Wash Post has an A1 story on Maryscott O'Connor of Daily Kos and My Left

[Pirate Smile]

Wing. She also has a Diary on it up on Kos.

The long 5 page article is generally a piece on the "angry left" in the blogosphere. Well, yes, we are angry but that isn't all.

The Left, Online and Outraged
Liberal Blogger Finds an Outlet and a Community

By David Finkel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A01

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. -- In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.

Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.


Maryscott O'Connor says her liberal Web log, My Left Wing, is "one long, sustained scream." (By David Finkel -- The Washington Post)

She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as "Satan," or about Karl Rove, "the devil"? Should it be about the "evil" Republican Party, or the "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"?

-snip-
Outspoken and Uncensored

These are mean times.

"I just want to see these swinging from their heels in the public square," reads a recent comment from someone named Dave in a discussion about the Bush administration on a Web site called Eschaton.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401648.html

5 pages long

Washington Post Article About A Blogger
by Maryscott OConnor
Fri Apr 14, 2006 at 07:57:15 PM PDT

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING


A couple months ago I got a cryptic email from someone claiming to be a reporter from the Washington Post; he asked me to call him in regard to a story he wanted to write.

I looked up the reporter on the Internet... turns out David Finkel is a Pulitzer-prize nominated reporter for the Washington Post. Still, easy to write an email and use someone else's name, right? So I called him.

It was for real. Finkel said he got my name from an email someone sent him, which led him to My Left Wing. He'd never been to a blog before (gasp! I thought EVERYBODY read the blogs!), and was intrigued not only by the medium but by my particular 'blog voice,' if you will.

And he wanted to write a piece about me. For the Style section, no doubt, I guessed.

Nope. Front page, baby.




Maryscott OConnor's diary :: ::
Finkel pitched the story to his editors and got the okay, on the condition I promise not to write about it before it ran on the Post's website, which I did.

A week later, he was here in my living room. He sat on my couch and explained that he didn't yet know what he was going to write, didn't have in mind any angle. He did have a phrase weaving in and out of his mind: "The Angry Left." Apparently I am the Angry Left personified.

Nevertheless, he sat on the couch with a notebook and we conversed. He watched me work on the blog, he asked me a million questions, some quite provocative: for a while there, I got the feeling he thought my writing on My Left Wing and all my passionate, vitriolic rhetoric was so much pissing in the wind. What did I hope to accomplish? Why was I so... "mean?" That was the word he used, too, which didn't bode well for my eventual representation in the article, I mused.

Finkel asked what time I woke up. 5am, I replied. That threw him a tad, but he was game: we agreed that the next day he would wait outside my house until I turned on the porchlight, to signal he could come in and be with me for an "ordinary day." That plan kind of fell by the wayside, though -- there is nothing ordinary about having a Washington Post reporter watching your every move and taking note of your every random exclamation and mutter...

Still, we achieved a sort of rhythmic normalcy as he observed and took notes for almost 12 hours. He came back the next day and we did it again, though we did manage to go out for lunch. The Post paid the tab; I was shocked to learn that Finkel would not accept a glass of water from me; he didn't want the slightest hint of impropriety, which meant not even using our bathroom, I discovered. Very strange, I thought.

We never did fully discuss that, but suffice to say I think David Finkel is an almost preternaturally ethical guy. At one point he brought out a camera (don't even get me started on my neurotic fear of having a horrible picture of me on the Front Page of the Washington Freaking Post)... but the light was bad. I asked if it would be better with the curtains open and he demurred; that, apparently, is creating the news rather than reporting it. (I keep thinking about that scene in "Broadcast News" when Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter chastise a cameraman who tells a Sandinista to put on his boots so he can get a good shot...)

Finkel returned for a fourth visit, but just to wrap things up and say goodbye. As the weeks passed, we spoke on the phone intermittently; at one point he got assigned to another, more time-sensitive story and mine was put on the back burner. Still, he assured me, the story would run.

But for the immigration brouhaha, Finkel's piece might have run last week... As it is, for better or worse, the front page of the Washington Post's Saturday edition tomorrow will feature an article by David Finkel about My Left Wing, left wing bloggers and... me.

And it's already up on their website. Go figure.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/14/225715/433

[otohara]

1. I Checked For Other Articles By WP's David Finkel

he's done many articles regarding, red vs blue, liberal family vs republican family. He's able to write good things about them and us. I think he must be a democrat, no republican would be able to maintain the balance he does, nor be so nice.

Thanks for posting, I will keep up with future articles by Finkel.

[flpoljunkie]

2. If you are not outraged, then you are not paying attention.

Very moving about her father...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401648_pf.html

And the photo album is because of a 25-year-old Marine who died fighting in Vietnam three months before she was born, which she thinks helps explain the note, the alcohol, the cigarettes and the very first piece of writing she ever published online, a rant against the war in Iraq that began, "Every single millisecond of my life was directly affected by the nightmare that was Vietnam."

<>Now, as they head toward 200, she picks up the album about her father, where there's a letter from him to his wife, written three days before he died, that ends, "I love you and the baby more than I ever knew a person could love."

The baby.

He never knew her name, or that she was a girl, or that his wife weighed less on the day their daughter was born than when she was conceived. "Catatonic" is how O'Connor describes what her mother became for a while, and then the mother got better, and then the daughter got worse, and then the daughter got better by becoming angry rather than silent about a new war, so angry she began wishing her president would go to hell.

__________________

[killerbush]

3. Please, order this lady some decaf.

This is one angry lady

[Terre]

5. A calm moment

and more in line with what MSOC looks like (haircolor notwithstanding):

[Uncle Joe]

11. Too bad her daddy did not live to see her, I'll bet he would be proud!

Kicked and recommended.

:kick:

[Terre]

4. Recommended!!

Because I want to see this on the GP. This story could reach the No. 1 position of WaPo's 20 most emailed articles list. I hope you guys will consider doing the same.

Currently it's at No. 2 as of this writing.

Since the WaPo doesn't have a rating system like Yahoo or MSNBC, email is the only way to get the article more exposure, and move it from No. 2 to No 1.

SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS, ENEMIES and 2nd Email Addresses!!

Link to email this article to everyone is located at the bottom of each page.

[Totally Committed]

6. You go, Maryscott!

Gotta love passion like that! Recommended.

TC

[dooner]

7. If you aren't as angry as Maryscott, you aren't paying attention...

It's hard to repress the fear and sorrow... how could any sensitive human being not be angry?

[Terre]

8. ONE MORE recommend folks

and don't forget to EMAIL that article.

:yourock:

[Terre]

9. WOOHOO!

Made it to No.1 !!!

"Here are the most popular articles, multimedia links and other editorial features sent by washingtonpost.com readers during the past 24 hours."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mostemailed/index.html

So don't stop emailing the article.

OK - I'll shut up for awhile - lol

:)

[Pirate Smile]

10. I'll give it a kick for ya!

[Eric J in MN]

14. It's still at #1.

nt

[Eric J in MN]

12. A difference betwen DU and "The Daily Kos" is perhaps

shown in the differerent reactions to this Washington Post article.

I like the fact that someone angry at the Bush Administration is quoted in today's "Washington Post," and other DUers whose posts I've read share that view.

At "The Daily Kos" however, a majority of the Commenters seem to be upset to see bloggers portrayed as angry.

[Pirate Smile]

13. There are threads here too that see it as a "hit" piece.

Perhaps there isn't that big a difference.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x938893

[ProudToBeLiberal]

15. Damn Marryscott made us look like extremist and on the fringe

yikes, there goes the independent vote.

[merkins]

16. Its a WAPO Hit Piece on the Left Blogosphere

Glenn Greenwald lays it out quite succinctly:

The tactics in the article are as intellectually lazy and empty as they are transparently deceitful and trite. There is no cheaper or emptier form of argumentation than to isolate a specific individual, describe her, and then, without any basis, ascribe those attributes generally to some larger group -- in this case, a much, much larger and more diverse group -- of which she is ostensibly a part. Anyone who has even minimal exposure to "the blogosphere" knows that it is insusceptible to the sort of sweeping generalization oozing from every misleading paragraph in this article.


The crude tactics employed by this article are easily dismissed, but the objective of this article -- to destroy the credibility of the blogosphere and what we do here, mostly because it is so threatening to the establishment media's dying monopoly over the flow of information, news, opinion and analysis -- should be taken very seriously. This is not some isolated hit piece. The Washington Post alone has published several articles in the last couple months which suggest, imply or outright state that the blogosphere generally, and the liberal blogosphere in particular, is irresponsible and filled with raged-driven radicals who are as extreme as they are irrelevant. Thus, one can and should ignore what it produces, because it is nothing more elevated than bitter, reckless, and hate-filled rants.


It is just astonishing to have to read an endless article from the Post about the supposed rage and anger on the "Left" -- all based on the sought-out, most extreme sentiments of people with little or no real influence -- while the eliminationist and traitor rhetoric that has been a central rhetorical tool of the Right's primary power centers for decades is mentioned only in passing, only by way of explaining how the Right used to engage in this sort of rage-driven politics until the Left took over. But anyone who listens on any given day to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, or who reads the hate-mongering and treason-accusing screeds of Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Powerline, know how fundamentally false that picture is.


Any time old, crusted, failing, dying institutions launch attcks on new and innovative competitors, it is an unmistakable sign that the attacking dinasour feels threatened and feels its power slipping away. That dynamic, more than any ideological goal, is what is motivating the steadily increasing appearance of these types of hostile blogosphere caricatures masquerading as news articles. The reality is that the blogosphere need not be a hostile competitor of journalists, but can be a uniquely valuable research and analysis tool to supplement the governmental adversary role which journalists are supposed to perform.


much more here:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/04/mistaking-caricature-and.html

[oxbow]

17. She reminds me of Spider Jerusalem..

Anybody here read Transmetropolitan? I swear she's the spitting image of Spider, right down to the chainsmoking and sailor's mouth! I used to love reading his rants...