Bloggers Take Democrat Bribes

RichardPoe.com (Poe's Blog) ^ | October 10, 2003 | Richard Poe

[GraniteStateConservative]

Exactly and FR is the biggest blog on earth. Bloggers post article excerpts, first and second hand unreported stories, articles on non-news stories, announcements, vanities, etc. and comment on such-- sound familiar?

[Libertina]

Anyone can blog. Any person who believes everything they read on the Internet is in for rude surprises. ;)

[RJL]

Professional journalists may have their biases, but those of us who work for big-media outfits are bound by codes of ethics under which taking money in exchange for favorable coverage would be a huge no-no.

Why does the New York Times, Paul Krugman, $50,000 and Enron spring to mind when I read this?

[Centurion2000]

This used to be a profession ... town crier.

[polemikos]

Gee, I'll mention his name online for a fee ;-)

[weegee]

All of those payments and the messages posted should be regulated by the Federal Election Committeee. The left may say that we need campaign finance reform but unless election laws are going to be enforced, new regulations will be a joke (and unconstitutional as well).

[weegee]

If you pay people to post then you are paying for advertising. Blogs are just speech. Paid blogging is paid speech (commercial speech).

[PsyOp]

Piad or not, bad commentary and lack of reasoning will always tell. As long as you remember that bloggers only deal in opinion, paid or not, democracy is still safe. Telling though that Dean would need to pay bloggers to say nice things about him.

[SwinneySwitch]

Typical Demonrat!

[jrushing]

How novel, PAID volunteers.

Wasn't it Clinton who started Americorps? He prouldy proclaimed that he had a hundred thousand (100,000) volunteers for (appx $24,000 per year) & this would help minority ghetto kids. It seems that most of the (paid) volunteers are white college kids who get free income for volunteering to work for free. Ghetto kids get nothing but a white "volunteer".

(Merriam-Webster: (Volunteers of America) : a member of a quasi-military religious and philanthropic organization founded in 1896 by Commander and Mrs. Ballington Booth.)

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Hey, Dean, I'll take your money. It's that part of giving you favorable coverage on my blog that's giving me a little trouble. Oh, well, no one would buy my support anyway.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[StriperSniper]

Gee, I'll mention his name online for a fee ;-)

They would probably pay you not to speak your mind on Dean. ;-)

[Tamzee]

That is amazing info you dug up on columnists donating to liberal campaigns... and not just left, but HARD left.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

BUMP!!!!!!!!!!! So much for fair and balanced media!

[Southack]

Hard Left?!

You don't know the half of it. Scheer got his columnist job at the LA Times by marrying one of their editors after coming back from North Korea and pronouncing Kim Il Jung's country to be a "workers' paradise."

[Tamzee]

Yep... I'm familiar with Scheer and his reputation. That is why I'm amazed he would donate to Kucinich since he knows it would become a matter of public record.

I bet Kucinich isn't even hard enough left for Scheer... he probably wishes there was a Castro clone he could support.

[Qwinn]

I actually don't think there's an issue here... AS LONG AS the blogs in question have a "Sponsored by the Americans for Howard Dean Campaign" or some other such aknowledgment displayed on the Blog. There is not one form of political campaigning I can think of that doesn't require an express acknowledgment of political donation sponsors.

I can't think of FR as a "blog" in comparison... the fact that FR has completely open posting privileges does make it different from what is normally called a blog, at least in my mind. The people who run the site can't really control the content to the point needed to effectively endorse a campaign. It's just too much volume here by too many people.

Now, imagine if Andrew Sullivan was sponsored by the Bush campaign - and no one could post it on his site. There would be -massive- repercussions. The Left would eat that alive - as Andrew is pretty influential.

You know what? The more I think about this, the more serious I'm inclined to take it. I'd definetly say some questions deserve answering. Depending on what the answers to those initial questions were would allow me to answer how far I think this deserves being pursued.

Qwinn

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Maybe if Ed Asner ran, Scheer would be satisfied?!

Excerpt:

By the end of his time with us, I had not asked him a specific question yet, and in my mind I could not get away from the scene from the party of the night previous.

"Mr. Asner, I do have a question – unrelated to the film," I said. "In your long and distinguished acting career, going back to your earliest days in Chicago all the way up to present days working with Will Farrell on 'Elf', you have had the chance to do almost anything you could ever wish to do. But if you had the chance to play the biographical story of a historical figure you respected most over your lifetime, who would it be?"

Remembering the sad story he had told about the poor kids in Chicago, I half expected him to come out with a political name of some sort.

"I think Joe Stalin was a guy that was hugely misunderstood," said Asner. "And to this day, I don't think I have ever seen an adequate job done of telling the story of Joe Stalin, so I guess my answer would have to be Joe Stalin."

Suddenly the time had run out, and for the third time in less than 18 hours, Ed Asner had puzzled the room he was in, into a stunned and disbelieving silence.

[Tamzee]

The rarified air in Hollywood apparently starved Asner's brain of oxygen... what a blathering idiot!!!

We've got to send this in to Hannity :-)