Yglesias issued his own followup stating that he published Palmieri’s disclaimer at her request, and specifically denying that she “inserted” it, as if she published her bit without his knowledge or consent. He was clumsy in how he did that, leading to the firestorm of controversy at the appearance of Yglesias’s superiors doing damage control. Had he put in a disclaimer saying that his post caused some upset, and his superiors wanted to clearly state that his blog was his blog, and not CAP’s editorial position, there would have been no controversy.
The error was Yglesias’s, not CAP’s or Palmieri’s. And it was a small error at a minor issue that blew up because blog readers loves them some good outrage at the man.
As a practical matter, if Palmieri requested that her comment be put on the blog, Yglesias wasn’t really in a position to refuse. Anyway IMO the issue is that Palmieri wanted to use Yglesias’s blog to directly contradict what he had said earlier about Third Way. She went beyond just issuing a simple statement that Yglesias didn’t necessarily reflect the views of CAP.
It might be useful to clarify the role of bloggers in left-leaning publications and websites. For the most part, they’re not employees in the way we normally experience the employer-employee relationship. It’s really more like op-ed columnists at a newspaper, though bloggers are generally chosen because they’re at least in the same political and philosophical ballpark as the folks picking up the paycheck.
Like op-ed columnists at a newspaper, they write and express opinions about all sorts of things. Just like everyone knows that Charles Krauthammer and E.J. Dionne, Jr. don’t express the editorial views of the Washington Post (and that their opinions would carry a lot less weight if they were constrained by the newspaper’s party line), everybody knows that not every word emanating from Yglesias’ keyboard reflects the views of CAP.
And just as it would be viewed as heavy-handed and rather stupid, really, if the Washington Post inserted a comment next to a specific George F. Will column indicating that Will was speaking for himself and not for the WaPo, and spoke of their close business relationship with those Will was criticizing, Palmieri’s intervention in Yglesias’ blog was also viewed as heavy-handed and rather stupid.
And in both cases, the problem wouldn’t be the WaPo’s/CAP’s interference with its columnist/blogger. The problem would lie in who was telling the WaPo/CAP what they should be saying.
Another thing is that Third Way and the DLC aren’t considered terribly progressive by most of the left (they’re actually considered to be hardcore corporatists). That the Center for American Progress is that much in bed with them is kind of squicky to a lot of lefties.
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Yeah, but why? Of all the things to get bent out of shape about, a boilerplate disclaimer seems to be…I dunno–a case of a bunch of people getting sand in their vaginas over nothing. Had there been censorship, repercussions to the writer, hell–if she’d made him recant…then I could see the reason for the upset. But I’m still not getting why “Hey kids, the views expressed on this blog do not necessarily reprensent the opinons of our organization–offically, we think the folks at 3d Way are swell, just swell!” would trigger a huge response. It’s quite literally the most harmless way I can think of to make sure that you protect your organization’s relationship with your client while still letting your writer speak freely.
I’ve been on the net since BBS days in the late '70s and I don’t get this behavior either. It sounds like a bunch of people looking to be pissed off about…something…anything.
Heh–well, not everyone. I didn’t know that. I do now though.
Ah–thank you for the analogy. That makes it clearer, although the outrage described by the OP still seems weird. My reaction in the Will analogy above would be to roll my eyes and continue on with my life–I wouldn’t write a letter to the editor about it.
Oh, my…Leftward Blogistan (and I speak as a peripheral member of that nation) IS basically letters to the editor. Or, maybe more accurately, a vast series of Open Letters, with instant feedback mechanism. Most of us would rather write a “letter to the editor” than breathe…
What we have here is a demonstration of the vast chasm that separates the Rightward Netizen* from their Leftward brethren.
To me, it just doesn’t seem to be worth the time to write a letter about: if she’d done something, censored him, made him recant? Sure, I’d write a letter. But for boilerplate, even very inartfully placed boilerplate? :: shrug ::
Heh…I think a lot of it is that most of us are just still inordinately tickled that the blogging world allows us to actually speak (you know what I mean) to the “celebrity” bloggers directly, and usually have an actual text conversation with them. And the actual editors-in-chief or CEOs or whatever of the hosting foundations. When someone like Governor Paterson or Keith Olbermann or Barack Obama actually post a diary at Daily Kos, it’s kind of like an online re-enactment of the time when you were a kid and you accidentally dropped the whole bag of bread crumbs into the water at the duck pond. It initiates an immediate stampede in the general direction of the bread…er, diary…by a virtual mob of ducks…er, bloggers…who all have to immediately post their question to the big-shot.
That makes sense–I used to be on a science-fiction discussion group and when an actual AUTHO*R showed up, there’d be the same sort of feeding frenzy.
As an aside:
Obama himself (not one of his minions) posts at KOS? That’s actually pretty cool.
Hopefully they have a way to insure his ID isn’t spoofed. Remember the chaos we had here when someone started spoofing user IDs by putting a blank space after the name?
To my knowledge, he’s posted twice. His first diary was more or less an explanation of why he voted to approve Roberts for Chief Justice (and boy, did he get a chilly reception for that one!) and his second was during the primaries earlier this year. Governor Paterson of New York has posted several times since his ascension to that office and has generally been received warmly (at least until his budget proposals were released). Olbermann posts semi-regularly.
I believe the editorial staff of DK do follow-up work when a “famous name” is registered (i.e., calling their office to confirm that it’s actually the person or at least his/her staff that registered the name) before they approve the account for posting.
Hell, the part about Third Way being “key leaders in the progressive movement” is generally regarded as untrue - the point of the Third Way school of thought in the Democratic Party, at least in theory, is to split the difference between progressives and Republicans. So they’re hardly “key leaders in the progressive movement”; they’re not even regarded as part of the progressive movement.
Can’t speak specifically to Third Way, but in practice, that part of the Dem coalition - DLC, The New Republic, Liebercrats - generally puts a lot more energy into attacking progressives than attacking Republicans. Hence the disdain.
I do now though.
