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Gadfly and ueberhero of moderation Mickey Kaus has concisely covered the entire burgeoning mini-scandal over scammer Jayson Blair Armstrong who resembles a Jack Abramoff wannabe [Meet the old boss....]. Here is the text of Mickey's staccato indictment of the new mini-Kremlin Kos koverup: [Sorry, the links are in the Kausfile above]
"Kos Wants Silence! TNR's Jason Zengerle has discovered one reason why normally fierce Kos defenders have been strangely silent on the Kosola controversy: In a message to "'Townhouse,' a private email list comprising elite liberal bloggers"--the authenticity of which seems to be undisputed--DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas has issued a:"
request to you guys [that] that you ignore this for now. It would make my life easier if we can confine the story. Then, once Jerome [Armstrong] can speak and defend himself, then I'll go on the offensive ... and anyone can pile on. If any of us blog on this right now, we fuel the story. Let's starve it of oxygen.
Kos continues:"A shrewd strategy, designed to prevent the Kosola scandalette from "making the jump to the traditional media." I've pursued the identical strategy myself, in analogous circumstances, though with a far less powerful and centralized institutional apparatus. So far, the "sheep-like" Kositburo members have largely complied. ...
"The email also contains a cursory defense of Kosbuddy Jerome Armstrong signing a suggestive consent decree with the SEC ("he was a poor grad student at the time so he settled because he had no money"), plus some thuggy blustering about "lawsuits" and "exploring legal options." Kos offers no defense, in Zengerle's account, on the central moral (not legal) corruption at the heart of the Kosola scandal: whether one thing you get when you buy Jerome Armstrong's services is highly effective "access" to his co-author Kos--access that in practice affects Kos' loyalties and the direction he sends his followers. If that's the case, it seems just as corrupt (and just as non-illegal) as when a former Tom Delay aide sells himself to corporate clients in part on the basis of his "access" to the bigshot he used to work for. That's business as usual--but I thought the Kos reformers were supposed to be different.
"Is the newly-discovered Kositburo itself a sinister institution? In recent years the right has behaved as if it had some sort of shadowy de facto steering committee. You figured the Left must have something like that--how else to explain why an antiwar site like Huffington Post would suddenly decide to seize the cheap partisan opportunity to posture as patriotic by making a show of opposing the Iraqi governments attempts to end violence through an amnesty program (and mocking the GOP's failure to similarly posture)? Maybe Arianna got a "Townhouse" email! ...
P.S.: The Kosola controversy offers more proof, if you needed it, of the folly of TimesSelect. Do you doubt that Chris Suellentrop's initial scoop about Jerome Armstrong's alleged stock touting would be march harder for the Kositburo to bottle up if it hadn't been stuck behind the TimesSelect subscription wall? I'd say TimesSelect cut it's impact by at least 50%. .... You'd think the guy who guided the disastrous Times Select experiment would get kicked to the side and given an assignment in far-off Asia, where he could do little further damage, instead of ... oh wait. ...
P.P.S.: The official NYT memo announcing Len Apcar's new assignment does not contain, in the section boasting of his many accomplishments, the sentence "He initiated TimesSelect." Kf's subtle Pravda-like reading of the memo therefore extracts this meaning: TimesSelect is dead. They'll pull the plug within a year. ...
See also: Excellent posts at Red State, where "Trevino" notes a) that Kos & Co. are behaving like "the Armstrong revelations have them scared," and b) there have long been suspicions about Kosola-esque dealings, and theyv'e been "more on the left ... than the right." ...10:11 P.M.
Kosolafest, 2006: Jim Geraghty has posted a "comprehensive Kos-Armstrong" timeline, which he claims shows an "interesting pattern." (The pattern: Buy one, get one free!) ... I debate the issue with Bob Wright here. Wright pooh-poohs the scandal. I say you don't have to have illegality to have corruption, and this situation reeks of corruption. ... Joyner tends to the Wright view, claiming there's only "one strike" against Kos. ... What about Ohio? 12:40 P.M. link
Yes, the left unites lock-step against revelation of wrongdoing by one of their agitprop KosKommandos-in-Chief.
Remember back in the days of glasnost and perestroika? Guess the new nomenklatura of the Puff-Kos left have forgotten.
The only Dem pol who is dumb enuf to continue this dalliance with korrupt Kossacks is tone-deaf drone John Kerry [unless Mark Warner has a "stupid gene" common to many on the left].
Finally, Zengerle zings Kos in catching the diminuitive Mex-Greek in an OUT AND OUT lie, concerning his status as a "poor grad student" when he settled with the SEC over his stock-shilling scams. Turns out he had already been a consultant for the imploder-in-chief Howard Dean at $3K/month for half a year when Liar Moulitsas claimed he was still in grad-school-penniless mode. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
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