Dennis Perrin has returned from his panel at YearlyKos with Juan Cole with the exactly the kind of high quality malcontentment you might hope for:
I found the registration area and went to formalize my arrival. The woman at the counter confirmed my place on the afternoon panel, gave me my personal plastic badge, along with a YearlyKos tote bag filled with all kinds of crap. Now I was part of the scene, though I immediately noticed a blue ribbon adorning my badge that read “Speaker.” Looking around, I saw different colored ribbons on various badges. Orange was for attendees, bloggers who were not on panels. Green was for the media. And, naturally, blue was for we “experts” who would shed light and wisdom from our various perches.
From the jump, I was pissed off and dismayed. Why the fuck was there color-coded distinctions at a supposedly “democratic” convention? I thought the whole point to blogging was to democratize political expression, to allow people who didn’t attend an Ivy League school or had friends in the corporate media to reach a wide audience with their views and concerns.
You may read it all.