From the New York Times:
On a laptop at a kitchen table in this cheery Twin Cities suburb, headlines ripping into Al Franken, the satirist whose campaign for the United States Senate is seen as one of the most competitive in the nation, are written up day after day for “Minnesota Democrats Exposed,” a political blog created by a former Republican Party researcher.UPDATED: As noted in the comments below, the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers is a group that includes all sorts of bloggers, not just political bloggers or Republicans.
...What Mr. Franken’s circumstance has proven, though, is that no Minnesota candidate this fall can afford to ignore Mr. Brodkorb, or the rest of the state’s vast universe of Web sites devoted to local politics. Experts here say the abundance of these blogs is a mirror onto this state, its partisan split in recent years and its long tradition of intense political activism (by some measures, voter turnout here was the highest in the nation in 2006). That said, they are anything but Minnesota Nice.
Eric Pusey’s liberal-leaning "mnblue," for instance, tracks Mr. Coleman’s moves on a "Weasel Meter." Some blog live from the smallest of political meetings and the forgotten campaign stops. Enough of these writers have cropped up here now to make a Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, better known here as the Mob. "We’ve kind of got a center of gravity going on up here," said Mitch Berg, one in a group that started a "True North" Web site in 2007.
7 comments:
One problem with your hypothesis....the "MOB" is made up of Minnesota BLOGGERS - not just political bloggers. We have many bloggers in the MOB who are center right politically to be sure, but we have others who are center left and still others who are apolitical and others still who blast both right and left for their stupidity.
Maybe if you had looked at the MOB blog-roll BEFORE you leaped to your conclusion you would know these things....
LL (MOB member since 2005)
One other problem with your MOB hypothesis:
MnBlue's Pussey is not paid. He does it because he is passionate about politics.
Brodkorb, the Republican, on the other hand, gets paid, and is fed information from paid scandal researchers.
Well, it made for a catchy headline, didn't it?
Good thing I put a question mark at the end of the headline so that it was a question, not an affirmative statement, otherwise the logician's complaint would be valid.
I have no doubt that Brodkorb, the Republican, is a paid hitman for the Republican party.
I'm sure he fills the same low-blow blogosphere role that Kari Chisholm plays in Oregon for the Democratic establishment.
P.S. Why so uptight lady logician?
The headline may have had the ? but the rest of the piece didn't.
Roz - Michael has gone over this again and again and again - he is not paid to blog. He WAS (note the past tense) a paid political operative and he IS (note the present tense) an independent contractor who does work on individual campaigns (he did some contract work in 2006 for Michele Bachmann) but that does not mean he is paid to blog. For crying out loud, the DFL has been looking for the smoking gun on that charge for the last 4 years and they have yet to find it. Is he fed stories? Let's just say I would not be surprised, but he is not paid to blog.
LL
Oh - I forgot to add....
I agree WMD that his site is "low-brow". I personally don't like his style at all.
LL
OK, so let's examine our situation. We are in a tragic and ill-conceived war where over a million Iraqis and over 4,000 Americans have died. It's costing $12 billion a month, and eventually 3 trillion dollars. Our economy is in the pits, with houses being boarded up, gas ready to blow past $4 a gallon, schools and cities bankrupt, bridges falling into the river and potholes sprouting like dandelions.
And what are we talking about? Lost letters handed to the doorman, taxes paid to the wrong state, old satire of dubious humor, written 8 years ago.
Are these truly the issues we want to concentrate on at this moment, as our country begins the slippery slide into decay and oblivion?
People, if this is all we have to consider in this senate race, they we have nobody to blame for having a crappy government. In a democracy, we have only ourselves to blame.
Well said, Charlie
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