Nolo Free beats me once again to commentary, making all the right points about this mostly-pointless article rehashing the Patriot scandal in light of the recent round of faux-Anthrax mailings.

One thing I can add: the writer claims that X will serve as the new counterbalance to the Patriot, which is silly in many ways. First off, X doesn't care about the Patriot. It was started to counterbalance the 'Shady Cal.' Most minority groups roll their eyes at the Patriot, knowing that attacking them is an automatic loss, but hate the Daily Cal with a passion. Reason: since the DC is made up of mostly upper-middle class white collar kids, they have pretty much 0 ties to the minority community. Not to mention the innate hostility between the First Amendment loving Press and the 'No Hate Speech' loving X crowd.

Second reason: the writer makes it seem like X sprang from the cooperation of ethnic groups to do battle with the evil Patriot. But X is an amalgation of four existing ethnic publications, not groups. Same writers, same layout people, etc. Certainly the resource pooling helps outreach and distribution, but there's a big difference between creating the single 'voice for the marginalized' and merely adding a fifth onto four existing voices.Email This Post!