I gather when Markos pointed this out - to wit JetBlue remained a sponsor of YearlyKos, JetBlue freaked out and told Markos to not refer to JetBlue as a sponsor of YearlyKos. But JetBlue ALSO insisted that Markos point out that JetBlue was still providing the free airline ticket vouchers.

So nothing substantively changed, JetBlue is still sponsoring YearlyKos by providing free airline ticket vouchers. O'Reilly has proclaimed victory, though what he won is not clear. Why is O'Reilly satisfied with JetBlue's inaction here? But one must always remember Bill O'Reilly is an idiot.

Now JetBlue, who in fact did not end its sponsorship of YearlyKos, has the progressive netroots all upset at them. Pretty crummy image value for a sponsorship. Of course the upshot of it all is that no corporations will come close to touching anything blog connected now. I suspect you'll see a drop in corporate political blog advertising for all political stripes. But that may have been the idea, right wing blogs and activists rely heavily on rightwing political welfare not straight advertising. One supposes they may not be losing a thing while depriving their political foes of straight advertising sources.

Professional bloggers will likely worry about what this might mean. And they should. But that opens the whole professional blogger can of worms that requires a more thoughtful discussion. Unlike some, I am not one who sees inherently greater value in what a paid blogger says than what say, Jeralyn says. I am a fan of citizen bloggers. But we can take that issue up in another post.

For now, we can say one thing for sure, JetBlue may have taken a bit of a risk with it's sponsorship of YearlyKos, but its damage control has completely exacerbated the problem. Better to have taken the hit from O'Reilly and absorbed the Left love. Now most eveybody thinks less of them.