The Salon editor doesn’t like one of my co-bloggers, and felt it necessary to say so Sunday night in a direct message on Twitter. I’m not sure she ever actually followed me, or saved herself the trouble of un-following me to prevent me from interrogating the message at all. Yes, she sent it with some expectation of privacy, but that is the point: this was a drive-by burn from a paid MSNBC personality (she announced her hiring recently on Twitter). There is something not right about it.
I was saddened, but not for the reasons you might expect. Yes, I admire Ms. Walsh for her erudite writing. Yes, I disagree with her but have been proud to share a book cover with her
As anyone who has read her posts will know, Emilia1956 lives in the UK but was born, raised, and educated in Virginia. We share a Southern perspective and remember the great Southern liberal lions of the Democratic Party. She has a drill sergeant’s impatience for nonsense, and understands the urgency of now. So of course I asked her to cross-post. Frankly, with firebaggery hitting a crescendo last year I lacked the time and attention necessary to categorize all the hoopla, and she was a help. She has also been gracious enough to accede to my editorial requests. Her shorter posts have been an especial boon, as is her coverage of things European.
I say “she” repeatedly to point out something: calling a woman a misogynist is exactly like calling liberal Jews “self-loathing.” The language of politics is already loaded enough with such phrases. Someone else actually called her a “bigot” in another forum, and when I pressed for definitions they replied that she came across as bigoted against the people she writes about. Emilia writes about all kinds of people, including Joan Walsh, and is a completely fearless Amazon warrior about it. But as controversy raises the hit counter, no wonder her posts are so popular!
Let me repeat that: Emilia1956 writes popular posts. I barely have to push them at all. Half the daily top posts for January were her posts. She also cross-posts at Addicting Info and has cross-posted at Politics Anonymous, which I suppose makes them dishonorable websites too. But as long as we’re on the subject of bigotry, let’s talk about putting “-lover” behind someone’s name. That’s a sure-fire way to convince perhaps a million people that you’re clueless, and also bigoted against them. The problem isn’t racist memes towards presidents, but elitist snobbery towards the president’s supporters.
Like “emoprog,” a term I don’t use, there are lots of names out there and very few proper categories. I sympathize with Ms. Walsh: the internet is full of people who take offense quickly, and never let go. Indeed, Emilia1956 (real name Marion Watts) can be a bit terrier-like in her tenacity. But I had not known until the moment I read the above message that Ms. Walsh had a problem with Emilia1956, nor am I in the habit of checking with the internet before giving someone cross-posting privileges.
Emilia1956 has also been accused of brooking no compromise. I can think of someone else who doesn’t brook compromise: he writes for Joan Walsh and his name rhymes with “spleenwald.” I get what he’s doing, and it’s free speech, but I disagree and say so — which is also free speech. I haven’t made any judgments about his sense of honor. Emilia1956 is also exercising her free speech, she speaks for a supermajority of expats on many issues, and she’s not questioning anyone’s honor.
It’s much worse than that, I’m afraid.
One of the reasons I let Emilia1956 on board this blog was because she is married to a union man, and she understands the value of a union. Joan Walsh knows all about unions and their history in the progressive movement. I absolutely support unions, and if this website enjoyed a fraction of Joan Walsh’s new income it would instantly become a union shop with members in three countries. Despite my middle class background and education, or perhaps because of them, I am proletarian to the core.
During the backlash against the ACA, I first began to see a problem developing in the liberal-progressive ‘sphere that reminded me of the Democratic coalition’s breakup. The same privileged intellectual class was still pooh-poohing the necessity of including the South in any strategy. As Emilia1956 and I have tried to demonstrate, this is a huge mistake. We want our 50-state strategy back, damn it, because we are Americans and not some other nationality.
As before, hucksters were out peddling solipsistic tripe and confusing theory of change with the workings of the empirical universe. Some people thought they were moving an Overton Window, but in fact what most of them were doing was chasing hits. Outrage wins the internets. That’s how a for-profit website works. And in time, Obama’s name became a negative thing because it attracted attention for all the wrong reasons, and both sides were doing it.
According to the logic behind “theory of change” progressivism, this ought to have awarded Obama a place squarely in the middle. The great centrist should have been called that by the mainstream media. Yet this is not what happened. The president became less popular than a notional opponent and people in the middle heard only bad things about Obama from everyone. What else were they to think, except that the president was awful, horrible, no-good and very bad at his job?
So they said so. In fact, people were generally dissatisfied and had a right to be. I’m pretty sure the president is dissatisfied. But as provisions of the ACA come on line to the direct benefit of regular Americans, it becomes more popular, and this is exactly what I said would happen when I chronicled the health care debate. (I certainly wasn’t alone — Karoli did it much better.) At the time, I said that the progressives with the fancy websites did not know what the proletariat wants or will like, and should stop trying to reinforce FOX News talking points about it. I still say that.
During “Kill the Bill,” I also wondered why it was so difficult to engage the creative, activist, nutty, wonderful street left in the process of reform. It seemed so easy for the astroturfers to whip up a crowd and make some noise, and by doing that the billionaires moved the Overton Window with greater effect than all the blog hits in blogistan.
During 2010 and 2011 I observed the rise of a new green activism, the rebirth of union activism, and the rumblings of discontent with hope for a new movement to take over the spotlight. Boy, did I ever get one. And now that an actual, real, not-electronic movement is in place the Overton Window has suddenly shifted like magic. It’s a lesson a couple of Ms. Walsh’s stable of bloggers might learn: there is more value in showing up than shouting.
I’m starting to feel old. Emilia1956 is young yet, but older than me. So I’m an old soldier, and she comes from the land of General Lee, and you’ll forgive our impatience with a movement that has to organize to have a meeting to consider all points of view on whether to hold a vote on the question of whether to order lunch, and then to follow through the whole process again to decide what to have for lunch. The movement that put Barack Obama in office took a two-and-a-half year lunch break arguing about its lunch while its lunch was getting eaten.
That coalition continues to break up over whether or not he is the most centrist Democrat in the whole history of forever. God forbid he should be two ticks of a completely-artificial scale to the right of Bill Clinton. Obviously that is worth letting things all go to hell so that we can start over in 2016 with no America left to save. In some circles, it’s quite fashionable to say such nonsense — and there are cliques that will come as thick and fast as the “obots” ever did if you defy the fashion.
There’s too much personality involved. The reason rabbits dominate my templates is that I refuse to be the kind of celebutard commentator who blocks and denounces people over personal drama and butthurt they cannot properly name. For the most part, I look at the blogosphere and see a big, enormous failboat, much of it on this score. My Twitter DMs include many alerts that someone has said some thing bad about me; I expect to find badness spoken of me somewhere on these ‘tubes, and that’s fine. Let them. It’s free speech. I can tune it out or I can engage — my choice.
I’m still hopeful that January 2013 can be a movement’s reunion to remember. So here’s a valentine for Joan Walsh, who may or may not ever wish to engage again. I’ll still behave exactly the same way I did before, as though I never got her message, and we’ll see if she honors that.
