I neglected to cover one point when I was mocking Jane Hamsher below...she concludes her screed with:
Right wing bloggers at the top of the food chain don't have to worry about this dynamic, because they're well compensated through a variety of means -- and also conspicuously silent on the subject. It's the toadies on the bottom who churn right wing propaganda for free who are whining, and they clearly don't understand the financial structure that both traditional media outlets and liberal blogs are operating within.Hmmm, let's go to the record:
Technorati Top 100 Blogs (by influence) as of April 9, 2009
1. Huffington Post - Liberal, venture funded
17. Daily Kos - Liberal, ad funded
32. Andrew Sullivan - Liberal, The Atlantic
42. Think Progress - Liberal, Media Matters
45. Michelle Malkin - Conservative, ad funded
46. Talking Points Memo - Liberal, ad and grant funded
51. Pajamas Media (really, Instapundit) - Conservative, investor funded
53. The Corner - Conservative, National Review
56. Hot Air - Conservative, ad funded
63. Ben Smith - Moderate, Politico
65. Crooks And Liars - Liberal, ad funded
76. Glenn Greenwald - Liberal, Salon
96. Powerline - Conservative, ad funded
So we've got 7 liberals, 4 conservatives, and 1 moderate. Of the liberals, 2 are ad funded - 29%. Of the conservatives, 3 are ad funded - 75%.
So when Hamsher says that 'Right wing bloggers at the top of the food chain don't have to worry about this dynamic, because they're well compensated through a variety of means -- and also conspicuously silent on the subject.' I guess she includes the Power Line guys' income from practicing law...I wrote a long time ago that the top liberal bloggers tended to have been hired to blog, and that continues to be true - Hamsher's dishonest comments to the contrary.
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Amid all the mastication metaphors about "food chains" and "chum", there seems to be an assumption that blogging is a spoils system, if not a scam.
I'd like to hear Hamsher explain who distributing compensation to top bloggers. Sinister Levantines, perhaps? Maybe even Marty Peretz himself?
This has already been explained (link).
Of course we know who's been slopping that particular swill trough, but who provides compensation "through a variety of means" to "Right wing bloggers at the top of the food chain"?
Maybe Hamsher could specify one means, one donor and one recipient, that is if it's okay with Sugar Daddy to give out that kind of information.
Glen, I believe that your request would be met with the "everybody knows its true" argument. Same tactic used by the Clinton Machine when discussing the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
I'm sure that's part of the reason Hamsher is miffed; she feels it only fair that members of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy get compensated too.
And no, even if Sugar Daddy could come up with an example, the last thing he wants is to stir this pot up. Questionable stuff in the gumbo, you know. Best leave it on the bottom.
Actually, I don't think I'd even get that much of a response. This guy didn't when he asked Hamsher to provide evidence for her claim that Tea Party protests are financed by FOX News.
Yes that link provides the essential answer.
And this link, Evan Sayet's speech, explains the intellectual context of her answer, in other words, it supplies the important "whatever that means" part: (link). ("Only" half an hour if you omit the questions from the audience, which you can.)
Facts or conspiracy theories can be added later. She already knows the bottom line, because she's following the normal modern liberal line of thinking, which always leads to the same bottom line.
She's also following modern liberal etiquette, which lead to liberal blogs using fourteen times as much profanity as conservative blogs. Minds that are constantly soaked and boiled in hate reveal it in the violent and obscene way they speak.
That's why, on average, liberal blogs can be detected easily. If you click on a blog that's new to you, and the author is boiling with hate and spewing obscenities constantly, fourteen to one it's a liberal blog, and of course it's correct to dismiss it whether it is or not.
(It's best to have nothing to do with constantly angry, negative people. Hate, constantly fulminating and following the same blind course, doesn't produce insights you can't live without. It only lures others into the same soul-corrosive swamp.)
The entitlement and moral blindness that tells people that they deserve money for hate and that conservatives must be stealing (or at least wanting to steal) goes with the package.