Blogosphere not as radical as pundits think
Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2007

It’s no exaggeration to say that the establishment media’s initial
response to the blogosphere was panic. The idea of mere citizens talking
back to the press was unsettling to Washington media celebrities.
Pundits who’d exhibited no qualms about the sordid imaginings of, say,
American Spectator or The Wall Street Journal editorial page recoiled in
horror at online mockery. It was laugh-out-loud funny to see a
Washington Post reporter infamous for treating Kenneth Starr’s
backstairs leaks like holy writ make a show of pretending that the
now-defunct Web site mediawhoresonline. com had accused her of
prostitution. How the system had always worked was this: They dished it
out, everybody else had to take it. Now that many print and broadcast
outlets feature Web logs—blogs—of their own, it’s no longer common to
hear the word “blogger” pronounced with utter disdain. Even so,
competition from the groundlings still provokes unease. The latest
high-minded worrier is a University of Chicago law professor and
sometime politico, Cass R. Sunstein.

A Justice Department official during the Carter and Reagan
administrations, Sunstein has written a book called “Republic. com 2.
0,” essentially arguing that the Internet’s “echo chamber effect” is
responsible for increased political polarization and declining civility.
In an interview with salon. com, he said that social scientists find
that when people talk only to those who agree with them, their views
become more extreme.

“I don’t like that Rush Limbaugh listeners call themselves ‘ditto
heads,’” Sunstein said. “It’s funny, but it’s kind of horrible. FOX News
is a self-identified conservative outlet. The more extreme elements on
the left treat their fellow citizens as if they’re idiots, or as if
they’re rich people who don’t care about anybody.”

A former colleague and friend of Barack Obama, he yearns for greater
recognition of the truism that “that neither conservatives nor liberals
have a monopoly on wisdom.” No sentient person thinks they do. We’re all
a mix of conflicting opinions. I’ve had runins with what I call the
anti-gravity left during my own inglorious career. (I’m pro-hunting, for
example, which drives sentimentalists nuts. ) Today, however, I’d argue
that Sunstein suggests a false dichotomy of little relevance to the
current situation.

Among the blogs I read, there’s no equivalent of the authoritarian
impulses, intellectual dishonesty and rote chanting of the GOP party
line that characterizes Limbaugh and his imitators on the right. Partly,
that’s because most are written by educated individuals who take pride
in winning arguments without cheating, and to whom party orthodoxy is
anathema. In a saner climate, many wouldn’t be called left-wing at all.

How liberal do you have to be to defend habeas corpus, Fourth Amendment
privacy rights and the rule of law, as Glenn Greenwald does on his
“Unclaimed Territory” blog at salon. com? A former constitutional
litigator, Greenwald brings rare clarity and passion to political issues
with legal overtones.

Here are the political blogs I read every day.

Duncan Black’s “Eschaton” blog combines the analytical skills of a Ph.
D. economist with the irreverent wit of a Philadelphia wiseacre. If
you’d been reading Eschaton (or Paul Krugman), you’d have seen the
housing bubble and the sub-prime lending crisis coming.

Josh Marshall’s Ph. D. is in history, but his talkingpointsmemo blog
specializes in gritty, detailed reporting. Marshall was on top of the
Jack Abramoff influencepeddling scandal from the get-go. Link through
talkingpointsmemo to Greg Sergeant’s saucy “Horse’s Mouth” media
criticism blog.

Bob Somerby’s Daily Howler provides salty press criticism you’ll read
nowhere else. “Radicalized” by the Washington media’s 2000 “War on Gore”
(his Harvard roommate, Al Gore ), Bob can’t abide liberal fecklessness
about the way RNC-invented “narratives” dominate mainstream political
coverage, and he doesn’t mind offending “weak, worthless” liberal
pundits who look the other way.

Eric Alterman’s “Altercations” blog is another place to find impassioned
disputation between the host and a wide variety of antagonists on
everything from Israel’s Likud party to the New York Mets. A Ph. D. in
history, Alterman also is the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan on the
Internet. “Slacker Fridays,” when the inimitable Charles Pierce’s
scathing missives appear, is a must. Media Matters columnists Eric
Boehlert and Jamison Foser’s dissections of the vices and follies of the
“mainstream” media advance a point of view similar to The Daily Howler’s
somewhat more politely. Kevin Drum (washingtonmonthly. com ) and the
inimitable Digby (digbysblog. blogspot. com ), a writer of such
analytical brilliance and prodigious output she shames the rest of us
idlers, are two bloggers I never miss. Read around for a while, follow
the links to related sites and you’ll soon find your own favorites list.
A celebrated editor once told me that reading the letters submitted for
publication to his magazine had persuaded him that, contrary to media
careerists in metropolitan enclaves, political intelligence and wisdom
are scattered randomly across the American landscape. Thanks to the
Internet, they no longer have to ask anybody’s permission to speak out.

—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and
recipient of the National Magazine Award.