] She said her manager was standing in another room and she
] asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go
] home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he
] came back a few minutes later and said, "I reckon you're
] fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,"
] Gobbell said.

[ There are a few interesting things about this story, not the least of which is, of course, the fundamental issue of firing someone purely based on their political leanings.

As the story reveals further down, after hearing about the incident, John Kerry hired the woman : "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked." This is pretty obviously a total PR move, since it's not clear what skills she can bring to the campaign, but you couldn't buy a better story if you tried.

One other compelling bit is that it seems that the story was broken, and almost completely carried, by a single member of the DialyKOS community, in their diary (personal blog). If you were looking for compelling evidence of a benefit of distributed media, seems like this could be it. -k]