The New "Left"
One of the interesting (and insane, imo) developments of the primary madness last year was how people like Paul Krugman became "bad progressives" due to their skepticism about Barack Obama's political style while others, like Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein (and many others like them) became newly treasured voices of the "Progressive" blogosphere. It amused me but also angered me. The Sully love in particular, given his history of racism, sexism and McCarthyism. While Obama himself has made the disdain visited upon Krugman and those like him as ridiculous as it always should have been, via Digby, animai provides a classic debunking of the lionization of the Sullys and Kleins of the world:
This is the summer of Joe Klein, resurgent. He's been washed in the blood of the lamb and, like Andrew "fifth column" Sullivan wishes to be welcomed back into the liberal punditin' fold. Every time he says something mildly rational about the irrationality of our current Republican opposition--"nihilists" was good--he gets an approving link from someone in the blogosphere [MORE . . .]
. . . [T]he age old question "Joe Klein--weak, petty, and venial or weaker, pettier, and venali-er?" Well, oddly enough, I have a tale to tell on this score. It turns out that Athenae and I must be twins, separated at birth, because I had *exactly* this conversation with Joe Klein and asked him to name names just last week.
[Klein. . .] said that its true the fringe republicans were “crazy” but perhaps no crazier than the “crazy left” under Bush. I thought he meant the “truthers” so I said “name me one person in congress or the Senate who was as crazy on any topic as these Republican senators and Congressmen who sign on to the birther and deather stuff are now?” Evading this question he said “well, Glenn Greenwald is crazy—he's a civil liberties absolutist.” Now, me, I come from a long line of civil liberties absolutists so I said “I admire Glenn Greenwald's work immensley but it must be very embarrassing for you, of course, because he's been eating your lunch for years.” (!) I think this must be something of a sore point for him. He began shrieking “Glenn Greenwald is EVIL! EVILl! [. . .]
People around us were clamoring to know what the debate was about so I laid it out, chapter and verse: I explained the Klein was upset because he had been caught out shilling for the Republicans on National Security Matters and on the FISA court legislation in particular and that he was still upset because he'd been held up for ridicule for his absurd statement that there was no problem with the secret Bush programs although he didn't know anything about them. And that this extended to the actual retroactive FISA legislation, which he also said was fine but didn't know anything about. This seemed to inflame things somewhat. Can't see why. He began shrieking at me that he hadn't been wrong, he'd been misled by a “democratic staffer” but really, I just began laughing at that point because “I didn't read the legislation” like “the dog ate my homework” is rather a lame explanation for a grown man, let alone a self described journalist.
It goes on. Read it and remember Joe Klein is not the only one.
Speaking for me only
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