November 05, 2004

COUNT ALL WHORE VOTES

These "blogs got it wrong" stories -- about dissemination of that Kerry-boosting exit poll -- make the error of treating bloggers as a mass, with shared values. Here's Paul Sheehan:

Chalk up the 2004 election as another strike for the subversive mischiefmakers of the internet, even if they got it wrong.

By early on Tuesday afternoon, New York time, long before the polls had closed, political bloggers began running stories about a likely victory for Senator John Kerry.

Something had gone wrong with the exit polling. And the internet had swallowed it whole.

Well, no. As Charles Johnson writes: "The blogs that hyped the bogus exit polls were all on the left bank of the blogosphere." Also via Charles, this magnificent Google translation of a Le Monde election piece. Key lines:

• "Matt Drudge, the star of the bloggers with low blows ..."

• "Little Green Footballs, a preserving blog, is delighted in advance by the head that Chirac and Kerry will make when they will learn the victory from Bush ..."

• "As for the blog Daylikos, it releases at 6.47 GMT its last post and its irritation: "More I think of it, more I am irritated that the TVS give results for Ohio whereas they are still clearly undecided. Let us leave these whores votes be counted."

UPDATE. Take a look at this, from Matt Howell.

Posted by Tim Blair at November 5, 2004 01:38 AM
Comments

Ces cowboys américains stupides, avec leur se baigner et leur Christ vulgaire. Paysans!

Posted by: Jim Treacher at November 5, 2004 at 02:40 AM

Frighteningly, Kos actually sounds exactly like that in person.

Posted by: Bob at November 5, 2004 at 03:37 AM

"The Insane American Night of the Bloggers!" Coming soon to a theater near you. "Their next post... could be their last!"

Posted by: dorkafork at November 5, 2004 at 04:00 AM

Pity about 'Among the Barbarians' Sheehan, he's usually more perceptive than this. Of course he's one of the Old Guard and the Internet must still be a bit of a mystery to him. On the other hand, maybe all of that 'Unique' water he's drinking. ;-)

Posted by: Boss Hog at November 5, 2004 at 05:19 AM

Kos is thought to be an up and comer in the democrat party. He is Terry McAwful's stooge, um protege.

Posted by: EddieP at November 5, 2004 at 07:39 AM

I believe the exit poll business was a conspiracy to set up justiciable issues for litigation, at least in the warped mind of the liberal internationalists. They looked at elections like those in Venezuela, where exit polls were used to cast doubt on the result and realized that if they could cook the exit polls, they could discredit the election and continue to call Bush illegitimate. The same tactic could have been used with provisional ballots. What stopped them from sending any number of ineligible voters into polling places and asking for provisional ballots in large numbers when their names didn't show up on the rolls? In the post-election wrangling, they could use the existence of these "cooked" provisional ballots to convince the media to hold off on calling states for Bush long enough to cast more doubt on the process. And that almost worked. Luckily, as Hewitt said, it was just not close enough for their cheating to work.

Posted by: Robert Speirs at November 5, 2004 at 07:43 AM

> "Little Green Footballs, a preserving blog..."

Once heard an apocryphal story about Margaret Thatcher visiting an Asian country, while she was UK PM, and a local paper translated its report into English by describing her as "Leader of England's [sic] Preservatives".

Posted by: Uncle Milk at November 5, 2004 at 09:03 AM

I saw Sheehans article and thought 2 things about it -

1. If he thinks the "internet got it wrong", he doesn't know what the internet is.

2. He probably does know what the internet is, but also knows the longer he can portray newspapers as the only source of credible info, the longer he has a job.

Posted by: Harry Tuttle at November 5, 2004 at 09:11 AM

Ah yes - conservative = preservative - must not rely on computerised translations, humans still smarter.
As for exit polls - I was exit polled only once and told them a pack of lies.
I also got on an internet polling scheme leading up to the recent Australian election and told them Latham etc was the best thing since canned beer.

Posted by: graboy at November 5, 2004 at 11:04 AM