Dearest Wonkette, aka Ana Marie Cox
has an article in Time Magazine on Daily Kos.com and she will also be filing dispatches from the Yearly Kos Convention.
"If I cared what commenters said, I'd kill myself." In the high-octane non-stop flame war that is the political blogosphere, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga knows how to get attention. He's kidding, of course. We're talking about the rhetorical excesses that can spill out of the impassioned debate that takes place on his creation, DailyKos.com, the world's most popular political blog.
"World's most popular political blog". Indeedy...
Compact and wiry, Moulitsas, 34, exudes quivering intensity. He speaks in staccato paragraphs, punctuated by intense stares and a raised eyebrow. His eyes bulge slightly outward, as if reacting to the pressure of all the ideas inside his head. Many of those ideas find a home on Daily Kos. A clearinghouse for liberal screeds and progressive perspective on the news, the site claims to get more than 500,000 unique visitors daily and more than 10,000 members maintain their own sub-blogs (called "diaries") within its reaches. On Thursday, almost a thousand of these loyal readers and contributors -- along with Wesley Clark, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and former Virginia governor and potential '08 contender Mark Warner -- will gather in Las Vegas for a pep rally-cum-political conference, "Yearly Kos."
...
His fiery phrasing naturally makes Moulitsas an inviting target for the right. Among bloggers, he is probably most famous for his tactless response to the June 2003 video images of the corpses of American military contractors being dragged through the streets of Fallujah, about which he wrote, "I feel nothing... Screw them." While conservatives -- and many liberals -- criticized Moulitsas's intemperance, the controversy did nothing to slow the site's skyrocketing readership. Indeed, the incident gave him his trademark.
Moulitsas will cop to setting the unabashedly belligerent tone of Daily Kos, right down to the design, which he calls "combative." Its logo is a silhouette of someone charging with a flag, and "the whole military theme of the site is very on purpose." Moulitsas spent part of his childhood in El Salvador during the country's civil war and was an Army artilleryman in Germany for three years, a background that, he says, makes him comfortable with throwing verbal bombs as well. "I'm not The Nation," he says. "I'm not afraid to use swear words. If people want calm, high-minded debate, this is not the site for it." Called in to mediate disputes among community members, Moulitsas has all the patience of a drill sergeant. "I get it all the time: 'Such-and-such was mean to me,'" he says in a mock whine. "I feel like I'm in high school. Suck it up, this is politics." More to the point, "This is war."
Click to read the whole thing...
Not that she talks about anything none of us don't already know; its good exposure outside of the blogosphere and good advertising for Yearly Kos. The more the word gets out the better off we are.
The more people we rally to come to their computers for information equals more people we can get motivated to then step away from their computer screens and get boots on the ground, and help get Democrats elected. We can read all we want, and we can raise all the money we want, but most critically and most importantly, we need boots on the ground.
Best part:
Watch Time.com for dispatches this week from Ana Marie Cox at the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas.
If only to rub salt in my not-going-to-make-it-to-Yearly-Kos wound, Ana Marie is going to be there. Damn.
====
Updated w/ Freeper goodness...
====
The Freepers found the Time column and they aren't too happy. Seems they don't like having their Freeperville having less hits than dKos.
I don't know the stats for FR visitors and posts, but find it difficult to believe Daily Kos is the most popular political web site in the world.
5 posted on 06/06/2006 10:40:11 AM PDT by Peach (If you can't stand behind our military, stand in front of them.)
Then of course personal attacks:
"Compact and wiry, Moulitsas, 34, exudes quivering intensity. He speaks in staccato paragraphs, punctuated by intense stares and a raised eyebrow. His eyes bulge slightly outward..."
In other words, a tweaker.
12 posted on 06/06/2006 10:42:42 AM PDT by telebob
Oh my gosh...you just jogged my memory. This would be the same Ana Marie Cox known as "Wonkette"--the D.C. gossip queen.
Typical lib chick: Mean. Trashy. Scary.
36 posted on 06/06/2006 10:52:21 AM PDT by TonyRo76 (American by birth. Patriot by choice. Christian by grace.)
I wonder if Ann Marie didn't give Moulitsas a Lewinsky with this article when she was done.
Never mind that Kos is driving the D's further and further to the left, leaving the sane D's essentially one choice . . .
64 posted on 06/06/2006 11:01:52 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs