alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

April 27, 2007

Use Dangerstein With Extreme Caution and Adequate Ventillation

by AltHippo @ 2:32 pm. Filed under hacks

For someone who writes a politics/gossip column, Mary Ann Akers doesn’t seem to understand how either politics or gossip works. In case she’s reading this, I’ll type slowly. (Just kidding, Mary. I’m a pretty slow typist, anyway. But seriously, you may want to consider reading your commenters. They do a great job of pointing out the many errors of judgment and interpretation you made in this short column.)

Let’s start with this bit from a recent Akers column:

In Democratic political circles, though, Hamsher is better known as the author of a racially offensive attack against Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). The incident occurred last summer when Lieberman still officially carried a “D” after his name but was running an ultimately unsuccessful primary race against Ned Lamont.

Hamsher, who was supporting Lamont in the race, posted a doctored photo of Lieberman in black face on HuffingtonPost.com (Read The Washington Post’s coverage here). Hamsher wound up apologizing (to “anyone who was genuinely offended”) and taking down the photo.

A day after Clinton’s post appeared on firedoglake.com, Democratic activists in various corners privately questioned the wisdom of the Clinton campaign in choosing to write for a blog associated with Hamsher. “It’s potentially problematic,” said one Hillary backer, who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the issue. “The topic [equal pay for women] is OK, but you have to wonder why she picked firedoglake.com?”

As one of the hosts of the DC chapter of Drinking Liberally, I’ve met of a lot of Democratic activists over the last couple of years. I would venture to say that all of them are very supportive of FDL, and would consider it a big privilege to post there. To the extent that anyone remembers the blackface incident, it’s as a sophomoric joke about Lieberman’s subservience to the Bush administration, twisted out of context and proportion, until it resembled the line that got Imus fired.

Since you (meaning you, Mary) are treating this as the defining characteristic of FDL, I have to guess you’ve been talking to the war bloggers and Lieberman spokespeople. And, by Lieberman spokespeople I’m referring to the eminently hacky Dangerstein, who you quote from at length.

Dangerstein doesn’t like lefty blogs. By that I mean he doesn’t like blogs in general, as it makes it harder for him to control the message, and he’s opposed idealogically to lefties, in that they oppose the war that his candidate enjoys from his desk in Washington. He especially doesn’t like Jane Hamsher. She was a major factor in Joementum’s primary defeat. So, there’s a lot of reasons why Dangerstein would want to smear FDL. It’s kind of like doing a column on Giuliani using his first wife as the primary source.

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