Could anything make me love Google more than the fact that Michelle Malkin, the Ann Coulter of the blogosphere, hates it? Malkin is alarmed because Google has formed a political action committee. Given that Google executives are on record as having contributed lots of money to MoveOn.org and assorted Democrats, she's worried that the creation of a PAC means "more money for moonbats." (She was already mad at Google News for not linking to her blog, which is either a case of vile search engine censorship or an outbreak of unexpectedly benign Google page-ranking sanity.)
Malkin neglects to note, however, that some of the Google PAC's very first contributions have gone to support Republicans running for their lives in the midterm elections -- New Mexico's Heather Wilson, Ohio's Deborah Pryce and Wisconsin's James Sensenbrenner. This has caused another amusing fixture of the right-wing blogosphere, American Princess' E.M. Zanotti, to respectfully demur with Malkin's dismissal of those evil, evil, don't-be-evil Google folks.
The reason for Google's Republican support? The three Republicans are supporters of Net neutrality -- the effort to keep telecom companies from carving up the Internet into gated communities. Zanotti declares herself a supporter of Net neutrality, so she's willing to give Google a pass on its PAC even though "Google is generally fairly Evil."
But Zanotti seems to be a trifle confused about the politics of Net neutrality.
The PAC is nonpartisan, like Yahoo's and eBay's PACs, the kind of PAC that was created to protect a particular interest in keeping the Net free from people like Ted Kennedy ... some Democrats, aside from all of their exciting and fun socialist principles that will turn us into group hugging hippies, they're big fans of intensive intervention by the Government in any form, and sticking their noses into places that haven't been regulated into oblivion quite yet, in favor of their own little pet lobbyists. They just can't WAIT to get their grubby little hands on Al Gore's invention, and Google is going to do whatever it can to make sure that Net Neutrality passes through, even if they have to hang out with the stodgy old Righties to do it."
Uh, Princess -- Ted Kennedy is a supporter of Net neutrality, as are most Democrats. Indeed, its failure to succeed so far is due mainly to party-line votes in which Republicans have generally decried Net neutrality as evil government regulation. Meanwhile the telecom companies have also done their level best to paint the pro-Net neutrality stance as, horror of unspeakable horrors, liberal.
Ah well, the concept that a market needs to be well regulated in order to make it more free is always a hard one for those who style themselves free-market fundamentalists to wrap their heads around.
Shares