Replies

Even more striking was the opinion of the popular blogger known as Atrios, who in real life is Duncan B. Black, a senior fellow at the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.
One might think that a media watchdog would be sensitive to such matters — after all, Media Matters was pretty hard on the disgraced reporter Jeff Gannon for, among other journalistic misdeeds, reprinting Republican National Committee talking points verbatim under his own name.

Hmmm... Media Matters... where have I heard that before?...

... Another of CAP’s missions is to carry out “rapid response” to what it calls conservative “attacks” in the media. CAP’s Web site promises that it will soon be capable of “responding effectively and rapidly to conservative proposals and rhetoric with a thoughtful critique and clear alternatives.” To this end, CAP offers a stable of talking heads – coiffed, credentialed and fully briefed – ready to appear at a moment’s notice on national talk shows to interrupt, side track, browbeat and otherwise prevent conservative commentators from getting their message out.
Notable among CAP’s line-up of talking heads are The Nation’s Eric Alterman – who claims expertise on the subjects of media and democracy – and Morton H. Halperin, who offers to speak on national security.
CAP helped launch Media Matters for America, a 501(c)(03) public charity better known for its Web site MediaMatters.org, which opened for business on May 3, 2004. Inasmuch as Media Matters aspires to serve as a media watchdog, monitoring “rightwing” journalists for errors and ethical violations, it is odd, to say the least, that David Brock has been appointed its President and CEO. Brock is a former conservative journalist who defected to the Left amidst an outpouring of dramatic public apologies and confessions that he had built his career on lies, writing political hit pieces filled with flimsy evidence and outright fabrications. Even so, whatever Brock lacks in credibility, he more than makes up for in the quality of his schmoozing. Brock told The New York Times that he conferred with Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle and former Vice President Al Gore before launching his Web site.[7]
The New York Times, which generously provided a 1,041-word feature article to announce Brock’s grand opening, reports that, “Mr. Brock's project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress…. [CAP president John] Podesta has loaned office space in the past to Mr. Brock and introduced him to potential donors.” Brock received $2 million for the start-up. His donors include friend-of-Hillary Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of the fashion company Esprit; former cable TV mogul Leo Hindery Jr.; and San Francisco philanthropist James C. Hormel, an enthusiastic promoter of the “gay lifestyle” whom Clinton appointed ambassador to Luxembourg in the 1990s.[8]
In its short life, Media Matters has already acquired a reputation for zombie-like partisanship and reckless disregard for the truth. Brock and his team seem to sleepwalk through their work, rubberstamping, with mind-numbing monotony, virtually every conservative utterance that finds its way into major media as a “lie,” a “smear,” a “slander,” or a factual “error.”
War on Rush Limbaugh
Among Brock’s high-priority projects is a campaign to pressure Congress and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ban Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) – thus depriving our troops in Iraq of one of the few radio programs they are allowed to hear that wholeheartedly supports them and the cause for which they fight. Only one hour of Limbaugh’s three-hour show is broadcast on one of AFRTS’s thirteen radio channels, five days per week – constituting less than one percent of the network’s total weekly programming. [9] Nevertheless, that is one percent too many for the Shadow Party and its operatives.
Shortly after Media Matters began its campaign, Democrat Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa obligingly proposed an amendment to the 2005 Defense Authorization Act mandating “political balance” on AFRTS. The Senate approved Harkin’s amendment unanimously on June 16. It stops short of banning Limbaugh outright, but the amendment effectively requires AFRTS to balance Limbaugh with more leftwing commentary. Given the fact that one of the network’s two news channels currently airs National Public Radio 24 hours per day, seven days per week, it is hard to imagine how AFRTS can broadcast more leftwing commentary than it already does.[10] Even so, Senator Harkin complained in a June 17 Senate speech, “[T]here is no commentary on the service that would even begin to balance the extreme right-wing views that Rush Limbaugh routinely expresses on his program.” [11]---------- "The Shadow Party: Part II Continued : Center for American Progress (CAP)," By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com, October 7, 2004

Atrios

American Dr. Duncan B. Black, known under his internet publishing pseudonym as Atrios, is the author of the popular liberal weblog Eschaton, which receives an average of over 100,000 hits per day. On June 29, 2005, Atrios, reacting to possible Federal Election Commission regulations that he feared would impinge upon bloggers' right to support and solicit donations to political candidates, redesignated Eschaton, without change of content, "An Online Magazine of News, Commentary, and Editorial," rather than a blog. Atrios is also a regular commentator on Air America Radio's The Majority Report. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their cats Wiley and Gizmo, whose pictures he often features on Eschaton.

He holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He previously worked at the London School of Economics, the Université catholique de Louvain, the University of California at Irvine, and recently, Bryn Mawr College. Black is now a Senior Fellow at the media research group, Media Matters for America.

For a long time Atrios, who apparently emerged from the Internet forums of The WELL, remained pseudonymous and joked that he was actually a high school gym teacher. However, during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, he revealed that he had accepted a job at Media Matters for America and allowed his name and photo to be published. Black later said that he blogged psuedononymously as an academic to avoid attacks like those unleashed on Timothy Shortell.[1]

According to Black, the name "Atrios" is actually a (misspelled) reference to a character named Antrios in the play Art, who paints the central "white painting on white canvas" in the play.

Duncan B. Black aka Atrios photo below...

http://www.indepundit.com/archive2/atrios4.jpg