Why Is Linda Yanez Throwing Bloggers Under The Bus?

I don’t know about you, but it makes me sick when Democratic candidates in Texas and elsewhere throw bloggers and the netroots under the proverbial bus.

Who is throwing bloggers under the bus now? It’s none other than 13th Court of Appeals Justice Linda Yanez, who is running for Place 8 on the Texas Supreme Court in the March 4 Democratic Primary.

A recording has surface of of Yanez at the October 27, 2007 Tejano Democrats luncheon in Corpus Christi. Yanez had this to say about blogs and bloggers:

…I was reading an article that came out in one of these, I know you and I have talked…you have talked about the blogosphere, and the fact that out there in that blogosphere, people can say anything they want whether it is true or not and they can be anonymous and that is a whole nother layer of running for office these days.

But anyway, someone had sent me an article that had come out in one of the local political…things. And it was about my opponent. And it had a big picture of her and it was an article about farm workers and taking them out of slavery. And I though, well, that is an interesting story.

And I looked at it and it was really about my opponent’s dad and how he had voted for some farm worker legislation in the 80s. And I mention that because I though, how ironic that my opponent is taking credit for something she has nothing to do with and her father had voted on. And the reason it was important to me is because in 1983, Governor Mark White appointed me to the legislative committee that went around the state and took testimony that led to that legislation.

So I called the author, and then he admitted that it was–he got paid to write the story. And I said that I didn’t see anything that said it was paid, you know, political announcement. So that was very, very frustrating for me.

Oh, really.

First of all, Yanez should be ashamed of herself. In spite of the fact that the Texas progressive blogosphere has done a hell of a lot for progressive and Democratic candidates since 2004, Yanez tries to paint everyone with the same brush:

“people can say anything they want”

“whether it is true or not”

“they can be anonymous”

What a pack of half-truths and lies. Sure, we can espouse whatever opinions we want but, by and large, the Texas blogosphere is well-regarded–even by the yardstick of the mainstream media–because we base what we do in fact and upon hard evidence.

Second, if someone is putting something on a blog and getting paid to write the content, they aren’t a blogger, period. And, chances are, they don’t label themselves as one, but rather as a paid news site of some sort.

Furthermore, if Yanez is going to make the accusation, then she needs to come out and name names and URLs, because all she is doing is trying to coat the entire Texas Blogosphere with the same brush. That simply isn’t going to fly.

Yes, there are political websites that do paid content. But they aren’t blogs, and Yanez should know better than to say that they are. It is nothing more than a not-so-thinly-veiled attempt to paint the Blogosphere as a bunch of paid political hacks.

It won’t fly.

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