Kos Kounting?

By Russ Vaughn

The Mainstream Media have fallen all over themselves oohing and aahing about the 1,200 or so nutroots who turned out for the Yearly Kos convention in Chicago. I don't seem to recall such fawning coverage when 30,000 Americans of a more conservative orientation came together in Washington, D.C. back in March in a counter-protest to an anti-war march on the Capitol.

Typical of this media toadying was a column by the Boston Globe's, Ellen Goodman. While knocking the E-male dominance of this new media marvel, blogging, she opines that this left side of the blogosphere is to the Democrats what conservative talk radio is to the Republican Party, making it seem for all the world like the Web is an owned domain of the Left.

The numbers are somewhat disproportionate. Equating this Kos crowd to the tens of millions of Americans who daily listen to conservative talk radio may be just a wee bit premature. Absolute numbers aside, it would be a mistake to assume the left owns the blogosphere, even if Kos makes a lot of noise right now.

Apparently, Ms. Goodman has hit her delete key on the 2004 presidential campaign when it was the conservative blogosphere that made it impossible for her and her liberal colleagues to first try to ignore, and when conservative bloggers wouldn't allow that, to attempt to vilify a group of true American heroes, the Swift Boat Veterans. You can't blame Ellen, or any other liberal media personality for conveniently wanting to forget that it was a conservative blogging campaign that enabled Americans to hear the truth about the Democrats' phony war-hero, presidential candidate. That is the phenomenon that historians eventually will record as the first major impact of the blogosphere on an American political campaign.

Russ Vaughn is a Vietnam Veteran and proud supporter of the Swift Boat Veterans