Enjoyed this convo, always down for journalistic inside baseball, although I confess I'd sort of forgotten Klein in the shuffle of the last few years! I've also never read Kendi's book, I might at some point. I hope you do an episode on Yglesias someday-he's a guy I never completely know what to think of, and his recent "let's sacrifice (some people's) trans rights for the good of bipartisanship" article was a bridge too far for *my* centrism at least-but I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts!
I will definitely do an Yglesias episode at some point, as I've been reading him for like 15 years now and have a lot to say. Not sure who my interviewee would be. Open to suggestions. Re his stance on trans rights, my interpretation has been that his beliefs are very pro-trans but he believes (and I'm inclined to agree) that elected officials in particular should always be making strategic decisions about what to emphasize in their rhetoric and what to be relatively quiet about it, that they should be playing to the undecided masses rather than the base. He had a recent post, for instance, on Obama and his earlier stance on gay marriage, making the case that it made sense in context for Obama to be pro-civil union/anti-gay marriage in 2008, in order to win, so that he'd then be in a position to advance what he actually believed while in office. This all seems like standard Machiavellian statecraft to me. No?
Of course pragmatically I know what he’s saying, Imo he’s partly a victim here of the way that the last seven or eight years shattered a lot of peoples faith in the inevitability of liberal progress. I think there’s much more of a sense now that that kind of machiavellian compromise risks losing what has already been won given the point of extremity which a lot of the GOP has reached and is willing to sign into law on that topic. I’m probably more open to *some* kind of compromise on these issues than a lot of people but I also I’m very apprehensive that trying to do so would just be ceding ground to people who desire trans people to be totally eliminated from public life and won’t be satiated by little victories.
Will listen soon, but given your mission statement I wanted to suggest a breadcrumb that might lead to something larger:
I cannot find it at the moment, but after his Pandagon days (maybe during his stint at American Prospect?). Someone (from Los Angeles?) blogged a takedown of Klein that simply stated that he was an opportunist. It would be interesting to find it to see how well it fits with his career since then.
In a similar vein, will you consider doing a deep dive into the blogosphere of the early aughts (Daily Kos; Digby; Sullivan; Yglesias; Atrios; Free Republic; Archpundit; Little Green Footballs; Steve Gilliard passed away too soon, but he was a personal favorite)? Ben Smith alludes to it a bit with his new book, but he seems to think that it was a given that it would have a liberal bent when I recall a lot of handwringing that conservative blogs were leading the pack. It feels like the right time to get this story right!
I was recording another episode in which we touch a bit on that early blogosphere world, and was thinking it would be a good topic. Who's the right person to talk to about it? is it one of those folks? Who has the most historically sophisticated sense of it?
You seem to have your head on straight, so I think you’d be the one to put it in perspective the best. Rick Perlstein seems to be about to cover ‘00 to now, but I think he’s going to butcher this part of it (despite, or perhaps because, he was so close to it)
Alright I'll ponder. I may ask Perlstein his advice for who to talk to, whether it's him or someone else. Could also just reach out to one of those bloggers - Atrios, Kos, Digby, Josh Marshall, etc. Not sure which of them has the broad meta-perspective. Could it really be true that no one has written a book or at least a chapter on that early political blogosphere?
To be clear, I would not recommend speaking to Perlstein or just about any of those you mentioned for a considered take, as our post Escalator Descent world seems to have melted their brains (technically, Digby was ahead of the curve by half a year with her apologia for the Charlie Hebdo murderers).
They were players, so they have a right to be heard (as do many, many others), but I wouldn’t invite them to do a history themselves (again, I think Perlstein will botch the job).
Someone may have written about this era on Crooked Timber or somewhere a little more temperamentally inclined to be thoughtful, but I haven’t seen it. It’s a clearly important history, so it should be done.
I enjoyed this episode, but I think there’s a big aspect of Klein’s success and influence that was neglected. While he usually doesn’t take views contrary to the progressive consensus, a big part of his early career was pushing back against the old, centrist conventional wisdom of journalism and the Washington establishment. Ideas like “the filibuster encourages bipartisanship rather than gridlock” and “balancing the budget is one of the most important issues” and “legislative success or failure is mostly due to the personal persuasiveness of the president”. These were cliches in the pre-2010s world of political journalism that now most people recognize as false, and Ezra was one of the major voices pushing on this conventional wisdom. At the time, pushing back on those ideas was very much a contrarian stance, and if we have a hard time seeing that now it’s because those ideas have been so thoroughly discredited.
I think you're totally right about that. One way to harmonize it with our prevailing thesis, about him being a reflection of the consensus, would be to say that the relevant realm within which he moved, back then, was this small world of left-liberal bloggers, so within that specific political community the consensus place to be was pushing against the orthodoxies of the actual establishment. So the dynamic is constant but the relevant context for Klein has shifted.
I'm not sure if I believe this or not. It may simply be that he changed over time. He was oppositional when he was younger, as many of us are when we're young, and now he's more reflective of the establishment, as many of us become as we age.
Maybe somewhere in the middle of these two framings?
Enjoyed this convo, always down for journalistic inside baseball, although I confess I'd sort of forgotten Klein in the shuffle of the last few years! I've also never read Kendi's book, I might at some point. I hope you do an episode on Yglesias someday-he's a guy I never completely know what to think of, and his recent "let's sacrifice (some people's) trans rights for the good of bipartisanship" article was a bridge too far for *my* centrism at least-but I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts!
I will definitely do an Yglesias episode at some point, as I've been reading him for like 15 years now and have a lot to say. Not sure who my interviewee would be. Open to suggestions. Re his stance on trans rights, my interpretation has been that his beliefs are very pro-trans but he believes (and I'm inclined to agree) that elected officials in particular should always be making strategic decisions about what to emphasize in their rhetoric and what to be relatively quiet about it, that they should be playing to the undecided masses rather than the base. He had a recent post, for instance, on Obama and his earlier stance on gay marriage, making the case that it made sense in context for Obama to be pro-civil union/anti-gay marriage in 2008, in order to win, so that he'd then be in a position to advance what he actually believed while in office. This all seems like standard Machiavellian statecraft to me. No?
Of course pragmatically I know what he’s saying, Imo he’s partly a victim here of the way that the last seven or eight years shattered a lot of peoples faith in the inevitability of liberal progress. I think there’s much more of a sense now that that kind of machiavellian compromise risks losing what has already been won given the point of extremity which a lot of the GOP has reached and is willing to sign into law on that topic. I’m probably more open to *some* kind of compromise on these issues than a lot of people but I also I’m very apprehensive that trying to do so would just be ceding ground to people who desire trans people to be totally eliminated from public life and won’t be satiated by little victories.
I guess it really depends on the details then. I'm just imagining choices about what and when to message, not compromises on policies.
Will listen soon, but given your mission statement I wanted to suggest a breadcrumb that might lead to something larger:
I cannot find it at the moment, but after his Pandagon days (maybe during his stint at American Prospect?). Someone (from Los Angeles?) blogged a takedown of Klein that simply stated that he was an opportunist. It would be interesting to find it to see how well it fits with his career since then.
In a similar vein, will you consider doing a deep dive into the blogosphere of the early aughts (Daily Kos; Digby; Sullivan; Yglesias; Atrios; Free Republic; Archpundit; Little Green Footballs; Steve Gilliard passed away too soon, but he was a personal favorite)? Ben Smith alludes to it a bit with his new book, but he seems to think that it was a given that it would have a liberal bent when I recall a lot of handwringing that conservative blogs were leading the pack. It feels like the right time to get this story right!
I was recording another episode in which we touch a bit on that early blogosphere world, and was thinking it would be a good topic. Who's the right person to talk to about it? is it one of those folks? Who has the most historically sophisticated sense of it?
No idea, which is why I suggested it! :-)
You seem to have your head on straight, so I think you’d be the one to put it in perspective the best. Rick Perlstein seems to be about to cover ‘00 to now, but I think he’s going to butcher this part of it (despite, or perhaps because, he was so close to it)
The best I have is a piece from the (apparently) now defunct Jacobite about Something Awful (same era, different vibe): https://web.archive.org/web/20170817102841/https://jacobitemag.com/2017/08/12/how-message-board-culture-remade-the-left/
And though Anonymous has been well-trodden ground, I like these pieces from Triple Canopy in the way it was wrong at a specific moment in time: https://canopycanopycanopy.com/search?q=Anonymous
(They use a weird horizontal scrolling method that doesn’t always work)
Alright I'll ponder. I may ask Perlstein his advice for who to talk to, whether it's him or someone else. Could also just reach out to one of those bloggers - Atrios, Kos, Digby, Josh Marshall, etc. Not sure which of them has the broad meta-perspective. Could it really be true that no one has written a book or at least a chapter on that early political blogosphere?
To be clear, I would not recommend speaking to Perlstein or just about any of those you mentioned for a considered take, as our post Escalator Descent world seems to have melted their brains (technically, Digby was ahead of the curve by half a year with her apologia for the Charlie Hebdo murderers).
They were players, so they have a right to be heard (as do many, many others), but I wouldn’t invite them to do a history themselves (again, I think Perlstein will botch the job).
Someone may have written about this era on Crooked Timber or somewhere a little more temperamentally inclined to be thoughtful, but I haven’t seen it. It’s a clearly important history, so it should be done.
I enjoyed this episode, but I think there’s a big aspect of Klein’s success and influence that was neglected. While he usually doesn’t take views contrary to the progressive consensus, a big part of his early career was pushing back against the old, centrist conventional wisdom of journalism and the Washington establishment. Ideas like “the filibuster encourages bipartisanship rather than gridlock” and “balancing the budget is one of the most important issues” and “legislative success or failure is mostly due to the personal persuasiveness of the president”. These were cliches in the pre-2010s world of political journalism that now most people recognize as false, and Ezra was one of the major voices pushing on this conventional wisdom. At the time, pushing back on those ideas was very much a contrarian stance, and if we have a hard time seeing that now it’s because those ideas have been so thoroughly discredited.
I think you're totally right about that. One way to harmonize it with our prevailing thesis, about him being a reflection of the consensus, would be to say that the relevant realm within which he moved, back then, was this small world of left-liberal bloggers, so within that specific political community the consensus place to be was pushing against the orthodoxies of the actual establishment. So the dynamic is constant but the relevant context for Klein has shifted.
I'm not sure if I believe this or not. It may simply be that he changed over time. He was oppositional when he was younger, as many of us are when we're young, and now he's more reflective of the establishment, as many of us become as we age.
Maybe somewhere in the middle of these two framings?
high-falutin’ adjectives, and a prince that i should based on principle is a totally flawed intro.
lose the psyche lingo
Can you be more specific?
looking forward to more!
Thanks! Figuring out who the next episode will be about. Open to suggestions.