they can't imaging that anyone outside the beltway has access to information. but amazingly, people who were well read or educated, people at places like universities and highly competitive business environments have been finding information for, well, years and years, all without being part of any beltway cocktail party circuits whatsoever. of course, brian's kind have always ignored the well educated, so they haven't thought them much of a threat.

but along comes the intertubes. people like lambert devote hours each day, reading information, checking sources, going to events, asking questions...how is that not like journalism again? oh, that's right: because at the end of his day, lambert doesn't raise his pinky finger in a Maclean mansion garden party with the 'right' people. what can he possibly know?

think on these comments when you wonder how some of the gang of 500 can believe the war is being won. it's no bet to say that if i put lambert, digby and atrios on a panel and filled a room with every pundit on TV and the SCLM, bloggers would know more than the latter group put together. more about facts, truth, and what really matters, that is.

brian knows this, which is why he relies on slurs and insults. he's afraid. and he should be. the jig is almost up.

... if you had that panel, they'd find some way to cling to -- and get the public to cling to -- some bogus narrative about civility, centrism, Iraq-is-the-war-on-terror, etc. and ostensibly repudiate all of the bloggers' vastly superior output of facts, truth, and what really matters.

I'm hoping it won't always be thus, and maybe it won't. But for the time-being, Vinny will keep slowly building his influence, and Brian will keep quickly destroying his country.

www.vastleft.com

But for the time-being, Vinny will keep slowly building his influence, and Brian will keep quickly destroying his country, but also his own audience. we'll see which is destroyed first, and if vinny survives.

My answer to Our Brian would be along the lines of:

Brian:

Yep. Part time job, no pay, 4 hours a day, 4 years, non-stop, build and administer a site, pay for the dedicated server to handle the user spikes, deal with the trolls and the spam, and try to figure out what the Fuck you guys are doing to us down there in the Beltway. Man, that's "efficiency."

All that--and my posts and readers--are my credentials, and if with your salary and access you're worried about competing with me, you're even more weak than I ever imagined.

And just think: In all my four years, I didn't once cheerlead the country into the greatest strategic disaster in American history!

Peace out,
Lambert.

P.S. There's an error in the first line of my response but, as you know, we in the blogosphere are prone to error. I wrote "Brian." I mean to write "Brian, you cocktail wienie-munching wuss." Sorry.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I especially liked this comment:

doesn't it strike you as rather strange, Brian, with the meager resources you say Vinny has, that he is putting out a "product" that people are choosing over yours? Either he's offering a good product or...you can finish that thought, Brian. He wouldn't be a professional threat otherwise.

Let's see now...are doctors worried that people will stop coming for their visits because they can get equal or better care from the web? Are university professors whining that they going to lose their jobs because people can get the equivalent of highly regarded degrees, by surfing? Do we hear physical trainers complaining that Vinny is stealing their clients?

Didn't think so...

www.vastleft.com

Perhaps the largest truth between the lines of Brian Williams' lament is this:

The reason people have turned to blogs for their breakdown of what constitutes real news is that Brian Williams and his pals are utterly incapable of delivering even a kernal of the truth from their hollow pulpits.

They know it, and more and more people have figured it out for themselves.