For a time I contemplated proposing a radical caucus for Daily Kos.org. It struck me that--through concerted effort--we might work together from the left to move some of the conversation here in the direction of a structural analysis of the ills of a US economy dominated by military industrial related concerns (ca. 50% of US taxes, ca. 50% of US exports);
toward a better understanding of the centrality of the abortion question to much wider issues of conservative anxiety about sexuality (gender issues, if you will) and the desire to control (re)production in order to control workers in general;
(more below:)
and toward a much-needed critique of the Democratic Party as the second party of US capitalism, in need of radical reform or (possibly) rejection by progressives--and of liberalism as a failed project now almost entirely co-opted by the radical right.
But like others who have posted here recently I find myself quite shocked at the storms of vitriol that posters who question an ever-narrowing spectrum of centrist analysis of political questions encounter. The ad-hominem garbage; the inanity; the utter failure to engage challenging ideas on their own terms does not speak well for the future of this website.
And I find myself wondering if kos himself understands his motives (or cares) after a steady stream of repetitive and increasingly pointless attacks on NARAL (the law of diminishing returns has really set in on these posts, no? Especially if no more sustained and penetrating critique of mainstream feminism is to follow). And. . .
this Rachel Wacholder crap which tonight ("I will lay out for every ball"? ? ?) seems to have morphed into something still more provocative and stupid. Like most people here--including, I would bet, 75% of those complaining--I have NO objection to sex or to sexual iconography when it is created for mutual nonexploitative use; I have peeked at all kinds of porn on the internet and have taken both pleasure and knowledge from it (and of course, much of it is troubling and all too reflective of the predatory economic global environment in which we find ourselves).
But pictures of naked women make other women uncomfortable when they are displayed in public settings. My wife--no prude--looked over my shoulder tonight, saw the new ad (or its new form) and scratched her head in disgust at the idea that such a picture was on an avowedly progressive site. For this reason alone, I think, Kos really needs to desist with such advertising.
The moral (of course) may be that this really isn't, in the end, a very progressive site. If Kos cannot get the message that the ads offend a large part of his audience; if he continues to attack NARAL in an aggressive way--then perhaps we should take his message for what it's worth. At this stage, I scratch my head over the phenomenon in the same way I sometimes do about Bush: why not just perform the simple expedient and talk to Cindy Sheehan; why not just commit--advertising being essential to the site's survival--to an agreed-upon code regarding a certain level of sexual content, etc. on the site? Why not make SOME KIND of freaking gesture to those who are so antagonized by the ads? Why risk losing a significant portion of your audience? Are you that powerful, that headstrong, that no gesture of understanding can be forthcoming? (Or have I missed something?) At this stage, at the very least, such ads have become unproductive, even in the amount of bombast generated on both sides. . .
NARAL is utterly centrist, middle of the road--I have endless gripes with them, as (as a lefty) I have with most middle class women's organizations. Their politics are often far from progressive. The notion that those politics should be broadened is salutary: like too many such groups they have largely failed to address the needs of the 75% of women who are poor in this country (YES!) and in need of political organization. But Kos, man--and Dudes, generally--did you guys not take Femenism 101? Do you have no idea what our mothers went through? Or what the ayatollahs of the hard right want for them again?
My sense is that this site is at a crossroads. Obviously, some here are swelled with the undeniable power that the kos phenomenon has generated. But that power has really brought with it some dangers--the amount of puffery I detect here mounts daily. The number of posts in which the poster makes some insincere claim of personal disinterest and then prattles endlessly on about himself (the "it's not about me" posts) is really very high. And the quality of the site has deteriorated over the last six months.
Maybe that's the price of success. Or maybe kos--which protestors about the sexual content of ads are repeatedly reminded is "private property"--needs a democratically constituted board of directors and the fresh breath of democracy whistling through its netreaches. The openness to comment that the mechanism represents is salutary; the reaction to challenging comment--and the disregard of a large cross-section of visitors--belies it.