Lee Siegel, in an otherwise unremarkable but unpersuasive piece explaining why he thinks bloggers are fascists, has this aside:
let’s cut the puerile nicknames of “DailyKos, “Atrios,” “Instapundit” et al., which are one part fantasy of nom de guerres, one part babytalk, and a third thuggish anonymity
Huh?
DailyKos and InstaPundit are site names, not personal nicknames. The former is based on a nickname, “Kos,” that derives rather obviously from “Markos,” the man’s real first name. The second is mostly self-parody by a fellow who, so far as I’m aware, has always signed his blog posts “Glenn Reynolds” and hardly hidden his identity. Only “Atrios” (aka, “Duncan Black”) has ever sought anonynimity, which he long ago abandoned along with his academic career once he became a professional Democratic operative.
While I’m not a fan of the styles of either Moulitsas or Black, sharing Siegel’s general sense of the raucous nature of discourse on their sites, I would hardly characterize either of them as “thuggish.” So far as I know, their assaults have been limited exclusively to the verbal variety. Reynolds, meanwhile, is a mild mannered law prof who seldom writes anything more hurtful than “Heh.”
