Taking back the country

Craig Cline also pointed to that essay with the note "This is how we take back the country." I hadn't quite thought about it that way, but yes. The problem with the mainstream media is not that its liberal -- it's that it requires a proprietary attitude towards newsgathering. The thing about group blogs like PowerLine is that they have no huge pride of ownership. The result is a fast-moving, massive news collection and analysis engine. Thus the entire construct is turned upside down. It is a universal. motivated fact-checking machine. I'm thinking about the story in Dan's book where some corporate exec is on the stage at a conference lying abouth his company and everyone's online and a Yahoo news story about the company comes out, which everyone starts blogging. In the course of the talk the audience turns hostile. Later in the book, Dan tells about Howard Rheingold being asked if this has a chilling effect on such presentations. His response, "No, it has a chilling effect on bullshit." Ditto for Dan Rather, Tom deLay, George Bush.