Money, money, money

Today I found something that seems to be very ridiculous to me. Or are you thinking about buying a T-shirt on which the name of your favorite blog is printed? Does that make any sense? Are there really people who buy these ordinary light brown shirts? I'm sorry, but there must be at least some idiots who buy this stuff. And other shopping addicts will be satisfied, too. Daily Kos Store offers a lot. Take a look at the picture above. What do you see? An ordinary polo-type shirt? No, take a closer look. Have you got it? Yes, something is different. D A I L Y K O S is written on it! Incredible! But pay attention on what Daily Kos states:

"VERY LIMITED QUANTITY! We had a lot of requests for "work-wear" shirts, and this should work for your 'casual fridays'."

So, what are you waiting for? Klick on the "buy" button and enjoy your 'casual friday'! But at first: $24,50, please...

Scandalous

In my last post I presented Daily Kos' authors and stated that they are the main reason for me to say that the blog is "authentic, reliable and well-balanced". But today I read something that questions my previous assumption. In 2003 the Howard Dean campaign (klick here to hear the legendary "Dean Scream") retained Daily Kos' founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga as a technical advisor. Zephyr Teachout who directed internet organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign told The Wall Street Journal more about her motivations behind this appointment:

"On Dean’s campaign, we paid Markos [...] as consultant, largely in order to ensure that he said positive things about Dean. We paid him over twice as much as we paid one staffer of similar background [...]. While he ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy his airtime. To be very clear, he never committed to supporting Dean for the payment — but it was very clearly, internally, our goal."

Incredible. I never expected this to happen. Although one could admit that bloggers aren't journalists and therefore shouldn't be seen as "objective" observers, I think that stinks. I know that Daily Kos is biased and that most authors favor Obama but on the whole I always had the feeling that there would be at least some distance between the politicians and the bloggers. I feel betrayed somehow. I will definitely judge the next Daily Kos posts from a different point of view...