On Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am typical of the right wing. I am why newspapers are going broke. I write garbage. I am angry with Barack Obama. I misquote Obama. I am bitter. I am a certified idiot. I am lame. I am a Republican flack.
On Thursday, I realized that I am a media pimp with my lips on Obama's butt. I am a bleeding-heart liberal who wants nothing more than for the right to fall on its face. I am part of the ObamaMedia. I am pimping for the left. I am carrying water for Obama. Lord, am I an idiot.
Since both these positions contain ideological elements that cannot coexist, is it necessary to conclude they are both false?
Actually he doesn't do that. What he does, however, is even less intelligent and artful.
The comments are naturally an unscientific indicator, but the impression I got is consistent with what I've heard from colleagues: The vitriol of last year's presidential campaign has outlasted the election. For the right, this isn't terribly surprising; their guys lost the White House in 2008 and control of both chambers of Congress in 2006, so lashing out in frustration is to be expected. The left, however, is more difficult to explain. It made sense for them to be angry when George W. Bush was in the White House. But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.
Rather than deal with the substantive issues - the very idea that Dana Milbank is a clueless reciter of conventional wisdom is impossible for Dana Milbank to contemplate - he asks a question that redirects the entire issue to those who have left comments in his online columns. He isn't a clueless hack, "the left" is angry!
First of all, to dismiss "the right"'s anger as understandable - and the substance of which we really need not concern ourselves with - shows that Milbank really hasn't been paying attention recently. While media clowns from Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh certainly are entertaining in a sick kind of way, the expression of racist and mindless political complaints verge on the scary; how many times do we have to hear these people use the word "revolution" before we realize that, some of them, are quite serious? Milbank certainly doesn't; the expression of popular political outrage just isn't his purview, apparently.
Second, the real Left in the United States is almost non-existent. There are liberals, to be sure, of various shades; there are the self-labeled Progressives, who exist further to the left than conventional liberals. Real, hard-core left-wingers - socialists and communists shading in to one another - are certainly out there, but have no impact on our political life. Furthermore, it shouldn't surprise anyone with a modicum of political sense that "the Left" in the United States, such as it may be, would be dismayed with the Obama Administration. Hewing a pretty conventional line, it exists completely within acceptable limits of political discourse and practice, although a portion of it that has been sidelined and even ridiculed for decades.
So much for part of Milbank's phony bit of wonderment. Second, the "anger" Milbank deals with is almost wholly anger directed at himself and his colleagues in the punditry. So, of course, it's all about him. Sigh.
So why is the left so angry? I don't know (I'm an idiot), so I put the question to the readers in my weekly online chat on Friday.
A reader from Rockville described it as a "sore winner" phenomenon. "People get used to being angry and when things change, they don't. So they find stuff to be mad about." Another said that some on the left "feel obligated to stay in the fight" because of the harsh treatment of Obama by the right.
But many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama's centrism -- his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture, for example. "I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site," one wrote. A reader in Evanston, Ill., took a similar view, that true believers on the left don't want "b.s. rhetoric about looking forward." Okay, but why wouldn't this be directed at Obama? Readers explained that some of it is. But, "if we yell obscenities at Obama," replied a reader in Dunnellon, Fla., "we get a visit from the Secret Service. Yelling them at you is worry-free."
So the angry left should thank me: I'm taking one for the team.
The "left" isn't institutionally angry. On the contrary; we tend to push a far more positive view both of the potential of this country and its people as well as have a far more hopeful approach to broader participation in public affairs. The anger that Milbank has directed at him lies precisely at his cluelessness in the face of this anger. Rather than deal substantively with it - perhaps calling Obama's speech on mortgage refinancing a commercial for on-line lending, he might deal with the substantive policy aspects of mortgage refinancing in a time of financial and economic meltdown - he dismisses these complaints of his powerful intellect and humorous insight as, well, anger for anger's sake.
Finally, in regards the last comment Milbank cites, I would say that I have seen more than enough criticism of Obama and his Administration online to dismiss the idea that the entire phenomenon is some kind of massive example of misdirection. On the contrary, it is directed quite honestly at the kind of hack-filled dismissal and condescension apparent in this very column.
