vague_ascetic's Journal: Tom DeLay's Blog

Tom DeLay has entered the blogoshpere...sort of. It seems to be in name only, as Mr. DeLay admitted it is ghost-written during an appearance on MSNBC's Hardball, Dec. 11, 2006:

BARNICLE: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We're with former Texas congressman and House majority leader, Tom DeLay.

TomDeLay.com, right? Is that--is that the blog?

DELAY: That's new today. Yes. That's my blog that we came out with today. And we're very pleased with it. We're getting a lot of comments and a lot of hits on it.

BARNICLE: So, like, do you get up first thing in the morning and start blogging away? Or what do you do?

DELAY: Well, I'm not a very good writer. I have the ideas, and I have somebody else put the words together. But yes, we're going to post a lot during the day. And we're going to respond to questions and comments.

It seems that they were less than web savvy at TomDelay.com, and initially opened for business allowing unmoderated commenting, a fact not missed by Keith Olbermann, also on December 11:

OLBERMANN: The ghost blogger must also be the individual responsible for checking the calendar. Mr. DeLay said on "HARDBALL" the blog started today. Actually it was yesterday. It's that pesky ghost blogger who must have also written DeLay's opening statement about why he started a blog, even though he's not blogging.

Quote, "I did not fully realize the impact or potential of the blogosphere until very recently, when Red State gave me the opportunity to post some of my observations in the wake of the recent midterm elections. The response I received was overwhelming, and I would like to again thank the fine people at that site. This experience brought me to the immediate realization that I needed to become more directly involved in the blogosphere," unquote.

And the so-called blogosphere got directly involved with him, thanks to his great idea to post unscreened comments. That experiment only lasted about 75 minutes before Mr. DeLay, or somebody, took the Web site down and deleted the 100-some comments, but not before one other sharp-eyed blogger saved them. Most are far too blue for us to repeat. We don't mean that in blue-versus-red. But we can quote a few, and now you tell it all (ph).

Quote, "You corrupt hypocrite, crawl back to the hole you came out of." And, "This is a joke, right?" And the winner for cynical wit, "Everyone already assumes bloggers are unemployed losers. Thanks for reinforcing that stereotype."

The "sharp-eyed blogger" is named James J. Risser. Risser archived 111 comments at DeLay's blog before they were taken down, and placed them on a new blog: tomdelaydotcom.blogspot.com.