Kid Oakland Leaves DKos

His final diary here

Kid Oakland leaves the dkos staff team because of a disagreement about a kos post on Donna Brazille. FTR, I cannot stand and have little or no respect for Donna Brazille. Anyway, KO had some issues with kos' post which was kind'a nasty as many kos' posts are in his juvenile way. Apparently, this led to the split.

So why is this news for me? Well, since Nov 2, I've developed an aversion to dkos. It has returned to the juvenile rah-rah Dean atmosphere prior to Kerry ascendancy. The breaking point for me was when kos put up a post and said "Fuck John Kerry." If I was standing right in front of him I would have kicked him in the groin . . . hard. But "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. (James 1:20)" So instead of getting mad, I just stopped participating and visiting the site. (How's that for anger management?)

I stop by dkos on a daily basis to see what's going on but I don't go there to find anything worthwhile. My favorite political daily bloggers are:

Juan Cole-Informed Comment
Josh Marshall-Talking Points Memo
Steve Clemmons
Laura Rozen
Needlenose
Left Coaster (Quite a bit of Dean foolishness, but otherwise quite good)
Kevin Drum-Washington Monthly
Matthew Yglesias (When I can understand what the heck he is talking about, think liberal Eve Tushnett)
Steve Gillard (I need to take a break from him sometimes. His site can be potty mouth central)
Unfogged (I think these guys are a bunch of yuppie untenured college professors. It's more light quips than heavy duty blogging)

Anyway, after the elections, the dkos site got a bunch of new front page contributors and I was excited about that. I soon found that none of them were of any interest to me, save kid oakland. I found his style to be very interesting. He is a left liberal I think and I don't think we match up well idealogically the further left one goes. Nonetheless, he was really the only main kos writer I would spend time to read. Actually, his writing made me jealous because I wondered why I couldn't write like that. So it was with no small measure of dissappointment that I see him departing kos.

As for dkos. I remember watching a National Geographic on child soldiers in Liberia, sad, sad story. There were a coupe of kids who couldn't have been more than 13 or 14 but they were soldiers ahd had guns. Imagine this, a 13 year old with a machine gun and no accountability. These kids roam about and terrorize everyone. They walk into cafetarias and are given free food as women old enough to be their mothers literally sing their praises. Sick situation. That's how I feel dkos has gotten. It seems to be a case of immaturity meets success without accountability and so kos fires off his mouth with hesitation because he is on top of the world.

I don't know how old Markos is but, as you grow older, one thing you realize is that nothing lasts forever and every present moment has consequences for future moments. When you are on top of the world, be careful, because you have no idea what'll be the case 7 years from now (consequently, when you are not on top of the world, know that things can change for you in a heartbeat). Now, Markos and others may argue, "But if that style is what got him where he is, why change?" My response is that, first of all, I doubt that it is that style that got him where he is. Fortunate circumstance can account for his success and some skill and talent, but either way, with the audience size he has which is 250,000 hits a day, he has a great responsibility. That means he has to change, simple as that. When he speaks, the press now quotes him as the representative of liberal bloggers, so he has to chose his words with caution. I don't think that necessarily robs him of his particular style. There is nothing in style that calls for a blogger of his idealogy and magnitude to say, "Fuck John Kerry."

Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum pull in significant numbers daily and they are liberal bloggers that we can all feel good about. You may not agree with them, but they certainly carry themselves with a degree of maturity that you can only hope to expect from kos and the gang someday when they grow up.