This chart offers an interesting look at the amounts paid to various bloggers by various political campaigns. I do not object to this practice when the writers make full disclosure. If Lowell Feld got a few thou for saying nice words about Jim Webb and Jan Henke got a bit less for braying the virtues of George Allen -- well, fine.
One item on that chart surprised me: The $850 a month Aaron Silverstein of
Heading Left received for pushing Bill Winter of Colorado. The surprise stems from the fact that, to judge from the standard traffic ranking measures, Heading Left receives fewer readers than does this humble blog. And -- aside from the glorious day when Russ Feingold paid for my soup -- politicians and candidates have never offered me a thing. They haven't even tossed my dog a Wendy's chicken nugget. (She
likes those. Hint.)
Then again, given my weakness for the
outré, the day may come when a candidate offers me cash to endorse an opponent.
I did once get a couple of hefty contributions from a goddess of a reader. The bandwidth-clogging free ads on the right-hand side of this page are for causes deemed worthy. The Google ads on the left fetch the equivalent of a free meal at El Torito once a month. (Try the
flautas.)
Do you think that the practice of pols paying bloggers could turn into an effective right-wing talking point? Might the entire blogging medium suffer disrepute?