Start with 'Bitter'

Markos Moulitsas is a bitter little progressive.

His reaction this week vis-a-vis his comrade-in-arms Jerome Armstrong and the "pay-to-play" allegations against him is combative, angry and ultimately unpersuasive. It does though highlight all the things that make DailyKos run:Ludicrous, all of it, but that's the new rules of the game. TNR and its enablers are feeling the heat of their own irrelevance and this is how they fight it -- by undermining the progressive movement. Zengerle has made common cause with the wingnutosphere, using the laughable "kosola" frame they created and emailing his "scoops" to them for links. This is what the once-proud New Republic has evolved into -- just another cog of the Vast RIGHT Wing Conspiracy.

While Markos has most certainly not broken any law or breached any sort of code of blogger ethics, he has damaged the one primary attribute that, as he once so eloquently put it, makes blogs work: Credibility.

For the record, this kind of phenomenon--just the mere appearance of impropriety--is precisely why you don't read much here about one of my favorite pet-peeves: ridiculous assaults on Walmart. While I frequently receive many an email from Marshall, my responses and posts number few.

Why? Quite simple really; I and the paper I work for actively pursue advertising dollars from Walmart at the corporate and local level.

Opening myself to scrutiny for writing pro-Walmart commentary while deriving income from a business relationship with them is something that I, for the sake of credibility, do not want.

Markos would be wise to get his head around that lesson, though it seems he has not yet.