Blogger Stirling Newberry is angry, and he’s demanding that the old left establishment listen up or pay the consequences. Newberry thinks that the left should start supporting the “netroots” for all the hard work they do. And by support he of course means he wants an allowance. He calls it a stipend, I call it welfare for those who still live off their parents.

Newberry’s thesis is that left-wing bloggers are a rising force, and to properly harness their energy the “establishment” needs to start playing ball with them and providing them with the kind of entitlements, er, incentives that the blogger who can’t properly monetize his or her website needs to continue pumping out screed after screed of Marxist rhetoric.

If they don’t, well, Newberry begins his story with an illustrative point on how the “cryto-racist” Conservatives spent decades finding their own way, without support from the right, and then they “purged” the Republicans in a brutal orgy of right on right cannibalism. Heavens, if I was a liberal donor, I’d be anxious to “get on board” with Newberry’s program.

That’s how protection rackets work.

Understand that what Newberry’s saying is “Hey, nice left wing you got here. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it”. This is a shakedown, and a thinly veiled threat from a man who wants to be paid to fail. He wants a $1000 a month stipend so he doesn’t have to blend Google ads and deal with a CCbill account. He doesn’t want to compete on a level playing field and work at producing a site that people will pay to see, he wants someone to scratch his back, he won’t stab theirs.

It says something about him, and the netroots movement, that they’d even make such a brazen offer. It says more about people who accept it.