Several of Billmon’s tweets yesterday went completely over my head. That’s not uncommon and didn’t pique my curiosity enough to look further until these two:
Billmon:
[1]@adamfffff @RaniaKhalek @Demos @MattBruenig And @neeratanden is one of the gatekeepers controlling access to that particular motherlode.
[2]Point isn’t really where they get their money now, it’s where more of it can be obtained.
Getting up to speed well enough to understand what was going on wasn’t as quick and easy as usual. Lots of history between the actors and the various organizations was involved, and I still only know some of that. But let’s start with the stars of this brouhaha.
Joan Walsh. For me, she resides in that category of media folks like Mara Liasson and Josh Marshall. More creds for being liberal than she deserves, but for me, she’s just not interesting as a thinker or observer of politics. Rarely bothered to read anything at Salon after 2002 and therefore, Walsh has long been on off my radar. (Noted her 2016 Why I’m Supporting Hillary Clinton, With Joy and Without Apologies, but as she could also have written it in 2008, there was no reason for me to read it. Guess Katrina hired her a few months ago to fill the resident crank slot.)
Neera Tanden. What I knew about her is pretty much limited to her Netanyahu interview. Giggling like a sixteen year old would have been unprofessional regardless of who she was interviewing. Completely inappropriate (and frankly nauseating) in a forum with Netanyahu.
Matt Bruenig. Can’t recall that I’ve ever read anything by him. Not surprising because he’s been at Salon and I haven’t.
Interestingly enough, yesterday was a big day for young-uns not staying in their political tents. Yahoo – Exclusive: Think Tank Fires Employee Who Questioned Ties to Donald Trump.
The Center for the National Interest, a Washington-based think tank [founded by Richard Nixon], has fired one of its fellows after he criticized the organization’s decision to host Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump for a widely publicized speech, Foreign Policy has learned.
…
The employee, a junior fellow named Alexander Kirss, sharply rebuked the think tank for inviting Trump to explain his foreign-policy platform in an April 27 event at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.
“Whether intended as an endorsement or not, the Center’s invitation is tantamount to tacit, if not explicit, approval of Trump’s positions,” Kirss wrote in a Monday column for the website War on the Rocks. He added that the businessman’s positions contain numerous “logical flaws and errors.”
Guess the “junior fellow” didn’t get the “we’re Vichy Republicans now” memo.
That leads us to Gawker – Liberal Think Tank Fires Blogger for Rude Tweets. (Elite boomers are really into trashing young people for being rude. As a boomer I get the preference for civility, but only if it’s not at the expense of honesty and truthfulness. The bigger the lie(s), the more rudeness is called for.)
The incident over which Bruenig was fired began to unfold yesterday afternoon, when he criticized Joan Walsh of The Nation after she published an article about “the presumption of moral and ideological superiority” of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters (many of whom, Walsh argued, are “trying to overturn the will of black, brown, and female voters or somehow deem it fraudulent.)
(Have to wonder if Walsh is writing her own (turgid) copy or Brock is ghostwriting it for her. But I’ve previously written about how the professional feminist class seems to have gone completely nutso in this election cycle in their fealty to a female legacy candidate.)
The tweets:
Joan Walsh:
I reject the moral superiority of a coalition led by white men vs. the will of black, brown and female voters.
Matt Brunig:
@joanwalsh It’s really about old people versus young people, but you know that.
Joan knows all this. Ben Jealous had to patiently explain it to her on All In when she tried this.
But the thing is Joan is very dishonest.
Joan Walsh:
Matt, you’re becoming a troll.
Matt Bruenig:
Your dishonesty on these topics is only matched by your level of animus towards young people. It’s kind of disgusting.
Joan Walsh:
Go to hell, Matt. Really. I have a daughter. You know nothing about me and your pathetic ageist sexism is tiresome.
Matt Bruenig:
I have a daughter too. Your pathetic ageism against young people (remember taunting them as “barely shaven”) is sickening to me.
But hey keep on gentrifying Harlem with your million dollar apartment you woke self-proclaimed centrist.
(It should be noted that Bruenig was mostly repeating what he’d said months ago in Joan Walsh to Young Bernie Sanders Supporters: Get Off My Lawn)
Several people weighed in as Matt and Joan engaged in their twitter tiff, then Neera Tanden jumps in. In support of Walsh and apparerently outraged by Matt’s earlier tweet – Your dishonesty on these topics is only matched by your level of animus towards young people. It’s kind of disgusting.:
Neera Tanden:
@joanwalsh Good to know this stuff isn’t just for me.
So, what was Tanden’s gripe about Bruenig? As much a mystery to me as the comment about a million dollar apartment. But Bruenig may have been hitting Tanden earlier with this report: The Intercept – Glenn Greenwald Nov 5, 2015 – Leaked EMails from Pro-Clinton Group Reveal Censorship of Staff on israel, AIPAC Pandering, Warped Militarism.
…
The emails also provide crucial context for understanding CAP’s controversial decision to host an event next week for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That event, billed by CAP as “A Conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” will feature CAP President Neera Tanden and Netanyahu together in a Q&A session as they explore “ways to strengthen the partnership between Israel and the United States.” That a group whose core mission is loyalty to the White House and the Democratic Party would roll out the red carpet for a hostile Obama nemesis is bizarre, for reasons the Huffington Post laid out when it reported on the controversy provoked by CAP’s invitation.
…
Or it could be Tanden’s emails advocating that the US charge Libya for the bombs we dropped on their country (that’s how ignorant people think). Or the Hillary-Tanden 2009 hush-hush emails on the ACA.
Neera’s tweet then began a twitter tiff between her and Matt which quickly devolved to:
Matt Bruenig:
[1]@neeratanden @joanwalsh Scumbag Neera uses welfare when she needs it then takes away from others when they need it. Disgusting.
[2]@neeratanden @joanwalsh But hey I understand the hustle. You don’t get to be president of CAP without starving some poor mothers.
That apparently crossed the line among the liberal think-tank elites (who must all be on speed dial to each other) and apparently are ignorant of the scumbag meme that Matt used. Matt was quickly let go from Demos. A “think tank” that I’d never heard of before yesterday, but they along with lobbyists seem to be the only growth industries in DC. Matt quickly set up a GoFundMe site to get him through this sudden and unexpected period of unemployment.
Billmon:
[1] FYI, in case you feel inclined to contribute to the Bruenig bailout: https://www.gofundme.com/259kuchp
[2] $21,684 in one hour is not too shabby. Way to go, people.
[3] Just think of every donation as one more “fuck you” to folks who made the Bruenig bailout necessary in the 1st place
Amber A’Lee Frost:
Matt Bruenig now officially has more small donors than Hillary Clinton.
Cute. More interesting to me is how thin-skinned these two elite HRC women are and how quickly they called on Bruenig’s employer and got them to respond by firing Matt. It was merely twitter-tiffs not anything important like a battle on cable news shows. (The Tanden fans are busy claiming that Matt lied about her support for welfare cuts. She’s only been in bed with those that did cut welfare and seek further cuts through that “grand bargain” for twenty years. Tough shit that her fans don’t want to hold her responsible for the company she keeps. But that’s also consistent among the Hillbots because they see nothing wrong in her close relationships with Kissinger, Blankfein, etc.)
Those thin-skins aren’t going to serve them well when Trump and his surrogates launch their attacks on these Democratic elites. Like Bruenig, Trump, etc. know how scummy and compromised all of them are; so, Achilles Heels and jugular veins won’t be hard to find. Too bad those Democrats won’t be any better at exposing the scum-suckers on the other side than they’ve ever been since about 1966.
UPDATE – Billmon remains on the case Lessons of the Bruenig Bailout and ties it together with comments on the political duopoly that were tweeted right before the following:
Cathy Young
@enbrown @freddiedeboer Oh I agree, and I think the GoFundMe is in really bad taste
Billmon:
[1] It’s fascinating how miffed (angry, even) the political literati are about the Bruenig bailout:
[2] Seems like more than just dislike for Bruenig or misogyny, harrassment claims. Genuinely offended powerless & unconnected have resources…
[3] …that aren’t dispensed from above, by the same power structure that delivers their pay checks.
[4]I vividly remember same reaction from pundit elites (including liberals) when blogosphere first started snowballing. Horror, revulsion.
[5]Really drove him for me how much the liberal literati resented change: especially change that empowered the lower orders.
[6]Early left bloggers (before species was domesticated) were proverbial skunks at liberal garden party, even though most were hardly radical.
…
[x] Combine social disruption in Dem politics with economic churn in paid media — collapse of old business models, professional insecurity…
[y]…and the ability of uppity left blogger to raise $25k in 2 hours online, just from getting fired for insulting a VSP is really threatening
There more.