David Sirota

I hate blogging about blogging, but I wanted to raise a bit of a concern about the strange conspiracy theory-ish tick among a small but vocal minority of bitter souls in the netroots that serves to further the image of the blogosphere as a place only for fringe lunatics, rather than thinking people. This image, of course, is inaccurate - but it doesn’t help when the discourse is infested with wild, off base and totally unsubstantiated theories that have absolutely no shred of connection to reality. My beef is with this: whenever a blogger asks substantive questions of one Democratic presidential candidate, that person usually gets accused of, at best, helping the right, or more often, working for and being paid by another presidential candidate.

This first kind of attack is irritating in the same kind of way the Bush administration regularly accuses its opponents of aiding and abetting terrorists when anyone asks an honest question about the Iraq War. Sorry, folks - “democracy” doesn’t mean just sitting back and staying silent while D.C. insiders coronate celebrities with party nominations for the most powerful office on the Planet Earth. Similarly, asking our candidates to explain themselves and what they would actually do in office is not helping our opponents - it’s doing our civic duty.

But it is this second line of attack (see this post’s comments for a typical example) that really gets me even angrier, because it is so boldly dishonest. Whenever I have posed questions about the factual record of any of the presidential candidates - whether its Obama, or Clinton or anyone else - inevitably I am accused by some commenters and some other bloggers of doing it because I am being paid by another candidate. They don’t want to talk about actual issues, or any of the factual points I bring up. And, of course, they offer no proof of their diversionary accusations because there actually IS no proof because I actually don’t work for another presidential candidate, nor have I even talked to any presidential candidates about working for them.

I was diligent about noting my work for Ned Lamont in every post I wrote about Ned when I was working for him. I have full disclosure on my blogs about what I do for a living. But that none of that - not the lack of proof nor my record of disclosure - seems to matter to these very angry, very sad, very bitter, very pathetic people who make these groundless accusations.

I’m not sure what can be done about this tiny but annoyingly loud and overly spastic/aggressive minority of people who have absolutely no regard for the truth, and in the process, are degrading the reputation of the blogosphere as a whole. All I would say to them, I guess, is please shut your traps you dumb, inane conspiracy theorists. If you want to have a debate about the substance, bring it on. But just because you can’t defend your agendas on the actual substance and facts doesn’t mean you have to destroy the credibility of the netroots with absurd, dishonest accusations pulled straight from the inner folds of your rectum.

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Please Shut Up, You Dumb Conspiracy Theorists