The Blogosphere Is Dead: Long Live The Blogosphere

Nine years ago, the merest whiff of the possibility of getting icky Liberal blogger stink on them was sufficient for the Edwards campaign to humiliate and sack two liberal bloggers just days after bringing them on to do "netroots outreach".  Tossed under the bus they were, and very publicly at that, because their hiring made Bill "Cardinal Richelieu" Donohue and Michelle "Internment Camp Counselor" Malkin unhappy.

From Salon, February 2007:

Edwards campaign fires bloggers

Trying to head off a firestorm of criticism from the right, the presidential candidate dismisses two liberal bloggers his campaign hired only recently.

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps — John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare’s Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan “anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots,” and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would “caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later.”...

Leading the charge against Marcotte — and to a lesser extent McEwan — have been bloggers like the National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez and Michelle Malkin. Malkin originally accused Marcotte of trying to scrub Pandagon’s archives of material that could be embarrassing to the Edwards campaign. When that proved untrue, Malkin posted a correction, but said that the fact that she had been wrong was “even worse for the Edwards campaign” because “its blogmaster left crackpot posts like that one up and hired her anyway.”

...

Mind you, they weren't sacked because they had lied or misrepresented reality in any way: they were sacked because, like most despised Liberal outcast who were the only ones pushing back against the Worst Administration in American History, they used some very blunt language to be heard over the roar of the Beltway media's craven collusion with the Bush Administration.

These were members of our ragged Liberal legions, most of whom have either given up or passed away.

These were members of our ragged Liberal legions, who one fed-up Conservative after another has been forced to admit (grudgingly and through clenched teeth, without every saying the Terrible Words out loud) were right about the Right all along.

These were members of our ragged Liberal legions who, despite being right about the Right all along.are still conspicuously ignored by the same people who still throw big bags of money at the likes of Bill Kristol and David Brooks and Michael Gerson and Joe Scarborough and Corey Lewandowski and ....

These were members of our Liberal ragged legions, who, if the're still at their keyboards at all, are probably still barely scrapping together poverty wages by shaking their begging bowls every now and then.

And now, nine years later...

From the New York Times:

Donald Trump, in Shake-Up, Hires Breitbart Executive for Top Campaign Post

Donald J. Trump has shaken up his presidential campaign for the second time in two months, hiring a top executive from the conservative website Breitbart News and promoting a senior adviser in an effort to right his faltering campaign.

Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, will become the Republican campaign’s chief executive, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser and pollster for Mr. Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, will become the campaign manager.

...

More on this later after I take a long walk and think about my life decision.