Petty

Looks like I missed the once-in-a-lifetime experience of Kos' crash and burn while I was off drinking.

I'll make this post short and sweet. God knows enough bloggers have talked about Kos' little faux pas. I won't repeat it here, but you can probably see it by following any of the links out of here.

Anyway... I have no problem with Kos taking heat for his stupid remarks. He should keep his head down and thank God today's headlines will be lining tomorrow's cat litter trays.

I have a big problem, however, with Michael Friedman's puerile campaign to hurt Kos financially. He contacted the political campaigns that are running blogads on the Daily Kos and pressed them to break off all ties. He also encouraged his readers to bombard the campaigns with similar requests. Kos charges between $700 and $2,000 a month for his blogads, and Friedman has been successful in having three of them pulled.

The thing that sticks in my craw about this, quite apart from the fact that Friedman has appointed himself judge, jury and executioner, is the fact that he's actually gloating about it. He boasts that this affair has gained him 10,000 readers and pushed him up the TTLB ecosystem (leapfrogging this site) to 662. He gloats that he's cost Kos thousands of dollars, and probably prevented the sale of blogads in the future. His latest post reads

"I'm doing my taxes, hence the light blogging.

I HATE TAXES!

I wish I could do to the IRS what I'm doing to Kos. It would be a lot more satisfying."

Reading his posts leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Friedman strikes me as a petty curtain-twitcher, the kind of person who would sue his neighbour over a 2 inch strip of garden. The kind of person who takes pleasure in hurting someone whose opinion differs from their own.

Michael, if you disagree with Kos then don't visit the site. Encourage your readers to boycott the site. Write scathing posts about how much you hate him. Don't do this.

Moral authority you are most definitely not.



*Update*

Friedman is taking this too far. He's basically claiming that Kos is on the side of the terrorists. I'm baffled. Read it for yourself. This guy's an idiot.

*'Nother Update*

Dean Esmay reminded me I forgot to finish off my post. Dean's World and A Small Victory have more. And I'm sure you can follow the chain of links to the point at which you visit a million sites going on about Kos.