Over at Balloon Juice, frequent commenter and Twitter compatriot Angry Black Lady blew up at Jane Hamsher yesterday:
Needless to say, Osborne clearly woke the beast. At Netroots Nation this past weekend, Osborne was offered a paid writing gig in “the movement,” (his words) but was informed that he “would need to “dial back” his criticism of Hamsher.
Actually, I got more than one work offer during the confab, and all of them signalled that I would have to dial back on Hamsher. Apparently, she’s something of a “made” person in a sort of netroots mafia super-secret plan Democrats hatched years ago. Of course, everyone was ready with fresh-hell stories about her.
But I had expected the instruction on her, as anyone hiring me for an editorial voice would certainly have limits on my rhetoric regarding established figures of the progressive movement. Indie habits die hard, but Hamsher is not more important than a movement. The word is out on her anyway; my part can be over.
The buzz within the African American ‘sphere — what Angry Black Lady was reporting in her Balloon Juice piece — is that Hamsher is racist. I don’t know if she is, and I don’t think it matters. The perception of racism is actually more telling than any proven, personal animosity. She has become a divisive figure, and not because I have blogged about her but because her online clique is vicious.
Her website is fringe. Her ideas are silly. Her followers are cultic; when they denounce Democrats as “sheeple” worshipping a “dear leader,” they are projecting their self-description. Her alliances are frightening. Like some cthuluesque creature of Taibbian prose, Jane Hamsher has wrapped her sucking tentacles around the netroots movement and sunk a devouring maw into its entrails. It is actually that simple: she’s a glommer-on, not a ratfucker. I withdraw the use of the latter term as it is inappropriate.
Nevertheless, there is fire below this smoke, and Hamsher lit it herself. Of that, Angry Black Lady is spot-on correct. The FDL demo lies within the 20% disapproval rating Netroots Nations participants gave President Obama in the Democracy Corps survey at the convention center. If ABL came to NN she would find herself in the majority. And she might meet Jasiri X, who is way more interesting and relevant than Hamsher.
