Anyone that is familiar with Maryscott O’Connor’s writing knows that her father died in Vietnam before she was born. That fact gives her anti-war stance added poignancy. Maryscott and I have had parallel ‘careers’. Her Daily Kos user number is 8540, mine in 8962. I created Booman Tribune in March 2005, she created My Left Wing in July 2005. Today, the Washington Post has a profile of MSOC called The Left, Online and Outraged. On the whole, I think it is a pretty good profile. Nevertheless, the profile still suffers from myopia.
It’s inevitable that an article about Maryscott will deal with her idiosynchracies. But the article purports to describe a wider phenomenon, of which I am a part.
…can one person sitting alone in a living room, typing her fingertips numb on a keyboard, make a difference?
The answer to that question should be obvious. Yes.
Bloggers make a big difference. We have an impact on the Washington Post and the New York Times. The cable news programs read us daily and cover the tenor of the blogosphere. We have, collectively, accomplished specific tasks…like getting Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon removed from the White House Press Corp.
But the really important function we have is totally missed in David Finkel’s piece on Maryscott. He sees us as angry. He sees us as a natural response and reaction to GOP control and GOP demonization of the left.
…after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about.
That has nothing to do with why I am blogging. I don’t blog because the right-wing has attacked the left. I blog because the media, including the Washington Post, is in the pocket of a bipartisan cabal of wealthy shareholders. All our news is sifted through a lens that never questions the underlying presumptions of American superpower.
In a very real way, America does not really have a left-wing in the traditional sense. When I see Republicans say that ‘you can’t get any further to the left than Hillary Clinton and John Kerry’, I just have to shake my head. But, that is what passes for collective wisdom in our mainstream media.
They define away the left-wing. How much does the Pentagon spend each year? How much would it cost to give every American child health care? To even ask these questions is considered unpatriotic in the big media of the New York Times, CNN, Time Magazine, or the Washington Post.
And then there is a little thing called ‘telling truth to power’. Everyone knows that politicians lie. But the current crop of Republicans take lying to a heretofore unprecedented level. Major media outlets pussyfoot around the truth on this fact. Bloggers get right to the point. One hundred years from now, historians are going to read the blogs from the Bush era to help them sort out the dis and misinformation they find in the major media sources. There used to be hundreds of newspapers to choose from. Now there are just a dozen or so that matter at all.
It is not so much that the lefty blogosphere is angry…although we are certainly that. It is that the lefty blogosphere is the only place where you can get a real (untainted) angle on the news. Someday we may have a Democrat in office and we may become apologists for their behavior. But we were not born in that atmosphere. We have no history of sucking up to power. We tell the truth to power. And that is what gives us strength and adds meaning to our voices.
Maryscott and I don’t do what we do because we are angry. We do what we do because there are too few people around willing to do what we do.
And I’m glad that Adam fixed the damned garbage disposal.
