Bill O'Reilly sent me

In one of yesterday's Nataline-Sarkisyan-murder-by-spreadsheet diaries (Here's the truth: A transplant surgeon speaks out), there's a quoted email from one of our watchers:

for what it's worth, I'm a Conservative who monitors Kos.  Even I called CIGNA after reading your original diary.  Now you may condemn me for being a champion of the forces that led to the issue in the first place (I would argue it's more complicated than that) but alas, I was moved to call because they were wrong and you brought it to MY attention too.

In the comments, there are open letters, calls across the aisle, and realizations that we're closely watched..

In fact, while I came here originally (UID: 17835), I posted a few things but didn't stay. It was Bill O'Reilly who brought me back. The story is below the fold.

I don't watch Fox News at home. I'm afraid of damage to my delicate video hardware. While there are no reports in the literature of Fox News corroding high speed digital circuitry, I just can't take that chance. I know what its done to our country, I can't afford to replace my HD rig.

So I don't remember where I saw Bill-O bloviating about Daily Kos. Maybe it was on Media Matters, which tells me everything I need to know about Rupert's aerial vaudeville. Maybe it was at a Florida turnpike oasis, they seem to prefer Fox news there unless a hurricane is churning somewhere nearby.

But I remember Bill-O. He was so angry the veins were popping out in his neck. He was attacking Daily Kos with every ounce of faux strength he had. This great orange Satan was responsible for every evil we face. But then he went on to the specifics.

When he did, I realized I agreed with each and every thing he said, even through the tortured lens of his reactionary rhetoric. He literally didn't have the vocabulary to turn the ideas this place promotes into something that I'd disagree with.

So I came back.

I've been around these tubes since before they were tubes. I was around for 300-baud modems, and BBSs through the early days of the Internet. We were liberal, we were in the know and we were in the now. We surprised the legacy political system because the ability to produce a thousand constituent calls in seconds instead of days sent shivers down the backs of wonks who worked at the speed of snail mail.

But today we're entering a new era. We're losing some of the power of a thousand phone calls in an instant, because everybody now knows how its done. The wizard behind the curtain isn't a secret any more, but on issues that resonate, we can still terrify.

But what we're getting in trade as this medium because more entrenched, is that the other side is joining us on a level playing field. They can see our arguments without the distorted lenses of the right wing MSM. Sometimes our arguments and positions give them pause.

And that is why I credit Bill O'Reilly with bringing me back to Daily Kos. I know he's watching, and I know every time he bloviates about us, he opens the door just a crack and lets his viewers view the url-pathway that leads right to us and our ideas.

Preaching to the choir is fun. High fives can be tremendously fulfilling. But preaching to the great unwashed and whispering in the ears of the loyal opposition can be even more gratifying.

Thank you, Bill-O, for making this place both.