OK I lied. It was lunch. It was brunch. It was in person.
Actually, it was on Zoom, and neither of us ate anything.
But I refuse to yield the cadence of one of my all time favorite films, My Dinner with André.
I previously met Driftglass and his wonderful wife, Bluegal, at Netroots Nation, 2016 in St. Louis, but all too briefly. I’ve been a fan of him since the Cro-Magnon blog days of around 2003, when he was a commenter on The News Blog, run by the late, great Steve Gilliard. Steve encouraged him to start his own blog — now one of the handful of liberal blogs still churning out the truth. And for over a decade, for 678 Episodes!, he and Bluegal have done The Professional Left Podcast, a/k/a The Cornfield Resistance. I’ve written a number of diaries here promoting it, like "The Professional Left:" The Best Political Podcast on Air Celebrates its Ninth Anniversary in 2019.
In the depths of November and December 2016, when I could barely click on anything political, listening to the Professional Left single-handedly roused me out of my stupor, with DG and BG’s hope amid the despair, especially their spirited exhortation to “Chop Wood and Carry Water.” And you know what, we did — and miraculously, in my view, ousted a fascist in an election, and continue to do so in no small measure because of people like Driftglass and Bluegal and the Daily Kos community.
I’m a Patreon supporter of the Show and they are currently soliciting Patreon subscribers to fund their new show, “No Fair Remembering Stuff.” (More on that below.) As of now, they only need about 20-22 more Patreon members to go forward permanently with the new show. So please consider putting just a couple of bucks a month toward their Patreon Subscription.
Since 2016 I’ve wanted to have a longer conversation with the Cornfielders, but my non-existent travels have not included their home base of Springfield, IL, and their travels, my turf — the People’s Republic of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Enter the magic of Zoom, and a two-hour conversation with Driftglass this week. Bluegal said hi, but was busy with her work for Crooks and Liars and couldn’t join. It was fantastic and we could have gone on another couple of hours. Driftglass refers to it a couple of times on this week’s ProLeft Pod episode.
One of the great charms about the podcast is the very happily married couple’s inclusion of a lot about their personal history and their day to day family life. We’ve listened to the progress of “Junior Dude,” “Middle Child” and “Youngest Child” through Middle School and on to excellent colleges in the Midwest. We know about Driftglass’s adventures in municipal government, teaching at Columbia College, Chicago, his writing career and tech experience. We know about their Senator Dick Durbin sightings on the streets of Springfield, IL We know more than we ever anticipated about IL villains like former Gov. “Hedgefund” Rauner and ex-Rep. Rodney Davis.
But they didn’t know anything about me, except that I hung out with our mutual friend, and my MMT mentor, the great Arliss Bunny, at that NN16 conference. And my day job has precluded my surrendering anonymity here and on Twitter — something I’m going to change (gradually) because I’ve retired from the job. So I told him about my career, beginning as a high school social studies teacher from the late ‘60s to the ‘80s, and then, after Fordham law at night, as a corporate litigator in a Manhattan firm until April 1 of this year. I told him about my children — twin girls just a bit younger than their Junior Dude.
But mostly it was about politics and the media. Of course, we agree on 95% of things, as DG notes in this week’s pod, especially, the critical role of young voters, and the corruption of the “liberal media,” as most vividly embodied in the persona of David Brooks, whom DG correctly calls “The Most Dangerous Man in the Media.” Now I modestly consider myself a Brooksologist (See my latest on him, David Brooks writes "cosmopolitan global elites" -- a Common Anti-Semitic Trope — which should have gotten a lot more than 29 recs. C’mon man.)
But on DFG*, I am not worthy when compared to Driftglass, without question the pre-eminent David Brooks Eviscerator of our time. DG and BG have embarked on a new branch of the Professional Left called “No Fair Remembering Stuff,” and the first six episodes were devoted to a decades long review of the mediocre, but awful and terrifying oeuvre of Brooks — the single most undeserving-of-prominence pundit in the history of pundits, going back even prior to early pundits, like Josephus and Emperor Claudius. In my view, six episodes on Brooks are way too few, and I would do a show called “No Fair Remembering Stuff about David Brooks.”
Which brings me to the one area in which we have some disagreement: the role and utility of Never- Trumpers, like Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, Rick Wilson, Michael Steele and hundreds of other Republicans you can see at any time by visiting the “liberal” network, MSNBC. While recognizing their incredible hypocrisy and failure to acknowledge history existed prior to 2015, I think they can be “useful idiots” for good, compared with DG’s view.
Note: David Brooks, while considering himself a Never-Trumper, is in a different category. He continues to actively harm us, even to the point of adopting anti-Semitic rhetoric (see above link to my diary on “cosmopolitan global elites”).
But this is a quibble.
It was thrilling to spend so much time with DG, swapping the personal and political.
So again please consider putting just a couple of bucks a month toward their Patreon Subscription.
Oh. Just one more thing.
*David Fucking Brooks