“CNN’s Kyra Phillips and John Roberts spent a good five minutes yesterday expressing serious concern over what they called “the dark side” of the Internet: the plague of “anonymous bloggers” who are “a bunch of cowards” for not putting their names on what they say, and who use this anonymity to spread “conspiracy,” “lunacy,” “extremism” and false accusations (video below). The segment included excerpts from an interview with Andrew Keene, author of Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture, who explained that the Real Media must serve as “gatekeepers” to safeguard the public against the dangers of anonymity on the Internet. Roberts demanded that bloggers should “have the courage at the very least to put your name on it,” while Phillips announced: “something is going to have to be done legally. . . . these people have to be held accountable, they’re a bunch of cowards.”

“These CNN journalists have a very good point, of course: it was, after all, Internet bloggers — using the scourge of anonymity — who convinced the nation of a slew of harmful conspiracy theories: Saddam had WMD, an alliance with Al Qaeda, and responsibility for the anthrax mailings. Anonymity is also what allowed bloggers to smear Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, and Steven Hatfill with totally false accusations that destroyed their lives and reputation, and it’s what enabled bloggers to lie to the nation about Jessica Lynch’s heroic firefight, countless U.S. airstrikes, and a whole litany of ongoing lies about our current wars. And remember when anonymous bloggers spewed all sorts of nasty, unaccountable bile about Sonia Sotomayor’s intellect and temperament? Just as Roberts lamented, blogs — as a result of anonymity — are the “Wild West of the Internet . . . . like a giant world-wide bathroom wall where you can write anything about anyone.””

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/24/anonymity/index.html

“Following this surreal episode involving a heretofore obscure black female USDA official – an episode in which almost everyone involved acted like a complete and utter buffoon, from Tom Vilsack to Ben Jealous to Bill O’Reilly – there’s really only one thing we can say with absolute certainty. And that’s this: there are a hell of a lot of people in this country who enjoy talking about racism way, way too much.

“This applies to people on both sides of our burgeoning race war, an increasingly unavoidable drag of a phenomenon that is looking now like a very good bet to drench the next 5-10 years of domestic political discourse in cacophonous suckhood. On the Tea Party side, I’ve decided it isn’t even necessary to have the debate over whether or not the Tea Partiers are racists. It’s enough to point out that the Tea Party and its sympathizers contain too many people like Andrew Breitbart (the idiot blogger from the Big Government website who originally posted the Sherrod video), Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, all of whom popped huge public woodies the moment the Sherrod video surfaced.

“It’s just not necessary to say whether or not these people are racists. All that needs to be pointed out is that when they get a chance to gape at a video purporting to show a black Obama official confessing to having mistreated a white farmer (it turned out to be the opposite of that, of course), or a tape of Black Panther King Shamir talking about “killing cracker babies,” the word that best describes the emotions they display at these times is glee.

“They enjoy these morbid stories about offenses to white dignity way too much. I caught Glenn Beck talking about some case involving a Black Panther who was intimidating people at a voting booth back in 2008 – the guy had this pervy smile on his face that made him look exactly like one of those creepy dudes sitting hunched over at the edge of the bed playing the cuckold in cheating-wife porn videos. Over the Black Panthers! Who the hell has even seen a Black Panther since the seventies? The whole thing reminds me of that Chris Rock routine about Native Americans – “When was the last time you saw two Indians?””

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/184697/83512

“”The intent was clear. Provide a race-based scandal as a counter-example to deflect the news media away from teabagger racism and Mark Williams, and provide fuel to racist right-wing fears that the Obama administration is keeping the white man down.

“The story moved from Breitbart to Fox News at lightning speed, and by the end of Monday, Sherrod had been forced to resign – according to her, by the USDA on orders from the White House.

“If you know anything about Andrew Breitbart and video, you know what’s coming next. The rest of the fucking video. By all accounts, the video, which should be either out or imminently out, reveals a giant pile of inconvenient facts edited out by Breitbart, or, if you believe Breitbart, whoever gave him the video. But who would be stupid enough to believe Breitbart? We’ll answer that question in a second. First, the inconvenient facts.

“One, the incident Sherrod recounted happened 24 years ago. Two, it happened before she was a government employee. Three, she was telling this story because this was her initial reaction, she realized it was wrong, changed her ways, and went on to help the family keep their farm. The family she supposedly discriminated against called into CNN to say Sherrod didn’t discriminate against them, and they would fucking well know, wouldn’t they?

“But Tom Vilsack was stupid enough to believe Andrew Breitbart, even though Breitbart’s entire track record consists of deceptively edited video, punctuated with the occasional run out to a balcony to accidentally support child slavery. Nobody should ever believe Breitbart – not because he’s an insane, drunken wingnut, but because he has a demonstrable record of being completely fucking wrong about every single thing he touches. EVERY SINGLE THING.”

http://www.youaredumb.net/node/1584