Trying to bribe bloggers -- THAT'S the story

Digby gets it.
Forget ethics paradigms and Zephyr and Kos and MyDD. The media, for all the trashing we give them, have actually focused on the meaningful news story here: that Dean's presidential campaign tried to bribe left-wing bloggers to support him.
Zephyr, who started all the brouhaha, now writes "We were paying him [Jerome Armstrong of MyDD] in part because WE hoped that he, and Kos, would blog positive things about Dean, but that was never explicit or implicit in the contract. This has to do with OUR motives, not some contract, and no compromise on their part." And she's now preaching about how bloggers need to have ethics! Well, duh!
It doesn't matter now how clumsy and unsuccessful the bribery attempt was -- Armstrong actually shut his blog down while he worked for Dean, while Kos noted it prominently on his site and on every Dean-related post he wrote. So it didn't work.
I suspect, actually, that the bribery idea never occured to Dean himself -- sounds to me like it was Trippi, now turned pseudo-journalist on MSNBC, and the fair Zephyr who thought this one up all by themselves. What did Trippi say the other day, something about that he couldn't support Dean for DNC chair because Rosenberg would do a better job of pulling the party together? Yeah, Dean just made too many poor decisions, didn't he, like hiring Trippi and Zephyr to work for him in the first place.
Poor Rosenberg, I'll bet he thought it was a real feather in his cap when Trippi endorsed him four days ago. Little did he know. It will be interesting to see whether this story, in the end, turns against Dean or against Trippi, but I know who I think should get the blame for it.
And personally, I hope Dean wins the DNC chair, and cleans house with a mighty broom. He knows who his friends are now, and his enemies, too.