So there I was yesterday, going back and forth a bit with someone on Facebook, calling David Horowitz a nihilist, when it occurred to me that I was confessing, in a way, my dissatisfaction with the current state of "liberal blogs". First of all, I hate that second word. I rarely use it, even when I talk about the stuff I do. What's more, I don't think of a lot of different sites as "blogs" - The Huffington Post? Crooks and Liars? Nah . . . - but rather just various facets of new media. More important, however, than whether or not this or that website qualifies as a "blog", was the question of who is or is not "liberal". In the context of the discussion, Glenn Greenwald's name came up, and the people with whom I was having this brief little back-and-forth agreed that calling him "liberal" is wrong. He is a kind of left-leaning libertarian.
Then, of course, I had to add my two cents. I took it a step further. I also dropped digby's name, adding it to my own personal list of those whom I don't believe are really "liberal". I offered my opinion (to which there was no specific reply, so I don't know how my interlocutors felt about this particular observation) that they aren't really "liberal". I said that I felt that they were just critics, pure and simple. Far too often they wrote as if they occupied some perch high above it all - I referenced Hegel's remark on some other philosopher that he wrote from an "angel's" point of view - and were able, without any effort at all, to pronounce a pox on all houses because they had nothing invested in current issue debates, public discourse, and the like.
One of those with whom I was writing back and forth made the remark that liberals, unlike conservatives, base their politics on "thought"; the latter are rooted (in this person's view) in emotion, which makes dealing with them far more difficult. I disagree 100% with this particular point-of-view, but he at least offered as evidence the thought that far too many liberals believe (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that there exists some one single piece of evidence that, if generally known and accepted, will make conservatives (and probably the rest of America) smack their collective foreheads and exclaim, "Golly, you're right! We all need to listen to these liberals after all!"
This last observation is the source of part of my frustration with self-described "liberals" and their websites. You peruse the above-mentioned folks, or Crooks and Liars, or Think Progress, or The Daily Howler, you can see this dynamic at work. One site, Media Matters for America, is entirely predicated on the idea that, providing the various ways mainstream media obfuscate, occasionally lie, and (in the case of right-wing blabbermouths on AM radio) are even quite scary, we shall shun them and their nefarious ways for sources of information that are more thorough, more honest, more based in reality (please note, I use this final phrase with irony).
For all their earnest, indeed tireless, efforts, however, FOXNews is still on the air, Rush Limbaugh still does five days a week, and conservatives (who at least have the advantage, as minorities usually do, of having someone to unite against) seem quite determined to act, well, as conservatives.
What's more, the constant invocation of their perspective, their failures, their constant untruths (and, one should add, the way those various rhetorical crimes end up manipulating hapless, spineless Democratic politicians) leads one to believe that they might not be paying attention. It is easy enough, as too often happens, to call out a public figure for hypocrisy. They haven't noticed, I believe, that it is not only easy, but old and tired. Furthermore, it doesn't work. The constant barrage of, "I know you are but what am I?" garbage ends up as mere bitchiness more than anything else after a while. If these folks were paying attention, they might notice that they aren't moving the conversation forward, they aren't changing habits of reportage or commentary, and they might just be losing some folks (like me) along the way.
The biggest pet peeve I have isn't the repetition of, "Boy, look how much the right-wing is lying today!" It is the aggrieved tone, the implication of the old phrase (one doesn't read it too often these days, but a couple years ago or so it was quite in vogue) "the reality-based community", as if we liberals have the skeleton to "reality" that our political opponents do not. Now, it is quite true - before anyone slobbers over their stuttered, "But. . . but . . ." I will come clean right up front - that I often make observations on how odd this or that statement or position by some right-wing individual is; I make the case (usually) that my own perspective comes from the not-exactly controversial position that the specific statement at issue has no basis in fact, is quite often poorly reasoned, or perhaps the source has a history of being in error, or have certain biases I find troubling. I hope, however, that I have not crossed the line from specific observations on this or that particular case to a kind of general tone that boils down to this following: "I'm so right and the rest of the world is so wrong, and yet no one seems to care; apparently the rest of the world is crazy or stupid or both."
The tone of aggrieved, earnest pleading - no one seems to understand that these folks are right and the rest of the world is just wrong wrong wrong! - is the main reason I have stopped reading Noam Chomsky. I will defend his voluminous works on the merits, both factual and ideological, to any and all comers. But, for myself, I have wearied of the beleaguered tone he has adopted in recent years.
Alleged "liberal bloggers" far too often in recent days and months have started adopting this idea. What's more, the barrage of reports on the various "failures" of the mainstream media - and some of them, indeed, are failures, not just ideological quirks - leads me to believe that, underneath the celebration of "alternate media" one read about not long past (like when I started perusing the internet, almost four years ago now), what really motivates far too many of these folks is a desire to pierce the mainstream bubble of noise and get their mugs on television, their words spread across a larger platform than the internet. Rather than setting up a kind of alternate network of reporting and commentary, it seems that what is really going on is a concerted effort to become the newest face of teevee or voice in print. One detects more than a little envy at the thought that someone as quite obviously ridiculous as David Brooks or borderline sociopathic as Bill Kristol pull down huge salaries as commentators, while these folks, tirelessly typing away in the quiet of their homes, are so much better at commentary, so much more insightful, so much more right.
Yawn.
So, I've stopped reading digby, whom I used to read pretty religiously. Ditto, Glenn Greenwald (and his pose has passed the tiresome stage and reached the annoying; "I'm right, everyone else is wrong!" only works for so long before it pisses off pretty much everyone). Crooks and Liars and Think Progress should drop the whole, "Look at the hypocrite-of-the-day and how the media ignore is and us in the process!" crap. Yes, Bill O'Reilly is quite awful, and might actually be a borderline personality. He isn't going to lose his job for all that. Even someone as odd (and occasionally creepy) as Chris Matthews will continue to be a media force, no matter how often his errors and occasional flights in to la-la land are pointed out.
There is still the possibility that the internet will provide a platform for developing alternative, virtual communities united around a common vision for the country, providing information and commentary that differs from the mainstream. At this point, however, the entire self-described (and too often erroneously so) political-social-cultural left on the internet is sinking in to irrelevance precisely because they have foregone the celebration of their own possibilities and expend too much effort celebrating their own alleged merits and pleading their own purity.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to vent.
Virtual Tin Cup
