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Powerline's Daisy Chain

Minneapolis is a great place to live unless you are a liberal columnist for the Star-Tribune. Nick Coleman, one such writer, lambasted the Powerline guys for criticizing him and being, well, extreme. What is amazing is that Coleman takes issue with the journalistic integrity of bloggers and yet rightly characterizes his piece as a "hatchet", perhaps because it's substantially an ad hominem based condemnation of Time Magazine's Blog of the Year. He writes, "Time magazine's 'Blog of the Year' is not run by Boy Scouts. It is the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won't recognize. Unless you came from Alabama with a keyboard on your knee." Other conservative bloggers are part of Powerline's "daisy chain" that is "assaulting the Mainstream".

In the end, Coleman accuses (via speculation) Powerline and its "mighty righty allies" of being on the take from political parties.

I'm wondering what Coleman hoped to accomplish through this column? Is he trying to make himself look bad? Will the Star Tribune publish a rebuttal?

Prior to the explosion of blogs it would have been difficult to hold Coleman accountable for his words or to respond in a suitable manner. With the shifting information paradigm, Hindrocket and the Big Trunk are able to answer Coleman, and do so here and here. Update: Deacon responds here. The "Daisy Chain" kicks-in with Captain's Quarters, InstaPundit, Betsy Newmark, Jim Garaghty, Shot In The Dark, SCSUScholars, Hugh Hewitt, Pejmanesque, Running Scared, La Shawn Barber and CounterPundit all responding. Ouch! I don't think I'd want this crew of heavy weights reviewing one of my articles.

Updates:

Steven Taylor, who lives in Alabama, adds to the daisy chain. He also uses a keyboard (sometimes on his knee) and was a scout. Therefore, he provides a qualified response to Coleman's denigration of his state's citizens.

Eugene Volokh provides a remarkably clear analysis of Coleman's assumptions (which are all wrong).

The Evangelical Outpost gives an interesting perspective: Essentially, what we have are two 'brands' going head to head for what Hewitt calls 'mindspace' – the attention, respect, and trust of information consumers."

And, Rathergate and BlogsforBush weight in.

(12/30) - The Big Trunk writes, "I spoke yesterday with Coleman's editor at the Star Tribune to complain about the factual inaccuracies in Coleman's column and to ask the Star Tribune to run corrections. Calling Coleman a megaphone would be far too kind, but my conversation with the editor persuades me that the "without oversight" portion of his description of us applies more to Coleman than it does to us."

ArgueWithSigns answers my "rhetorical" questions - cool! His comments are certainly unique: "Coleman is a columnist. If people read, he’s happy. If people read, the publisher is happy. And clearly, gigging the blogosphere (and especially its rising stars) is a guaranteed way to get read. How many hits has Coleman’s column brought to the Star-Trib website? Hits is money, in the parlance of news publishers.... In fact, I think Mr. Coleman understands the blogosphere a lot better than he lets on. "

Posted by tim at December 29, 2004 10:35 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Rod Stanton at January 19, 2005 10:41 AM