Giving Thanks to Blogs and E-zines

My wife and kids are still upstairs all snuggled in their beds while Daddy sits on the couch with his laptop, drinking coffee, watching the parade, and surfing the Internet to find out what happened all around the world while HE was still snuggled in his bed.

Let’s see what I’ve been missing since I turned in. A key Zarqawi aide was captured in Mosul. Israel is reconsidering Assad’s unconditional peace negotiation offer. A chemical weapons lab was just found in Fallujah. And, the IAEA is uncertain about Iran’s undeclared nuclear materials.

Hmmm. Just imagine. I didn’t have to wait ten hours for Dan Rather to lie to me…errr…tell me about any of this, or 24 hours to read my local paper’s biased opinion of these events. Now THAT’S something to be thankful for.

Of course, as I sit here pondering the power of the machine that is humming on my lap, I wonder if twelve years ago--when Al Gore had the decency of inventing the Internet for all of us--if he could possibly have envisioned a day when, with every lie he uttered, thousands of bloggers (I’ll bet we find out that he created that term, too!) all around the nation would be scrupulously dissecting for accuracy every word emanating from his socialist lips.

If Gore could have foreseen such an eventuality, would he and his media elite buddies have done everything within their power to hide this wonderful invention from us? Could they possibly have imagined that a more informed population directly resulting from this new medium might actually lose faith in the bilge being proffered to them on a regular basis by the left and the media that so supports them?

After all, since Americans began hooking themselves up to this marvelous information source, the Republicans have taken back the Congress, the majority of governorships, the White House, and, in doing so, have actually become the majority party in our fine land for the first time since before Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected. How much of this ten-year success can be directly attributed to the dissemination of--for a change--accurate information over the Internet through conservative news websites, blogs, and e-zines? Has this conceivably been a larger factor in the Republican Revolution than the explosion of conservative talk shows on the radio and Fox News?

Undoubtedly, one could look at this year’s election cycle to divine answers to such questions. For instance, most Republican and Democratic officials have strongly suggested that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth likely had a larger impact on this election than anything else. Given the fact that the mainstream media (MSM) basically either didn’t report their assertions, or participated in covering them up by advocating the position that these folks were all liars, it is safe to assume that, beyond the commercials, their message was largely disseminated over the Internet.

Additionally, with all the discussion concerning the rise in Democratic voter registration, the conventional wisdom was that young people in America were going to come out in droves to cast one, largely unanimous vote of No Confidence for the current administration. Quite the contrary, in the 18 to 29-year-old demographic--which likely represents the largest component of computer/Internet users--President Bush garnered 45% of the votes. In the midst of a war that many of these folks appeared largely to be against--at least if you listened to the broadcasts of the MSM as well as the assertions of the Democratic leadership--one must believe that information being transmitted over the Internet to this demographic, potentially including that of the Swift Boat Veterans, had a tremendous impact on their voting decisions.

Of course, potentially no finer example of Blog Power was their identifying the existence of forgeries in the documents presented by Dan Rather during ''Memogate.'' Twenty years ago, such a high-profile report proffered less than two months before Election Day likely would have brought down the incumbent president. Without question, the release of information concerning pending indictments of Reagan administration officials connected to the Iran-Contra scandal just days before the 1992 elections had a tremendous impact on George H.W. Bush’s campaign.

Correspondingly, one could easily envision a scenario where if this transpired in today’s Internet world, enough information would be quickly disseminated through blogs and e-zines expounding upon the errors and omissions in this story that it might not have a large impact on the electorate. As a result, maybe Bush 41 would have gotten four more years, and Clinton would never have been able to sell stays in the Lincoln bedroom while gutting our defense and intelligence complex.

By contrast, twelve years later, the response to this ''60 Minutes'' charade was so fierce in the blogosphere that almost all of the MSM ended up reporting information about these documents originally identified by folks who had no journalism degrees, received no compensation for their efforts, and, maybe most important, did their investigative work in their pajamas. Consequently, not only didn’t this doom a presidency, but a little more than two months after the fact, just before the results of an examination into the whole sordid affair are going to be released, the broadcaster responsible for the story announced his retirement in a cloud of shame.

Since this despicable episode, the Marine who killed a supposedly innocent Iraqi civilian in Fallujah has represented another fine example of the power of the blogs and the e-zines. Within hours of this story first being broadcast on NBC News, dozens of e-mail messages from soldiers practically at the scene of the event were being posted at websites like Free Republic containing real time, eyewitness descriptions about what was truly going on in this battle. And, within days, similar accounts were being reported on conservative radio talk shows, newspapers, and Fox News to such an extent that the MSM had to, much to its disappointment, change its tune. Now, ten days later, this issue has been relegated exactly where it should be--an internal investigation by the Marines to identify wrongdoing, if any--rather than it being tried with prejudice by the MSM.

For this, we should all be thankful. And, maybe more so, we should be grateful that this medium is facilitating the advancement of truth throughout the world. If the content of news broadcasts and newsprint is going to continue to be impacted by factual transmissions over the Internet, we can become more confident in its accuracy. In a world starving for information, this is crucial.

We should also be thankful that the bloggers, and the e-zine publishers--on both sides of the aisle, mind you--have tirelessly created avenues not only for folks to receive information that is currently being withheld from them by the MSM, but also to allow amateur writers all over the world to voice opinions that would have been silent just a handful of years ago. As the Nielsen ratings and subscription data of the various members of the MSM continue to plummet with each passing day, more people in this fine nation and across the globe are joining in this international exploration for truth. As I now receive e-mail messages from all over the world virtually every time one of my articles is posted at an e-zine or linked to a blog, I know firsthand that what is happening in America is also transpiring in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, the Middle East--practically anywhere you can think of.

Such revelations should also make us thankful--or, maybe hopeful is the right word--that our politicians on both sides of the aisle are beginning to wake up to the power that has truly been bestowed upon the people through this medium. Lie to us, and not only are we going to uncover it, but we will broadcast the news to the masses from a bully pulpit the likes of which no candidate or elected official has ever possessed or conceived of.

For we are the Internet Imperium. We belong to no specific demographic, age group, race, nationality, gender, creed, income level, profession, or educational attainment. The only thing we all have in common is our insatiable hunger for information, and the truth. And, we won’t be lied to anymore.

About the Writer: Noel Sheppard is a business owner, economist, and writer residing in Northern California. Noel receives e-mail at slep@danvillebc.com

"If Gore could have foreseen such an eventuality, would he and his media elite buddies have done everything within their power to hide this wonderful invention from us?

Could they possibly have imagined that a more informed population directly resulting from this new medium might actually lose faith in the bilge being proffered to them on a regular basis by the left and the media that so supports them?

Remember in the mid '90's when the libs were thinking they could use this "Information SuperHighway" for socialist propaganda? Those idiots forgot that the truth shall set you free, and when the libs started getting hammered on websites like FR, they started screeching about needing "controls" on the Internet.

Well, the horse is out of the barn.

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