A "bio" of Taylor Marsh. For me, I am stunned.

[beachmom]

This is a must read via The Field, and relevant to the Kerry forum, because, you know, she used to be pro-Kerry a kazillion political cycles ago:

http://johnbrownks.blogspot.com/2008/03/fraud-or-legitimate-pundit-taylor-marsh.html

Read the whole thing (hey, it's good blogger copy), but here is the conclusion, and the guy writing it is quite quirky:

IS TAYLOR MARSH A FRAUD?

A lot of people would look at her authorship and radio host claims and say, "Hell yes, she's a fraud". Originally, I was sort of thinking about saying that, too. I'm going to stop short, though. She isn't a fraud. She's just good at making things sound better than they actually are.

She can take a self-published workplace story and spin it into being a respected author, buttressing her grandiosity because some other author just happened to mention her book in another book. Taylor Marsh can take her work experience in online porn and transform it into research for her book. She isn't a former porn employee, she's an expert.

Taylor Marsh can buy radio time in a gambit to get a paying job, fall flat and then spin that into being a talk radio icon. She can take what might have been little more than writing advertisements in an alt weekly and create a background in a print journalism.

Now, I don't want to pretend like she's a complete fabrication that suddenly emerged, fully formed, out of nowhere. If you start digging, you'll find that Taylor has been prolific on the web for a long time. She writes, writes and writes some more. She's blogged all over the place, including pro-Kerry work and Patriot Project efforts during the last election cycle. Blogging regularly, however, doesn't make one a genius. Otherwise, the guy from icanhazcheezburger.com would be on TV in place of David Gergen.

Taylor Marsh isn't a fraud. She's a spinner. A dedicated spinner.

...

She's found a way to go from being a regular person with a strong interest in politics to having a voice, an audience and some impact. She might be full of shit, but she's slinging it to people in numbers I can't imagine. Taylor Marsh might be part of the political soul cancer that's been killing our liberal democracy, but she's good at creating a reputation, credibility and an audience. The spin is Clifford Irving. The success story is Horatio Alger.

I think the author is too kind. In my book, she is a fraud. Never had a radio show, never had a book published, her "expertise" in the porn industry is that she worked in the porn industry helping someone with a website, not an investigative reporter as she has claimed. It is clear that nobody should be taking her seriously. I am wondering. Should we be vetting bloggers? Because, you know, we used to link to her here because she would write nice things about Kerry (until the joke). Well, if what she is saying now is hackery, then it was then. Honestly, I feel a bit silly that I ever gushed over her pro-Kerry posts, when it never was real.

[karynnj]

1. I guess this proves that old intenet joke (1990s vintage) that had a dog typing with

a thought bubble saying that "On the internet, nobody knows I'm a dog".

She is a fraud because she claimed a background and expertise that she didn't really have. However, that made her writing no less insightful. What it does expose is the way that everyone - including us - looks for things that they agree with and are happy when people with some visibility write these things. Though her biography is extreme, think of the influence we give to some people when their credentials, which are honestly known, don't seem to back it. (Look at most radio people - AAR or the right - Randi Rhodes is not exactly that accurate.)

While Taylor Marsh, of the colorful background, was writing nice things of Kerry, Frank Rich, from the pages of the NYT, was repeating snarky jokes on windsurfing, not connecting, and being aloof. His view of the campaign was that of the theatre critic he had been rather than someone who even considered the serious issues, what Kerry was proposing, or the consequences of re-electing Bush. His resume is impeccable from a Harvard degree, magna cum laude, editor of the Harvard Crimson, to many different assignments on the NYT. I would have to go back and read what Marsh wrote before I could say which of these two actually functioned better writing opinion in 2004. I know that Rich's kool guy's nonsense ignored a man using every ounce of his incredible intelligence and working his heart out to change the disastrous path we were on. It's hard to believe that Marsh was less insightful.

As to vetting bloggers, I think that at the time we linked - it was because it was good that a blogger with some visibility was saying nice things. Her visibility and the value of her opinion were what they were. We also linked to every Kerry related editorial we found - though we didn't know the background of the writer. In the end, the vetting is done by whether the opinion is well supported, though obviously we are not neutral. Ultimately, you believe people who say things that are true most of the time. Just like in real life.

A more interesting question of whether she was a fraud would have been had she not claimed these false credentials and - like many internet people - given little of her biography. Then, this past would still be embarrassing, but would not reflect on the credibility of what she did as a blogger.