Echo Chamber?

Asked whether blogs serve any purpose beyond merely telling like-minded people what they want to hear, most liberals respond with reference to the Trent Lott scandal, which was kept alive in blogs until it finally made it into the mainstream. Sure, Lott only lost his leadership position, but even that would almost surely not have happened without blogs (notably but not solely, as I recall, Josh Marshall, Atrios, and CalPundit).

Now, long after I first saw it in blogs, then the Gadflyer, then Salon, the news that a number of Congressmen, including Democrats, participated in a coronation of Mr. Sun Myung Moon (I’ll not call him a Reverend, and I’m not sure of the proper honorific for “nutbag”) in the Dirksen Senate office building, the story is finally mainstream, on the front page of the Washington Post:

More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be “reborn as new persons.”

Note that the Post story mentions three Democrats and one Republican, Curt Weldon. One of the unmentioned republicans is Lindsey Graham, former House Impeachment Manager, who apparently also attended (he was listed on the flyer for the event.)

AB