The Reality-Based Community? VIII
The New York Times
takes on the liberal bloggers on the "stolen" election meme:
But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go.
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply "can't imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president."
But some denizens of the Web see it differently.
Jake White, the owner of the Web log primordium.org, argues that he and other election-monitoring Web posters are not motivated solely by partisan politics. "While there are no doubt large segments of this movement that are being driven by that," he said in an e-mail message, "I prefer to think of it as discontent over the way the election was held."
Mr. White also quickly withdrew his own analysis of voting systems in Ohio when he realized the data he had used was inaccurate.
Articles like these, poking fun at the ridiculous conspiracy theories, will be used by liberals in their cries of "What Liberal Media?"
