Did you hear the one about the conservative that told a provably false, bald-faced lie to his conference attendees?
“Netroots Nation is going down faster than Mel Gibson’s career,” Erik Telford of Americans for Prosperity told a laughing crowd at the Venetian casino gathered for the third annual RightOnline.AFP started RightOnline to counter Netroots Nation, celebrating its fifth anniversary and holds the event each year in the same city as the progressive event.
Telford received huge cheers for saying that with 1,100 registered attendees, RightOnline was larger than Netroots Nation. He said the progressive event had estimated “between 1,000 and 2,000 attendees.” But Netroots Nation’s official spokeswoman Mary Rickles told TPM that Netroots has 2,100 registered attendees.
First they stalk us, then they lie about us. How “quaint”.
Telford also characterized our conference as full of people who are “angry and bitter”. Following their tweets over the weekend (hashtag #ro10), the lie about our conference being smaller was retweeted ad nauseum as was the “angry and bitter” comment.
I saw something much, much different.
I saw happy, energized, engaged people.
I saw welcoming, accepting, encouraging people.
We had people from all races. We had men and women. We had gay and straight and bisexual and transgendered folks. We had disabled bloggers like Daily Kos diarists Scottie (indiemcemopants) and PerfectStormer, both amazing writers and advocates. We had people who fit into more than one of these categories and yet all of them found a happy, accepting home at Netroots Nation 2010 in Las Vegas. Neither angry or bitter, the motley crew of progressive liberals all shared a common vision of promoting progressive ideals and politics across the country.
We were energizing and energized. We smiled, we laughed, we were serious and we were focused.
And we did not have to lie about our conference to feel good about ourselves.
Those “others” at RightOnline 2010?
Not so much.
Hope to see all of you in Minneapolis in June 2011. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
I’m just sayin’…
