Are Blogs Really That Difficult To Understand?

Here is yet another curious take on political blogs, Candidates beware: The blogs are watching

Many of Missouri's biggest political stories this year — regardless of candidate or content — had one thing in common: They first showed up on the Internet.

Newspapers statewide were scooped by a Democratic-leaning website, firedupmissouri.com, which first disclosed the details of Gov. Matt Blunt's proposal to sell off the assets of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority.

And Pubdef.net, a St. Louis Web blog, first reported U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill's closed-door assertion to fellow Democrats that President George W. Bush "let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."

Such coverage helps explain why potential Missouri candidates for 2008 are already grousing, mainly in private, about scrutiny they're facing on various blogs. Advertisement

Explained Democratic consultant Tony Wyche: "The Internet forces you to track another whole set of media outlets."

(singing) "Nobody knows...the troubles I've seen..."

The poor dears!

A Republican blog, The Source (mosource.com), already claims credit for the first 2008-related controversy. The site was among those who produced the first accounts of contributions that Attorney General Jay Nixon — a Democrat running for governor in 2008 — received from Democratic groups. Those groups had just gotten similar sums from AmerenUE, which was in the midst of negotiations with the state over the Taum Sauk reservoir collapse. Nixon, the Democratic groups and Ameren deny any link between the donations and the talks.

Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, says Missouri politicians must accept the fact that activities or comments that once were ignored could now end up as fodder for the Internet for all the world to see.

"If you thought you didn't have any privacy before, you really don't have privacy now,'' Robertson said.

I hate to bust on someone from the old Alma Mater, but PRIVACY!?! What!?! Who??!? How??!?! I'll admit that often in the past candidates could rely on their cozy working relationships with reporters to keep some things under the radar, but campaign contributions and negotiations carried on with the state are not, by any stretch of the imagination, private concerns. If such things were not brought to light before a better explanation is that the newspapers were not doing their job, and not that bloggers are now doing anything unseemly.

Republican blogger John Combest pointed to the flap over McCaskill's New Orleans remark as evidence that "the Internet has destroyed the sense among (Missouri) candidates that there's any such thing as 'off the record.'"

That's not necessarily a good thing, said St. Louis University political science professor Ken Warren.

"The stuff on these blog sites is usually extremely partisan, extremely irresponsible and often simply not true,''

Notice what is "extremely partisan, extremely irresponsible and simply not true," are bloggers, and not McCaskill's statement.

Terrific.