Yeah you read that right. Why Complain?
Why complain about O'Reilly and the emails and the bad PR?
The community really invited this upon themselves.
Here's why...
Had it not been for our own actions O'Reilly never would have attacked Jet Blue for being sponsors.
I guarantee you Jet Blue is 'privately' regretting their involvement with sponsoring YearlyKos. The negative PR they are receiving far outweighs any positive PR for them.
Don't be surprised if such sponsors are a little harder to come by next year.
Actions always have consequences. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. What is happening now to Jet Blue, dkos, and potentially other sponsors in the future is not good.
I found this paragraph from Markos' post today to be so shortsighted:
Of course Fox News is pissed that we killed their Democratic debates while just about the entire party leadership and presidential candidates will be at YearlyKos
Well first of all what we actually killed was OUR TWO DEMOCRATIC DEBATES.
Don't ever forget that we killed two opportunities for the public to hear OUR candidates. That is what was actually killed. Fox didn't get hurt - they weren't their debates. They felt nothing. It cost them nothing. In fact what this community did was provide them a vehicle to slime dkos and to embarrass one of our sponsors and any future sponsors. Any one here who counts that as a win knows nothing about PR or image building or good business sense.
Secondly it is likely that the candidates would have appeared at YearlyKos anyway. So nothing is gained there Markos. And that fact is that when they appear at YearlyKos they WILL NOT appear in front of a nationally televised audience like they would have with Fox. So it is a net loss in exposure for our candidates. They lose and the nation loses in not being able to see them.
And I don't want to hear about the terrible questions that the big bad Fox would have asked them. Our people can handle it just as they did in 2004 and never complained. In fact if you read the transcripts of those two Fox broadcast debates you will see that our candidates took every question and turned it to their advantage.
Our Reps appear on Fox all the time. Last Sunday Carl Levin 'owned' Brit Hume on FNS! A few weeks before Mark Green, president of Air America Radio, had a stellar performance on FNS. Did you boycott them?
And I don't want to hear about the Fox viewing audience being wingnuts. That should have never been the point. Why? Because when it comes to debates other 'regular' people who don't normally tune in will tune in to wherever the debate is - just like people do here.
Would you like an example? When the Repubs recently debated on a Fox broadcast debate - guess what - no only did people here who boycotted Fox Dem Debates ACTUALLY TUNE IN TO FOX to watch it, they lived blogged it on the Front Page!!!!
Now how is that for hypocrisy? You destroy two of our own debates, hurt our candidates not only by denying them the ability to get our message out to national audiences but by actually threatening them if they appear - and what do you end up doing?....
Watching a Fox Debate and Live Blogging it right here on the Front Page!!!!
You brought this all on yourselves and our sponsors and in the end you watch Fox!
Believe it or not the thought of that just makes me speechless.