Yeah, given the ratings, I think we all are.

“We have to fight back against these people. We can’t let them do this kind of stuff to us. And they’re always going to be very powerful forces that don’t want us to hear my voice, and the voices of those like not just me, the voices of those like us.

They want to shut all of us up, Ed. That’s what this is all about. I’m amazed you’re still able to talk on the radio.

They don’t want to hear this stuff. And what we have to make clear is we’re gonna stand up and fight and we together, all of us, we will not be silenced.”

Via Brian Maloney, who notes via e-mail that the constant references to a shadowy “they” call to mind some of Perot’s greatest hits. Maybe. But Perot’s nuttier moments seemed sincere; Silky’s, true to unctuous form, are almost certainly contrived to appeal to the fightin’ nutroots, who now dominate his campaign. Nothing gets them off like the heroic image of themselves as a powerless but passionate grassroots insurgency challenging the establishment; the title of Kos’s book suggests as much. Edwards is just tossing them some chum on that count. The Man can’t handle the truth they’re selling so They have to make fun of Silky’s mane and try to silence Ed Schultz, whom no one except Ed Schultz has ever heard of. It’s all a “distraction” from the “real issues,” like the war on terror and the Anbar awakening and everything else that’s politically inconvenient for the left.

Expect plenty of quasi-conspiratorial garbage along these lines in his speech to Yearly Kos. Exit question: Does the fact that the entire Democratic presidential field skipped the DLC meeting and RSVP’d for yKos bear at all on what presently constitutes the “establishment” on the left?

Update: The web may be the nerve center of Silky’s campaign but he knows where his bread is buttered.