Watching the Watchers: Under new management

By Anthony Levensalor

Sunday, October 23, 2005 at 01:02 AM

Beginning some time in the next week, Watching The Watchers will officially be sold. The sale of the site has already taken place, and new management will be taken over shortly. What does this mean to the site and the people who post on it?

Well, it means that I won't be posting much, first of all. I have grown restless and have been shaken up quite a bit with the way the progressive movement in this country has chewed itself up, eaten itself from the inside, and especially so on the left side of the blogosphere.

Any of the lefty bloggers deemed worthy enough to be on the email list that went around this week know what I mean. Oliver Willis of OliverWillis.com made a comment about the whole exchange I think is more than appropriate (paraphrasing):

This is why the right decimates the left in elections.

He was referring to a unilateral move by Advertise Liberally, the lefty blogads group of the highest regard and blog count, to remove several sites from their network (including RawStory.com) without consulting the membership at all.

Chris Bowers has said time and again on this very blog (when he and I had our little tiff that got me blacklisted) that he had sole management over the AL network.

And then he says it was Kos and Armstrong who decided these new regulations. I'm not stupid enough to believe he had a say in the new regulations, because as we all know who have ever had any dealings with him, he is a lapdog for the big guys, much like every elected politician in this country. I have had enough of being behind the lines of a losing battle, wherein my own people, the people who are supposed to be on my team, play politics and try to keep the little people down so Kos can have the money truck show up on time for his blogads.

So the site is going to someone else. They are going to leave it a liberal political weblog, and are going to make no changes to the membership, I assure you. Everyone who posts here will be welcome to continue doing so, and I have agreed to stay on and help out with the administrative details of the site for a while.

But I can't play on this side of the fence. The backbiting, the constant bickering, and the all-out wars that develop between people who should be supporting each other are atrocious and stupid.

And while I am at it, I would like to make the following things clear:
1. Kos is an asshole. 2. Jerome Armstrong is second only to Kos in assholiness. 3. Chris Bowers is a coward who kowtows to Kos and Jerome. 4. General JC Christian is a fantastic blogger, and an insightful columnist. 5. The left is a broken, anarchic, fragmented bullshit bunch of fucking maniacs who are hell-bent on destroying each other. 6. I am no longer on the team, because of the assholes mentioned above.

I am starting a new blog, but I will not use this venue to advertise it, because it would be disingenuous to do so. Let's just say it fits in a little better with my worldview after being entrenched in the progressive movement for two years.

I love you all, and I always will,
~A!