The Fray

I'm not sure the distinction Chris Bowers' post here is about actually tracks the phenomenon Atrios complaints about here. Chris is pointing to the sociological phenomenon among progressive blogs of a division between what Henry Farrell calls the "wonkosphere" and the activism-oriented sites that comprise the "netroots" (see Mark Schmitt's column) with the gap bridged primarily by Atrios' site. This divide strikes me as a natural division of labor sort of thing. If I tried to dedicate this blog primarily to activism and movement building the result would be . . . a really bad job.

When I participate in activism it's by doing stuff like working phone banks or knocking on doors. I'm one of the organized, not one of the organizers. Which is fine. The organizers wouldn't have anything to do if there weren't Indians to organize and make the calls (UPDATE: This was unclear -- I meant you can't have all chiefs and no Indians, too many cooks spoil the soup, that kind of thing), and I lack the capacity to spearhead anything more complicated than a trip to the grocery store. I think, however, that I do a pretty good job of writing a blog that's primarily political punditry with a little pop culture and sports thrown in so that's what I do and I primarily link to people whose blogs are similar to mine in subject matter not because our blogs are "better" than other kinds of blogs, but because it's just in the nature of blogging that your site is going to mostly link to similar sites.

A separate question is whether or not journalists think of themselves as political actors. Overwhelmingly, I think journalists would tell you "no, they shouldn't" and that most liberal (but not conservative) pundits would agree. To me, this is wrong. I could in perfectly good faith spend all my time looking for flawed arguments for conclusions I agree with, finding far-left people with unsound views to denounce them, and mocking the foibles of politicians whose views I agree with on the merits. A blog like that might even be entertaining and perhaps widely read. I wouldn't do a site like that, however, because I think it would be irresponsible. I'm not a political activist by trade, I'm a writer, but hopefully my writing has some kind of impact on the world and I'd like it be a good impact rather than a bad one and that's something I try to take seriously.

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I could in perfectly good faith spend all my time looking for flawed arguments for conclusions I agree with, finding far-left people with unsound views to denounce them, and mocking the foibles of politicians whose views I agree with on the merits.

Why didn't you just say Kausfiles and save the space?

Posted by: JH on January 17, 2007 12:21 PM

I knew what you meant even before the update, but I have to say that I never liked that expression for several reasons, including the basic logical inconsistency that chiefs are Indians too.

Posted by: schwa on January 17, 2007 12:47 PM

Kos does great work, but a lot of the wonkery isn't very interesting at all. Want a new type of political blog? One so pointless that in most cases it doesn't even take a side in political debates but does crankily rant against the state of the world from a non-political perspective? Then please see Powers of the Earth.

Posted by: Wido on January 17, 2007 01:08 PM

The "Indians to organize and make the calls" remark initially looked like a reference to the much-discussed IT company practice of outsourcing phone work to dudes in Bangalore.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf on January 17, 2007 01:16 PM

When I participate in activism it's by doing stuff like working phone banks or knocking on doors. I'm one of the organized, not one of the organizers. Which is fine.

No! Thou shalt get in line behind the mighty Kos! (or if he's not available, then maybe Matt Stoller) That is the only true path.

Posted by: JP on January 17, 2007 01:38 PM

Why didn't you just say Kausfiles and save the space?

Actually, I don't believe Mickey actually agrees with any of these arguments/views/politicians. Or disagrees, for that matter. He's basically an amoral, non-substantive person who just likes to piss off liberals for its own sake, motivated mainly by personal assholery.

Posted by: JP on January 17, 2007 01:41 PM

"...looking for flawed arguments for conclusions I agree with, finding far-left people with unsound views to denounce them, and mocking the foibles of politicians whose views I agree with on the merits. A blog like that might even be entertaining and perhaps widely read"

This would be my description of Althouse.

Posted by: Chris on January 17, 2007 01:44 PM

"A separate question is whether or not journalists think of themselves as political actors. Overwhelmingly, I think journalists would tell you "no, they shouldn't" and that most liberal (but not conservative) pundits would agree. To me, this is wrong."

It's not wrong. You're just not a journalist.

You occupy a space between activists and journalists. But that doesn't make either activists or journalists wrong. Both have a role, as do folks like you and Ezra and Josh Marshall in the middle space.

Political life in this country would really suck if journalists who see themselves as political non-actors didn't exist.

Posted by: Petey on January 17, 2007 01:52 PM

Here we go again with the Kaus-bashing. The reductive logic here -- he says he's a Dem but he criticizes Dems so he must be "irresponsible" or "amoral" -- is pathetic. Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas? Or the obvious point that Dems aren't infallible and should be subject to sharp scrutiny? Oh, no, that doesn't hold for Mickey Kaus. He must be reviled. He must be silenced. He's not a serious man. Because he criticizes Dems, he is a clown, and the only folks who don't think he should be made a pariah are Republicans and other faux Democrats. Give me a break.

Posted by: Chris on January 17, 2007 02:59 PM

"The reductive logic here -- he says he's a Dem but he criticizes Dems so he must be "irresponsible"

What's even better is that Matthew seems to be saying that all objective journalists are "irresponsible" too, not just folks like Kaus.

Posted by: Petey on January 17, 2007 03:15 PM

The first time I read Matt's post I understood him to be saying:

(1) Most journalists believe themselves to not be political actors
(2) Most liberal pundits believe themselves to not be political actors

This, clearly, isn't how anybody took it, so I assume I'm wrong. But within the class of journalists, if people like Matt and, well, Kaus, are going to be "journalists," we've still got reporters on the one hand and columnist/pundits on the other; the former shouldn't be political actors, imo, and the latter should.

And Chris, I'm pretty certain the dismissal of Kaus isn't that he's a Dem who criticizes Dems and therefore must be shunned. It's that his criticisms of Dems are shallow, unimportant, false, craven, self-serving, etc. And there are still other reasons to dislike his writings, but I just thought I'd throw that out there. It's not like Matt, or the people Matt associates with professionally/personally (to the extent we're privy to Matt's personal life) shies away from criticizing both specific Democratic politicians, or generally accepted platforms of the Democratic party, at such time as he thinks they're deserving of criticism.

Posted by: Quarterican on January 17, 2007 03:25 PM

"The reductive logic here -- he says he's a Dem but he criticizes Dems so he must be "irresponsible" or "amoral" -- is pathetic."

Man, you haven't been reading much of our criticism of Kaus. The problem is not that he disagrees with us, it's that he has bought into all the crap spread by the wingnut propaganda machine, having become a part of that machine himself. See, for example, this (the first thing that came up in a google search of this domain):

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/11/simple_answers_to_silly_questi/

Posted by: rea on January 17, 2007 03:28 PM

What's even better is that Matthew seems to be saying that all objective journalists are "irresponsible" too, not just folks like Kaus.

I didn't actually have Kaus in mind here and I don't think he's being irresponsible. Kaus's work reflects his real political/policy interests and priorities; I think his interests are odd and his priorities wrong, but that's a different matter.

As for 'objective' journalists, it's only irresponsible if you actually do a good job of covering-up your so-called 'biases.'Infiltrating the objective media in order to advance a cause is perfectly responsible behavior.

Posted by: Matthew Yglesias on January 17, 2007 03:40 PM

So Matt, do you think that ‘objectivity’ actually exists?

My own feeling is that journalists are obviously political actors, but they’re different than activists. Journalists (of the non-pundit variety) shouldn’t try to serve any particular political agenda. They should try to further the public’s understanding of empirical reality. Obviously this is a fairly complicated idea in practice. Nobody’s perfectly unbiased, one person’s truth is another person’s spin, etc. But still, that's the ideal which journalists should strive for.

Posted by: RC on January 17, 2007 04:19 PM

I read Matt's blog daily to watch a logical and lucid mind at work, so I wouldn't care what ideology he claims to profess.

Posted by: Steve Sailer on January 17, 2007 04:31 PM

Chris, it's funny how, in attempting to criticize those who assume they know Kaus' motivations when he attacks liberals, you are able to draw such sweeping and unfounded assumptions about what my motivations were in criticizing Kaus.

The difference between you and me is that I was a regular reader of Kaus for a period of years and I probably read hundreds of his entries attacking liberals, while you've read exactly one brief comment from me in which I attacked Kaus. If you read somebody's work over and over again for a long time, you can draw some conclusions about what their motivations are and where they're coming from. If you haven't, then you can't.

Posted by: JP on January 17, 2007 05:22 PM

"I read Matt's blog daily to watch a logical and lucid mind at work, so I wouldn't care what ideology he claims to profess."

Ideology has a big effect on how logical and lucid you permit yourself to be. We all have at least a bit of ideology in us (since we all need to make lots of assumptions about the world in order to think), but some ideologies are more constraining than others.

Posted by: MQ on January 17, 2007 09:47 PM

In response to JP's post, let me note that I have also read Kaus for years. I agree that he focuses much more on criticizing fellow Dems than any other Dem pundit I am aware of, but I don't see why this makes his agenda so contemptible. He's trying to influence the people he perceives that he has some chance to influence.

As for Quarterican's assertion that the reason Kaus is dismissed is because his "criticisms of Dems are shallow, unimportant, false, craven, self-serving," I say look at what Kaus writes about education. There isn't much doubt on an empirical basis that the Democrats' alliance with teachers unions is, uh, problematic. Whether it be impeding Antonio Villaraigosa's attempts to fix schools in L.A., fighting to preserve bilingual education just to save jobs in New York City or forcing the rejection of massive bequests in Detroit because they would fund charter schools, teachers unions are not a progressive force in our society.

For insistently pointing out this alone, Kaus deserves respect. The Democratic Party's allies includes some noxious players. Please, please, please, let's have more iconoclasts willing to point this out.

Posted by: Chris on January 18, 2007 02:51 AM

I'm pretty sure that Kaus-bashing falls squarely within the rules of the marketplace of ideas. Kaus has written so much stupid crap over the years (right off the top of my head, his BS about Brokeback Mountain and the liberal enclave of Plano TX, or his BS about how the Senator Johnson incident meant people might reconsider their views about Schiavo, or him wondering how Democrats can reconcile supporting gay marriage with reaching out to Islamic societies... AAH THE STUPID IT BURNS) that he doesn't deserve respect simply for bashing teachers unions.

Posted by: Barbar on January 18, 2007 07:52 AM

Chris -

Actually, if you do one good thing, and many bad things, then it's not necessarily clear you deserve respect. I could go dig up the specifics of what Kaus wrote about, say, Kerry - nobody's favorite candidate, but - that were, as I said, shallow, unimportant, self-serving, etc. Bet you there's more than a few windsurfing cracks, e.g. But I won't, because I don't want to burst any blood vessels in my brain. So I'll content myself with pointing that

(a) I bet I'm not alone in finding Kaus' approach to writing incredibly annoying, and
(b) dude's got some really weird issues about gay people that I don't want to have anything to do with. Seriously. Actually, his gay-people-issues are sort of indicative of everything that annoyed me about him back when I still regularly followed links to his pieces: it was somehow weirdly important to him that he be out in front of the pack, proclaiming that, actually, nobody liked Brokeback Mountain, and they didn't like it because gay people made them uncomfortable. He needed, at great length, to discount any possibility that our society might be becoming more accepting of gay people - which he's supposed to think of as a good thing, and I believe he claimed to - and instead criticize his imaginary liberal elite bogey-man for being so self centered as to believe that just because people were flocking to this movie in cities like NYC and SF it was also succeeding elsewhere. Kaus was here to tell us that in fact it wasn't succeeding outside of the "coastal elite" areas (which, you know, it was), and it was another hammer for him to use in the ongoing theme of: "I'm the only Democratic pundit who's in touch with the Real America," which is not only false but besepaks a horribly twisted set of assumptions to start out with which are fundamentally unhelpful to the goals of the political party he's supposed to adhere to. Not to mention that during this same episode he clearly evinced a great deal of personal discomfort at the idea of gay people having sex, and being presented with that image. So, you know, if I hadn't already stopped reading Kaus, I would've around this time period, which encapsulated so much about why I'd already stopped reading him.

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