U.S. bloggers came into their own during the 2004 election when Charlie Johnson and the Powerline guys ended Dan Rather’s career 24 hours after Rather tried to smear W with forged documents. Now bloggers are happily assisting in the demise of the statist legacy media. But in the UK, blogging has been slower to make its presence felt.
No longer, however,
British papers over the weekend have been buzzing with the resignation of PM Brown’s media advisor-spin doctor Damien McBride, who was caught peddling poisonous sexual innuendo about Tory politicians via secure government email.
Some of the offending emails fell into the hands of Paul Staines, founder of the ‘Guido Fawkes’ political blogsite, who proceeded to administer a kick in the groin to Brown, McBride and McBride’s accomplices inside and outside the government. While the Times and Telegraph have taken a rather sniffy tone toward Guido, tabloids like the Daily Mail have predictably waded into the brawl with relish.
Other UK blogs increasingly concerned with the erosion of civil liberties have also joined the gleeful chorus. Samizdata.net, for instances, is loving the whole dust-up:
This posting will tell any Brits who care about it absolutely nothing, but perhaps our many American readers should be told about this. This being the downfall of one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s closest advisers. A certain Damian McBride has “resigned” because of some emails about smearing various Conservatives that he sent to another Labourite, the widely despised Derek Draper, who tries to blog for Labour.
Blogger Guido Fawkes is being credited with this outcome, not least by the guilty men themselves. They have spent much airtime today jabbering away on Sky News, the BBC, etc, about how “disgusted” they are that their emails have been read. Disgusted that they were caught was how it sounded. Guido’s numerous commenters are exulting. “Good on you Guido”, “we must mark the date in our diaries”, but “mission definitely not accomplished” until such time as this government beast or that government beast (a certain Tom Watson MP is apparently next in line for the chop), or the King Beast himself, are nailed to the Guido wall.
King Beast Brown, I mean. For there is indeed something very Nixonian about this, or at any rate it feels that way today. The thing to get is that Damien McBride is not like some College Republican ratfucking prankster. He is much higher up the greasy pole than that, far nearer to the H. R. Haldeman end of things, talking every day with the Big Beast himself. . . .
The resigned one and his various defenders, including Draper, are asking us all to believe that their Downing Street computers were hacked into, and for all I know that may be true. But if that is so, what does it say about the wisdom of creating a Database State, given that these are the plonkers who will be in charge of it? As Guido has just pointed out, this was the week the government awarded itself the right to read all our emails.
Anyway, my basic point is: remember that big cheese TV guy in America who got caught making use of a forged letter that said something bad about someone, and remember how it was bloggers who blew the story to bits. And remember how people said during all that that this was blogging really making itself felt for the first time in real world politics. Well, that moment just happened here in little old Britain. Tomorrow, this will be all over the Sunday papers. Guido’s face and Guido’s blog – the actual blog, how it looks – is being flashed all over the TV news as I write this.
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