by Unknown | 8/03/2008 07:42:00 PM
Markos, from this post:

I'm clearly supremely unqualified to tell a women's conference what it should be about.


Markos, from earlier in the same post:

BlogHer is about, well, women who blog.


I'm sure if Markos had been around in 1848, he would have been happy to inform us that Seneca Falls was about, well, women who oppose slavery, and that just "isn't that interesting a story."

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7 Comments:


Anonymous Anonymous on 8/04/2008 1:50 PM:

So what's new? He grossly exploited Buffy Orpington by posting his front page "privacy" hypocritical rant which included contact outing her, but which brought in site traffic and directly benefited his pocket. She was brutalized by that community in part as a direct result of Markos' free market, self-serving actions, and the prevailing comment was that "she asked for it."

Progressive community indeed.

 

Blogger Ahistoricality on 8/04/2008 3:43 PM:

I'm not a Kos fan, as you're well aware. I'm actually struck by the fundamentally party-conservative -- not really liberal or progressive, but deeply, Big-D Democratic -- nature of Markos's project and his consistent unwillingness to actually address the coalition nature of the Democratic party. (also by the contrary consistent tendency of Republicans and 'mainstream' news sources to view Markos and the dKos crew as some kind of ultra-liberal, hard-left cadre) He clearly sees constituencies like progressives and women as subgroups within and subordinate to the Party rather than seeing the Party as an alliance of something like equals.

 

Blogger Unknown on 8/04/2008 4:19 PM:

Anonymous, it's not new, but it's still disturbing to me to see it continue. However, I was a member of the Kos community when the Buffy Orpington thing happened. As far as I can tell, Buffy was a sockpuppet of a right-wing troll who was never in any real danger, as she never actually existed.

Ahist, hear hear. Very well put. I do still read the front page of Daily Kos, mostly because I enjoy Brownsox's election analysis (and Markos has some good number-junkie stuff too on occasion). But I try not to get more involved with it than that. Usually I can read the FP without getting too peeved, but this time that was unfortunately not the case.

 

Blogger Unknown on 8/04/2008 6:44 PM:

Here's Anonymous's last comment, without the identifying information about dKos posters. See here for this site's policy on anonymity.

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Buffy is a very real person who continues to suffer very real harm and fallout from those events, and Markos is well aware of how he victimized her and harmed her, as are a dozen or so others on the site, including occam's hatchet, RubDMC and others (RenaRF, clonecone, etc.).

She wrote about health policy and issues and wrote from the point of view of a true progresive.

That may well have been the motive behind attacking her, as she did not address politics and campaigning. Ergo, she wasn't a Democratic tow the line shill.

It's so interesting that after Markos banned her from the site, no one investigated why she was so used, and the "progressive community" had no more conern for her than a piece of trash.

Your conclusion that she was a sockpuppet is so convenient for Markos, is it not? Tidy and clean.

 

Blogger Unknown on 8/04/2008 6:45 PM:

Anonymous, you may be correct, as I don't know Buffy personally. Nevertheless, I saw "Buffy" elsewhere around the net after the dKos thing happened, and she seemed pretty clearly to be a fake individual.

Just because dKos is a generally bad website doesn't mean everything they do is bad.

 

Anonymous Anonymous on 8/04/2008 6:59 PM:

Really? Provide links to those "sightings". Provide primary sources.

"Seemed" is unseemly when offering unfounded opinion as point of fact.

Your responses are leading me to evaluate the credibility of your posts with another degree of skepticism.

Very disappointing and very much below any research standard.

 

Blogger Unknown on 8/04/2008 11:17 PM:

As per our additional conversation via e-mail, it appears I was too hasty in typing "Buffy" as a sockpuppet. It does appear that she is a real person who is not a Republican troll. My apologies.

As to your comment above -- given my online knowledge of the cast of characters you mention, I would say some of them (Rena and RubDMC, for two) are generally good and decent people who got carried away in what was clearly an incident of mass hysteria. At least one other on your list is one of the most abhorrent and truly evil people on Daily Kos.

Believe me when I say I've had enough run-ins with members of that crew to last me a lifetime. You can check my diary history (as Nonpartisan) on that site if you like. However, if you do know Buffy personally, please express to her my opinion that she hasn't handled the situation very well. Continuing to try to discuss the matter on blogs, as I saw her do for months after the incident, is completely counterproductive and just keeps the emotional pain going for no apparent gain. As I see it, her two best options are 1) to try to forget the whole thing, or 2) to seek legal counsel, start suing people, and get restraining orders against all those who harmed her, which should bring the required peace of mind. I'm aware that she's desperately poor, but I'm willing to bet that there are quite a few right-leaning law firms out there that would relish an opportunity to sue members of Daily Kos, and would be happy to do it pro bono.