O’Reilly attacks my life again!

I swear this is the last time I will talk about this guy. However, in the span of the last week he has smeared my baseball team and now, my favorite political blog, DailyKos. The only reason that I even care enough to say something in here about it is that I know that a few of my dear readers watch his show. They know that I am a participant on DailyKos and that I will be at YearlyKos in Chicago. Last night, Bill O’Reilly called DailyKos readers and posters “Full of hate. The worst of example of hatred America has to offer.” Yeah, I *might* have taken that a little personally. Of course, Mr No Spin might *just* have been spinning. A tad. Let me give you a little run down of how DailyKos works and the kinds of people I have met.

There are over 120,000 registered users on DK. You must be a registered user to post a comment or diary. Now, I have no doubt that the comments he quoted were indeed found on the site. I’ve seen comments like that. Hateful – oh yes. Reflective of the entire blog and community of users? Hell NO! Those were random comments in user diaries. One would have had to go digging (I am sure his interns had fun with that) to find them, but find them you can. Will you see words like that the minute you open the site? No. Of those 120,000 users, 16 are front page writers. That includes the blog’s founder, Markos Moulitsas. Those 16 are the representatives and voices of the site. It is their words you see front and center. On the right hand side are community diaries. The only part of those you can see is the diary title. Markos forbids profanity in the titles. The top 8 are those which are recommended. A Recommended diary must receive a certain number of user recommendations and comment activity before it can reach those top 8 spots. Otherwise, with a community that large and active, diaries tend to scroll down, and then off the front page very quickly. Now, Bill O was pulling examples not from diary content – which is the most readily visible, but from comments within diaries. That means someone has to click into a diary on the right, open it in full to read it, then click on the comments section. Still, within the comments, the community of users will police things. A truly hateful and disruptive comment will most likely be troll rated until it is no longer visible to the casual visitor. There will probably also be replies chastising the commenter for what was said. Now, given that is a political site, passions do run high. Vitriol IS spewed. And some of it is not troll rated out of sight. Every political movement has it’s share of nuts and DailyKos and the progressive movement surely does! I’ve seen them. I ignore them. They are never on the front page, never become Trusted Users, and certainly do not drive our discussions. IOW – O’Reilly cherry picked the worst examples he could find and then painted the entire community with that broad brush. The King of Spin.

Now, please take a moment to click on the following two links. It will only take about 5 minutes to read the first and maybe 2 to read the second. A response to O’Reilly from DailyKos front page writer BarbinMD titled “What O’Reilly Missed”. This one highlights some examples of the REAL community spirit that exists there. The diarists that she highlights are all frequently Recommended and are highly respected and trusted community members. These are the people you will find there on a daily basis with just one click. No digging required. The next is from Markos. He is currently on vacation with his family in Greece, but apparently his email started filling with some O’Reilly viewer’s reaction to last night’s show. See if you can detect the hint of irony in these examples. “O’Reilly’s Hate Mongers.” I am not surprised.

As for me personally, why do I participate on the site? Easy. The “hate filled” community! Cheers & Jeers, Sat Morning Garden Blogging and the new Birding series. Brother and Sisters, the Sunday prayer thread. The series’ that Barb highlights. PhillyGal and her wacky Pootie Pic diaries. Metoer Blades and his Environmental Rescue series. Oh yeah, hate filled stuff indeed! I’ve made lifelong friends there. I’ve witnessed support and love and understanding there that is sadly sometimes lacking In Real Life. We’ve mourned the loss of members to cancer. We’ve celebrated births and marriages. It’s LIFE. It’s PEOPLE. It’s a COMMUNITY. With a few loons 🙂