HuffPo Blogger Under Fire for Obama Bittergate Uproar

One of the first things I noticed about Barack Obama's Bittergate controversy is that all the key initial links to the breaking story sent readers to the Huffington Post.

Strange?

HuffPo routinely publishes some of the most radical writings on the web, and a number of commentators there had announced they were in the tank for Obama. Why would HuffPo want to slam their own assets?

So it's no surprise to learn that Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke the news on Obama's San Francisco "cling" comments, is getting hammered for creating a national political scandal. The New York Times has more:

The backstory of how Senator Barack Obama’s comments about small-town voters became news is getting almost as much attention in the blogosphere as the comments themselves.

Mayhill Fowler, a blogger for OffTheBus.net, a Web site published by Huffington Post and created by Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen, was the first to report Mr. Obama’s comments — that small-town voters bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations.

The comments created an instant sensation in the media and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seized on them, hoping they would slow Mr. Obama’s momentum in the polls against her in Pennsylvania, which votes in 8 days. If Pennsylvania rejects Mr. Obama by a big margin, and voters in Indiana and North Carolina follow suit, the comment could be seen as the game-changer.

Ms. Fowler told me in an interview Sunday night that she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him -- which partly explains why she was at the fund-raiser in the first place and why there was a four-day delay between the event and the publication of her post. Ultimately, she said, she decided that if she didn’t write about it, she wouldn’t be worth her salt as a journalist.

Some Obama supporters in the blogosphere were up in arms at Ms. Fowler. They doubt that she really supports Mr. Obama, have called her a plant for Mrs. Clinton and suggested she was deceptive in getting into the fund-raiser.

The whole episode gives a revealing glimpse into yet even more ways in which the Internet is changing the coverage of politics. And Ms. Fowler says she is surprised that she is playing a role in this revolution.

"I'm 61," she said. "I can't believe I would be one of the people who's changing the world of media." But her experience raises questions about whether the roles, rules and expectations for journalists and bloggers are different. Can a person be both? Even Ms. Fowler acknowledged that "clearly everyone is going to be re-thinking how they handle this kind of thing."

My instincts were right all along, so let me say it right here: No, you can't be a journalist and a blogger simultaneously.

Huffington Post epitomizes the problems.

Check the site out: It hosts mainstream wire service stories from sources such as the Associated Press alongside unhinged far-left rantings likely to make the skin crawl on middle-Americans nationwide.

Not only that, they eat their own:

"Faux Obama Supporter Mayhill Fowler Smears Obama."

God help Mayhill Flower!!

Mayhill Fowler is catching holy hell for her post about the San Francisco fundraiser and "Bittergate": The Huffington Post is anti-Obama. She enjoys an "above the fold" space only because she's willing to go after Obama. She must be on somebody's payroll. She's a Clinton operative. An Obama-basher.

There's more of the juicy stuff here.

And people want to tell me this isn't helping John McCain?!!