In my mind,
Marisacat serves as something akin to the "Informal official
dKos daily cable news landscape screener". I've found her consistent and timely posts about what's up on the screen over the course of the day/evening invaluable for non-cable subscribers like myself. It goes without saying that
dKos and other political blogs cover the blogosphere and US print journalism all day all the time. And the bonus gift for signing on to
dKos are, to my mind, the posts from folks who read in the orginal and report on the foreign presses among all of those I sometimes feel like
Soj and
paper tigress have become my own personal "informal official rest of the world updaters".
So that's three media expertly and stylistic covered. But my medium of record is radio; I listen almost 24 hours a day (I take a break when my son comes home from school) even keeping it on through the night when I sleep, cuz I don't have an alarm clock. When the tone of voice shifts from BBC English to the NPR Voice, I know its time to get up.
Here's my stab at introducing radio into the dKos repetoire.
I'm not, however, going to introduce radio into the
dKos repetoire with a straight up reportage of what's on the radio. (Inappropriate use of Diary intros: how many rating points do I lose for that?). I'm really thinking about a diary of the things that bounce in and out of my head as I listen to the radio, and using the format for the opportunity it provides to think through that bouncing stuff in more depth. Hopefully with a little feedback to help straighten out some of the the quirky thinking.
Listening to the radio while doing other stuff (including reading the dKos boards), is a different experience than watching or reading the news; it's almost a bodily one. With its constant flow and the news cycle structure of mainstream radio that NPR adopts, its almost as if I actually have "news stories on the brain". These stories and voices really do pass through my brain, some of them (thanks NPR) several times a day. Every once in a while my brain goes along for the ride and sometimes an interesting thought or two occurs.
Oh yeah, its probably important to state that I bounce between a local NPR station (no music) and the local Pacifica outlet only.
One item:
Early this morning I hear Orrin Hatch complaining that the only reason the Democrats are denying these judges is that they don't like their Conservative viewpoints. My brain then kicks in and takes the opportunity to recreate one of my favorite moments from the film Die Blaue Engel: Emil Jannings tells Marlene Dietrich that he loves her, Marlene props her bestockinged leg up on the table,leans her head across her knee and looking directly at him says, "Na... und?" I find this German-language version of the phrase a much expressive means of obviousness than its cousin from dude-language.
"Na...und", indeed Orrin.
Then I'm remember Alex R's diary from yesterday, Politicize This. Alex R. is right: "Partisanship" has become a dirty word, an evil talisman with some incredible power that keeps the Democrats at bay. Orrin is one of the chief shamans in that little exercise, too.
Here's what I'd like to hear the next time the news cycles around and Orrin is again voicing his complaint. There's a taped response and the lovely tones of some Democratic Senator on the Judiciary Committee all of a sudden says, "well, yes, Orrin, that's exactly what we are doing because it is what we are supposed to be doing. We are the minority, the opposition. This is a democracy. In a democracy the minority's job is to check the powerof the majority not simply to serve the interests of the minority, or to destroy the interests of the majority but to protect the interests of the whole. The majority is not the whole, no matter how large it is. We are opposing these judges not for us, (your new and improved definition of "partisan") but for the whole, from a perspective that's hasn't been included in the process (the "old" definition). It is always the minorities job to keep the whole healthy, that means when the majority acts in its interest, the minority must act from an interest as well, one of the many that would otherwise disappear. Any minority that does not take up the banner of partisanship is harming the interests of the polity, that is, for everybody. So when you think about it, we are even opposing these judges for you".
That isn't going to happen today, of course. But just thinking about it makes me ever more confident of how important it is to get into that redefintion game as soon as possible. And we have to get into it at point well past GO. Because the goal isn't just to change people's understanding of what "having interests" means. We have to get to the point that "having interests" is understood as what its all about.
It's a tough game in Apolitical America in the first place, but thanks to the Radical Right's successes on the redefining democracy project, it is made even harder. Out on planet fringe, aka the penal colony for political irrelevants, there are some ideas on how to do this. But that's a really long post.
"Na ...und", it ain't.
And from yesterday still bouncing around:
On Russell Mokkhiber's show the guest was a guy with a book -- a nice change from the girl with a book theme. This guy's was The Electoral Strategy For The Left* (*not the real title of the book), but close enough to capture the flavor of the discussion. It's pretty familiar terrain: all those things people are pronouncing with great authority. "The Left needs this..., The Left needs that..." where everybody is certain about who The Left is, What's wrong with 'em, and What Is To Be Done." Familiar terrain. At one point though he said something along the lines of, of course none of this should be taken as a dismissal of the issues of the left. Social movements should keep doing what they are doing, activists should keep working on the issues because that's where the real change is. All I'm saying is they need to vote for Democrats.
Could there be a clearer illustration of the gulf between electoral and real politics? This in fact, is what the left is trying to tell the country. The gap between electoral politics and social change has never been as great as it is right now. The people who are social movement activists are not the same people who are electoral activists.
"Na...und" girl?
The truth is, the guest author nailed it, even though he didn't mean to. I have to admit I find it silly that so much attention goes into insisting The Left votes for Democrats in 2004, but I know that's the urgent crisis of the times, but... . First of all, every person saying it is talking about a different "The Left" and most of the left is going to vote for Democrats in 2004. The ones that don't, won't, and doing that is still important, but for reasons nobody's talking about.
Where I saw that the guest author really nailed, it was in making that gulf so clear. It's all about that gulf, really. This is what the left in all its various manifestions is struggling to get everybody else to understand, even as they also struggle to figure out what to do about it, knowing what has to be done next November. All those struggles are the really guts and gore stuff, and my cup of tea, so to speak. I think that mostly because it is where "politics" moves out of word status and actually becomes something meaningful and tangible for me. Lots more mulling required.
For now its enough that this guest and his aside helps me understand a little bit better why, as the campaign season heats up and everybody starts talking about the "real campaign", I'm left feeling a bit washed away. Its a mixed kind of thing; I know the Democratic nominees are our protection against the Devil, a kind of firewall to keep the danger away. This I know is a good and necessary and desirable thing. But its no substitute for an exit out hell.