| Waves of conservative tweeters have descended upon Socrates, the lone wolf leftwing blogger who originally waged a one blogger war against Brett Kimberlin, a battle joined by Team Breitbart in the aftermath of Kimberlin and his associates fighting back against the very real and ethically challenged contretemps of Breitbart with respect to hoaxing Shirley Sherrod and ACORN. By the time Breitbart unveiled Anthony Weiner's weiny to an adoring public, it was full throttle game on.
By all accounts, Breitbart was a fair and gracious man in person, rather humble and likeable. Unfortunately, these are personal characteristics in this day and age that typically will gain you little out of life except maybe having the word "looser" stamped across your forehead.
And Andrew Breitbart was not a looser. He was a winner. And he won because his antics and his public persona were anything but gracious, fair, likeable and humble.
Socrates quickly became a cause celebre among the Breitbartians, who have been very fair in giving him his props for being the one leftwinger savvy enough to see through the donation schemes of Brad Friedman (BradBlog) and Brett Kimberlin. It appears that his relentless criticism had considerable impact on lowering traffic at BradBlog and possibly putting a dent in the endless fundraising efforts associated with election rigging investigations. At the very least, Socrates shed some light on a very untransparent side of the blogging game.
And he has steadfastly refused to put up a donation button at his blog, where, if he played his cards right, legions of his new conservative fan base would probably have hit the tip jar to the tune of tens of thousands by this point in the kerfluffle.
God bless my friend Socrates, for he refuses to play that game. Although as his Sancho Panza, I have advised him repeatedly to go ahead and play, and don't forget good ol Sancho on payday, either....
How much rake are all these blogging entrepreneurs collecting, anyway? Jane Hamsher, care to be the first to divulge?
None of our fucking business peons, just stfu and open your checkbooks to keep supporting our worthy causes.
One thing is made clear in all the volumes of blogging now spreading virally through the rightside of the Whiteysphere, from the Pattericos to the Stranahans to the malkins to the (other) McCains: you will see endless villification of Kimberlin but you will read nary a word of criticism of the late Andrew Breitbart, who has reached the mythical status of an internet God.
How does that cleancut image square with the reality?
Not very well. |
