Over at AlterNet.org is this piece by Joshua Holland that takes on the gorwing use of the word "serious" by Washington-based pundits to describe other Washington-based pundits and politicians like Joe Lieberman who have been, and continue to be, wrong about American policy in Iraq (they may not be serious, but they are consistent). I had read this after I followed a link at atrios to an article at American Prospect on-line describing Joe Klein's new blog. In his first blog, Klein manages to attack other bloggers for frothing, as he froths about them, and Paul Krugman for being right, even though he was wrong. Klein uses the word "serious" to describe journalists who are wrong, generals who are wrong - pretty much everyone who is wrong. Krugman is unserious, but Klein admist he is correct. It is almost touchingly irrational and incoherent; Klein has clearly made a serious ass out of himself in his first forays into blogdom.
I think it is important that we understand what the word "serious" means in this context. According to Joshua Holland at American Prosepct online, serious is Joe Biden saying the President is going to get his surge, even though it will fail, is destined to fail, cannot not fail; even though the American people are against it, Congress is against it, he's against it - because Congress can't do anything about it except cut off funding for it, which won't happen. Not for reasons of state, but out of political cowardice masquerading as constitutional propriety. For Klein, serious is being seen on television (although, in his first blog entry, Klein admits he goofed by advocating the nuclear option for Iran) and being a Washington-based journalist or one of those journalist's sources. Bloggers aren't serious because we don't interview people who mouth words they don't understand and don't believe anyway, or who exist without a connection between reality and the words they use to describe it, or whatever. Bloggers froth. Bloggers, though, have been right, and so has the occasional mainstream journalist like Krugman - but they aren't serious because they don't buy into the narratives that are used in the corridors of power.
Biden isn't serious because he has displayed ignorance and cowardice and wrapped them up as political manouvering. Klein isn't serious because he has yet to say anything I have ever read or heard him say that was either correct at an analytical level, and has too often displayed himself as the ugly bridesmaid at a wedding - the one the groomsmen refuse to dance with. In 1992, he courted Bill Clinton, and when Clinton ditched him, he famously wrote an anonymous book, a roman a clef about Clinton that told more about Klain's "Heart-on-my-sleeve" attitude toward politicans than anything about Clinton we couldn't figure out on our own. Rather than being tossed bodily from the Washington Press Corps, however, they embraced him in a "Aww, isn't that cute" kind of way. Yet, Klein has been wrong, and continues to be wrong. Fourteen years is a long time to have no political instincts and rely on bad sources for stories that rarely if ever get to the heart of any matter other than Klein's relentless defense of his own seriousness.
Klein wants to be David Broder, who is also serious. Yet, neither of them are really serious, although Broder is a good journalist with a surprising work ethic. Both of them, and most of those who are touted as "serious", are wedded at the hip to those in power, and are used by those in power to forward various agendas. Broder, like Klein, very often wears his heart on his sleeve, displaying man-crushes on such unserious persons as Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, the Iraq Study Group and other former power types and insiders. Neither of them are serious for the very serious reason that they are part of our current problem and have no understanding of the new dynamics of power - including blogging and the communities on the net that inform and work for change - that are rendering them, and their serious counterparts, irrelevant.
From now on, whenever you read or hear the word "serious", understand that it means "Washington insider", "sycophant", or "someone who is wrong all the time". Or perhaps all three at once.
