The Secret History of DailyKos' Founder
and the Shadowy History of a Big Box Blog
Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog
and The Truth About Kos (DailyKos).
Having written letters to the editor of newspapers, including one published in the Boston Globe, and having written opinion pieces for many newspapers and successfully published hundreds of press releases (see blog sidebar), I know that the mainstream media refuses to print articles without at least a name, address, telephone number and author's title (where applicable). Print newspapers and magazines telephone call authors to confirm their identities and credentials, doing at least a bare minimum of due dilligence.
Then, at the bottom of print media opinion pieces, the articles often state the professional position(s) and associations of the author that ostensibly gives him or her special insight into the subject matter.
The American blogosphere, although it talks much about the importance of transparency in government and media, nonetheless maintains a CIA-like secrecy about the identities of its authors, purposefully obscuring the identities and biases associated with opinions and the onstensible "facts" that are published in "diaries" stories and comments at such blogs. Since Moulitsas Zúñiga trained for two years at the Central Intelligence Agency while he was starting DailyKos, it ought to surprise no one that his blog prizes the anonymity and plausible deniability for which the CIA itself is known.
The American blogosphere functions more like a conspiratorial group commiting crimes and trying to avoid punishment than a transparent source of reliable information. The best example of this is Mark Moulitsas, AKA Markos C. A. Moulitsas, AKA Markos Moulitsas, AKA Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga. Although he would obviously like to be the most important political figure in Democratic politics, even his birth name remains a mystery, which is all the more important because everything he has said about his family background is demonstrably false.
Whatever his name is, it is certainly not what he says it is, if only because he has given his name in so many different ways over his short life. Although he used the middle initial "C" in college, he has never told the public what it stands for. At times he has used it and at other times he simply has denied the initial exists at all, as with his Wikipedia page which says that he was "born Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga".
It is natural that someone will eventually want to write a biography of this enigmatic figure and such a biography would, at the very least, have to begin with his full, real and complete name.
This is all the more important because, in all of the articles and typeface that have been spent (wasted) on this individual, it seems that no one has been able to identify and interview a single member of his birth family.
I believe that only the Truth About Kos (DailyKos) has researched, identified and published a photograph and the name of a member of his family.
I believe that, given MAMZ's pretensions, the public needs to know at least as much about his background as they know about mine. And yet, not a single reporter has apparently ever spoken with a member of MAMZ's blood family, on the Moulitsas side or the Zúñiga side, with respect to MAMZ himself. However, reporters have spoken with one relative, Carlos Alberto Delgado Zúñiga, on many occasions, because he is one of the wealthies and most influential members of the El Salvadoran oligarchy and named as a official of a CIA-identified right-wing Salvadoran "pressure group" called the National Association of Private Businesses (ANEP).
Humble family, huh?
This is why I suggest that most of us probably know far more about the publisher of our local weekly newpaper than we know about this man who would like to run the Democratic Party without ever having been elected to do so. Rather than run for election to the power he seeks, where the media scrutiny would be more intense and less credulous, he seeks to amass power by spreading money around among our elected leaders and would be leaders.
And so, what distinguishes Markos C. A. Moulitsas Zúñiga from the Texas oilmen and right-wing Republican money bundlers who seek to turn our government officials into well-paid guardians of their personal wealth and puppets in their schemes for geopolitical power? Don't they all want to buy, with cold hard cash, more influence in our government than individual voters can have at the polls?
Shouldn't someone like MAMZ be required to register as a lobbyist, so that his contributions and political behavior can be more thoroughly scrutinized, according to the laws that govern the behavior of people who spread around political payola?
Some readers will insist that MAMZ's good deeds and motives are reasons why we should trust him, even though we know virtually nothing about his background, and what we do know only raises more troublesome and fundamentally important questions. Many of those who wanted so desperately to believe in the veracity and unquestionable goodness of Senator John Edwards are the same credulous Easter Bunny supporters who insist that it is wrong and bad to desire and to seek more background information about MAMZ now.
They may even insist that MAMZ's family has a right to its privacy, which might be true if they were not the recipients of million dollar US Government loan guarantees supplied by the taxpayers of the United States of America through the Overseas Investment Council (OPIC). Just seach the text of the OPIC press release for the name "Baja Salt" and then go to the Baja Salt Group website to see who the owner is. (The "manager of Markos C. A. Moulitsas "family hotel". That's right! The link no longer works. It's a darned good thing we have screen shots of the now defunct Moulitsas Zúñiga online wedding/honeymoon album, celebrated at the "family hotel".)
As the truth of MAMZ's hidden family background and professional associations become more generally known, many MAMZ supporters, members of the media and the disinvolved general public will wonder how they could have been so deeply taken in by a man about whom so very little was known. John Edwards, meet Markos Moulitsas. Both of these men's wholesomeness and goodness are so self-evident that there is no need, many believe, to follow the facts where the ineluctably and implacably lead.
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