the Times of London, the New York Post, countless other tabloids and TV networks the world over, and now the Wall Street Journal. He hates dissent. He hates progressives. He loves the Right Wing. He loves control. And he particularly loves to use his media outlets to attack other news providers. (See: "Outfoxed.") He's boasted about his ability to shape public opinion, and he thinks his audience is stupid. (That's why he stuffs his newspapers full of lottery ads and naked girls.) I'm certain that he views the Daily Kos and everything it represents as a significant threat to his monopolistic ambitions and his oligarchic values.

How do you rule the masses when they have the vote? It's elementary. You try to control what they think, how they see the world. Think I'm drifting toward the conspiracy fringe? Think about it. They don't want you to know too much, they don't want you to think too much, they don't want you to ask too many questions. They want you to shut up and watch TV, and believe that patriotism involves some combination of waving the flag and shopping. . . Instead of, for example, being engaged in the affairs of your country because you care about it, working for change etc.

Some have suggested that if the blogs were as prevalent four years ago as they are now, the current administration would have had a harder time lying us into war. Who knows.

So this O'Reilly thing is not about the "Culture Warrior" versus the left-wing fringe. Although I think it's likely that Billo really does believe what he's saying. This is really about trying to keep the little guy down, and stifling the free flow of ideas.

And what's more anti-American than that?

-jw

P.S. Watch Chris Dodd attempt to insert some reason after Bill reveals a shocking example of "hate" on the Daily Kos.



Then go to the Daily Kos, as Bill suggests. And see for yourself.