Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Shorter Pandagon and Gilliard and Atrios
"Rich liberals owe us a living!"
Echoing a complaint that's been reverberating around some lefty blogs for a couple of weeks (if not longer). Who the hell are these rich liberals? Besides Soros and Turner, I can't think of any. I could be wrong, but I suspect most bazillionaires are likely to be conservatives.
Atrios et al have a point: The right wing has been quietly building its machine for DECADES. They've got their Cato, their Heritage, their legions of eager young Federalist Society lawyers. But the left isn't going to catch up with them by complaining that somebody oughta be paying us a nice salary and benefits to be progressive.
If I had a few million dollars I'd happily toss some of it at Media Matters and some at the ACLU and some at People for the American Way and some at a handful of leftie bloggers who do original, invaluable work (Bob Somerby, Josh Marshall). If I were a jillionaire, I'd start my own foundation, give it some bullshit lofty-sounding name, put Paul Krugman in charge, and give him plenty of money to hire well-qualified highly educated people to crank out progressive-policy-advocating editorials for newspapers all over the country (think Cato) or for some kick-ass website. But I think I'd be unmoved by the complaints of people who think they deserve a job, with a good salary and benefits, doing some unspecified liberal work. "Bejus!" I'd growl. "Back in my day, nobody paid us to blog! We worked 18 hours a day digging ditches and then came home and blogged for FREE! And we LIKED it!"
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"Rich liberals owe us a living!"
Echoing a complaint that's been reverberating around some lefty blogs for a couple of weeks (if not longer). Who the hell are these rich liberals? Besides Soros and Turner, I can't think of any. I could be wrong, but I suspect most bazillionaires are likely to be conservatives.
Atrios et al have a point: The right wing has been quietly building its machine for DECADES. They've got their Cato, their Heritage, their legions of eager young Federalist Society lawyers. But the left isn't going to catch up with them by complaining that somebody oughta be paying us a nice salary and benefits to be progressive.
If I had a few million dollars I'd happily toss some of it at Media Matters and some at the ACLU and some at People for the American Way and some at a handful of leftie bloggers who do original, invaluable work (Bob Somerby, Josh Marshall). If I were a jillionaire, I'd start my own foundation, give it some bullshit lofty-sounding name, put Paul Krugman in charge, and give him plenty of money to hire well-qualified highly educated people to crank out progressive-policy-advocating editorials for newspapers all over the country (think Cato) or for some kick-ass website. But I think I'd be unmoved by the complaints of people who think they deserve a job, with a good salary and benefits, doing some unspecified liberal work. "Bejus!" I'd growl. "Back in my day, nobody paid us to blog! We worked 18 hours a day digging ditches and then came home and blogged for FREE! And we LIKED it!"
