Over at Off the Kuff, Charles Kuffner has a few comments about MWO. He has some personal objections to the tone and style of the web site, which is of course his right. But, I nonetheless have a few comments.
First, it is important to recognize that MWO is at some level a parody site. It takes the attitude and methods of the frothing Right (not lumping ALL of the Right in this category) and throws it back at them. It adopts their language (As in 'Republic Party' to imitate the often repeated 'Democrat Party'), Drudge's over-the-tope headlines and siren, etc... If there's one thing that we have learned in the past 12 years it is that turning up the volume, and mocking your opponents into the ground, works.
In a perfect world political discourse wouldn't be dominated by Rush Limbaugh. But, it is. And, for too many years there has been no counterpart on the Left. None. And, those cry-baby conservatives who are always screaming liberal media also always scream "free market" when the domination of the AM (and increasingly the FM) dial by right wing hate radio is pointed out to them, are not too stupid to understand the importance of ClearChannel's market power, or the fact that Mike Malloy, the closest thing to a "liberal Rush Limbaugh," (sorry for the comparison, Mike) was fired from his highly rated Chicago radio show not because of ratings.
We can't change the rules of the game, but we can accept them for what they are, arm ourselves, and start fighting back.
As for his objections to MWO's email campaigns - well, sure, the tone of some people's emails is over the top. And, MWO can be held, I suppose *partly* responsible for that. On the other hand, anyone who has questioned the media about this issue has gotten the response that volume and quantity matter. Their rules.
