Getting Credit from Old Media

This blog, sparked by Jill Miller Zimon, fascinates me since it's totally contrary to my philosophy as a political blogger. You see, from the start my main goal was propaganda. I was a one man left win pinko version of Fox News pouring liberal poison into the ears of the media elite.

My theory was that most regular reporters were too jaded/overworked/lazy to actually write good content, so that merely by reporting on stories that didn't get any coverage you could completely shape how the media covered them. The same way that old media acts as a catalyst/shaper of how the blogosphere reacts to mainstream stories, a blog that targets stories that don't get the coverage could have the same effect on them. It's human nature. The first person to comment on anything shapes how the collective reacts to it. As I like to say, the first person to ride into dodge is always the sheriff.

Bottom line, I wanted them to copy me, and I didn't want any credit, because if they did it would lessen the power of the story. Blogger sitting in his basement who doesn't even live in the district reports... has a lot less power than the venerable Cincinnati Enquirer, why we are venerable is beyond us since we've been endorsing candidates such as Jean Schmidt that have been sucking the lifeblood out of this great nation for decades, reports... I know that it worked because reporters have told me that I had an influence.

This is why I refused interviews where I would be on camera. The story was never about me. It was about my agenda. In the case of the special it was the Democratic Party's assault on the heart in the Republican base. I've embraced the medium and was playing the game as the landscape dictated. The fact that others took credit for my work even though they only showed up at the last minute was the price of a job well done.

In the end the only credit that really meant anything to me came from insiders within the Schmidt camp.

Here's an example. I'm on a mailing list where somebody was complaining about how some of his pro Obama content was being copied, and that people weren't taking it down fast enough after they complained. I asked him if he thought that the people writing slanderous emails about Obama were complaining that they were being forwarded? He should be happy that he's being "ripped" off, because that means that it is viral and thus having impact upon people. In politics, as in everything, the profit comes from selling the sausage, not from making it.