Partially Obscured by Wings
Doc Searls comments on the Heritage Foundation's canny spambiguous bulk mail (I got one) and the dearth of peace-bloggers. A lot of folks expressed irritation at what has been seen as an attempt to co-opt the party, but I agree with the Doc, who thinks "The Heritage Foundation deserves kudos for its gracious combination of permission- and gonzo marketing." I've never been at a party which wouldn't have benefited from a little gracious co-option.
Searls also has this to add:
conservative thinkers are far more clueful about the Web and its authority structure than their liberal counterparts... Liberalism may not be absent from the blogging world, but it's certainly impotent.
At any rate, the most interesting writing tends to come from those who strive to be less ideological, or to subvert conventional ideological categories from within, to swim against streams within streams. Glenn Reynolds continually denies that he's a conservative; if he doesn't convince too many people of this, he's certainly an extremely effective example of how a "conservative" can, and should, be able to swing both ways as the situation requires. Reynolds is particularly adept at expressing clearly this tension between imaginary ideological types and the reality on the ground, which is one of the things that makes his writing more interesting and useful than that of those who appear to strive to embody every ideological cliche. Similarly, Andrew Sullivan is a walking, living, breathing and quite deliberate contradiction in terms, when it comes to ideology and identity politics. Searls doesn't mention Matt Welch, but he's another example of how powerful writing and thinking can be a valuable by-product of sincere, intelligent attempts to squirm free of ideological pigeon-holes. On the other hand, perhaps the most prominent antiwar web commentator, whom Searls also does not mention, is Justin Raimondo, a certified/certifiable right winger by any definition.
Self-defined champions of "liberalism" as such tend to have a comparatively rigid ideological posture that deliberately weeds out the interesting writers among them. The lefty who swims against the stream (e.g. Welch) is denounced as a closet rightwinger or an errant lunatic, vilified and kicked out of the club rather than engaged in debate; when a "conservative" manifests ideological cross-pollination (a la Reynolds) it is dismissed as insincere, deluded, or irrelevant. So whom would you rather read? Paradoxical as it may be, dissenters, whatever the context, are always more interesting than puritans.
Posted by Dr. Frank at March 20, 2003 09:49 AM | TrackBack