I sympathize with David Sirota’s realization that blogstalkers can be mildly frightening. Actually, they’re more creepy than anything else. And I’m glad he is taking it in stride and enjoying the bonus in traffic. It’s true, some of his stalkers are the same people that have stalked me in the past. They’re slightly insane and seriously stupid. However, Sirota is taking increasing criticism from a broad swath of the progressive movement, and not just from loonies.
The criticisms vary and some of them are quite personal. The most valid criticism is that he is a demagogue. And I mean that in both senses of the term.
1 : a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power 2 : a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times
I don’t really see Sirota as seeking ‘power’ so much as fame and readership. And there is nothing wrong with that, in itself. The problem arises when you use popular prejudices and false claims in the name of championing the cause of the common people. It doesn’t help that he heaps scorn on his critics, calling them names and insulting their intelligence and character rather than attempting to rebut their claims. But that’s all part of playing the part of a demagogue.
I wouldn’t waste my time discussing David Sirota under normal circumstances. But as he will remind you in virtually every post, he is a syndicated columnist who has recently appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Bill Moyers. He appears on these shows as a voice of progressives and of the blogosphere. Because of this, I do not consider him just a blogger I happen to disagree with. He’s becoming a major voice, and face, of the movement I’ve been working in for the last four years. And I don’t want him serving as an ambassador to this movement.
More than my disagreements, I am concerned about his temperament and his intellectual honesty. Nothing good will come from his high profile and when he flames out he is going to create some collateral damage. It should be clear now, at the outset, that significant voices in the blogosphere do not want to be associated with Sirota, don’t subscribe to his faux populism, do not trust him, and take no responsibility for his actions going forward.
He claims to be a leader within the progressive movement, and he has his followers. But his cause is not my cause and his movement is not something I recognize as representative of what the blogosphere is all about.
I just want that on the record. And, having it put it in the record, I am going to drop the subject of David Sirota for the time being.
I think Paul Rosenberg should write a 10,000 word essay on how the whole controversy is caused by Obama’s failure to understand the deep philosophical issues touched on by Doris Kearns Walker and Stephen King.
doris kearns goodwin, i mean.
I’m assuming you meant Doris Kearns Goodwin?
You lost me at the seriously stupid part. Sirota has turned into a legend in his own mind.
Lambert Strether is seriously stupid.
As someone who has been banned from both OpenLeft and Corrente, I can attest to the fact that Lambert is even stupider than the OpenLeftists.
He’s cosmically stupid.
I find it funny that all of you are fighting amongst yourselves. Funny in a bad way. That is what is truly seriously stupid. Bruised ego, pissing contest, bruised ego, pissing contest, bruised ego, pissing contest. Rinse repeat.
Everyone standing on a broken record, bludgeoned and ankle deep in a yellow puddle.
Got any common ground with them?
Or you can tell me again about cosmically stupid? Please? Before it is knee deep…
And I ain’t just kicking you on this. I certainly agree about Sirota. And I never trusted him even when he had some good points to make. And I have no problems noting some of the problems at CorrenteWire.
This is the whole fuckin’ left side of Radical American Centrism that is getting stupid lately.
We all have better things to do. At least, I’d like to think so? Wouldn’t you? 🙂
I think the Beastie Boys said that.
It’s not a question of bruised egos, but of not accepting Lambert and Sirota as gatekeepers of what is legit “progressive” opinion. What unites them, aside from their incorrect vain analysis, is a penchant for trying to censor anyone who calls them on their bullshit.
I understand all that. But I still think we can all do better by looking for where we have common ground and feeding off of that. We still have bigger problems to deal with in our political leadership to be wasting our time worrying about a lot of the little differences in opinions on the different Blog communities is all I am saying.
It is pretty clear that it is “us” (the people) vs “them” (all of the politicians) on about 90% of the policies and issues. It doesn’t seem to matter who is in charge of the White House, Congress, or any of the States. So far, all we have gotten are a few policy crumbs.
And the more fragmented we become the less effective we become. I want a frickin’ political feast. Not just for my own pet issues… But for us all.
See I don’t even subscribe to THAT statement about us/them! I really don’t see how it could be called anything but an important disagreement that really DOES impede stuff if it’s just papered over. That said, whenever Dave Sirota tells us to write and demand his column if we want more of his writing I always think: “Well when I want to read your writing in my paper I will. But don’t hold your breath.”
And who the fuck is Lambert Streither?
And that is a good thing. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. Life would be boring if they did!
lambert, a blogger nobody reads, yet gets attacked by BT, OL, and The Confluence, all on the same day. Go figure.
I’ve only been reading Corrente for about 2 or 3 weeks, but Lambert really hasn’t come across to me as “seriously stupid”. Can you please enlighten me as to what I’m missing?
I hate to say it, but if I wanted to run a campaign, especially in its bootstrap phase, as a gigantic money laundering scheme, this is exactly the kind of system I’d set up.
And if I had a lot of supporters from the financial community, in particular the hedge funds, who are very sophisticated technically, I’d reach out to them for the technical, legal, and accounting resources I needed.
Just saying.
Lambert – 1 week before the general election, describing the Obama campaign.
http://www.correntewire.com/oopsie_7
And here’s the part you just left out that Lambert was writing about:
Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed.
Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.
That smells pretty fishy to me, too. It’s exactly the kind of stuff that, if it were a Republican campaign doing it, would be being decried by liberals from all directions.
If you can do better, though, please share. I am not going to defend Lambert blindly to the death. But a person simply sharing a critical perspective on any of our leaders– whether Democrat, Republican, in office, or running for office– is not enough for me to decide that anyone is “stupid”. That way lies sheepdom.
Well, I’m of the opinion that RedState level character assassination in which imaginary problems as used to insinuate criminality directed at the Democratic Presidential candidate 1 weeks before the election against a right wing psycho is fucked up. Your opinion may vary.
This is the entire contents of a post that Booman calls “slightly insane and seriously stupid”:
The level-headed Sirota, on the other hand, has properly told those who had the temerity to have preferred a centrist other than Barack Obama: “pipe down and get a friggin’ life,” “screw off,” “you’re not welcome here,” and “just STFU and slither back to your rathole of bitterness. Your candidate lost because she helped create the problems we now have to fix. Deal with that and become a productive member of society, or again, just STFU.” He also has termed those who have linked to him a handful of times, sometimes favorably, sometimes not, as “hate stalkers.”
Contrasted with such keen thinking and civility, I can finally see that I’ve become a bona fide public menace, and I shall report to the nearest Hope Officer at once.
But for those who dare, this is the kind of warped thinking I’m uttering in my dark little cave:
http://www.correntewire.com/oh_corrente#comment-134056
It’s just frightening what us bitter dead-enders have to say, isn’t it? Thankfully, progressives like Sirota and Booman are around to shut down that kind of poisonous discourse!
Is something wrong with your keyboard? I don’t see any OFBs of OZFs or any of the many other clever acronyms you pinheads came up with for Obama supporters. And not a single “zombie” reference? Are you sick?
I’ve also been banned from Open Left and finally gave up after one of Paul R’s extended juvenile hissy fits and left. Those guys really are thin-skinned, mule-headed and childish. It’s odd that the problem stems from the front pagers themselves rather than the users.
I saw this post and some familiar names so signed up.
His has an impressive ability to generate pomposity of a previously unheard of density from exceptionally lightweight material.
Too many of his posts are now getting too long for the blog format, but he does have some very sharp, non-traditional insights.
The following is Paul at his best: a polonius of leftwing politics.
What I take from this is quite different from what Levison does: I see in it Obama’s formative experiences in a condition of extreme power imbalance and disadvantage, a condition that while superficially was much less dire than King’s was fundamentally much, much weaker, because there was nothing comparable to the incipient mass movement that King suddenly discovered himself at the apex of. I believe that Obama is still psychologically, or perhaps more accurately attitudinally held back by that early, formative political experience.
Others have suggested repeatedly that it goes back to his absent father, and while I think that’s part of it, I think it’s also possible that a more positive encounter with social change potentials in early adulthood could have substantially compensated for that childhood experience, at least in the realm of his political attitude, orientation, and philosophy. It’s the combination of the two that I think we have to reckon with. Obama has, quite simply, no life model of what it means to really win. And that is a really big problem if you’re the leader of a political party, particularly if you’re President.
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11420
You have to step back from this and try to imagine the self-image of someone who can produce such a screed.
Good example. One of many…
1.) I think there are some other voices and faces missing from the left/progressive blogs that should be represented. Boo? TerrenceD, Steven? All insightful, reasonable and pretty even-keeled.
2.) Sirota however, is doing exactly what needs to be done by getting a progressive voice in the mainstream media. If there are other voices that should be heard, perhaps they should take a page from Sirota and figure out how to build both an audience and presence that can take you into the mainstream press.
3.) The fact that it appears that Kos and Sirota are the designated go-to reps from the progressive blog community is worrisome.
4.) I’ve always liked OpenLeft’s general thrust. It’s more about a movement and infrastructure building independent of the democratic party or specific candidates/officeholders. And that is much needed.
5.) Since Matt Stoller left, OpenLeft seems somewhat chaotic and disjointed. It appears as if there’s a vacuum there that David Sirota is filling which is leading to more of his views being taken as the OpenLeft “consensus”.
No kidding. Kos is, for all of his many flaws, mostly harmless. Part of his desire for publicity is the desire to appear reasonable, and that has pretty effectively kept him from embarrassing the rest of us. Sirota, on the other hand, will eventually become a magnet for public ridicule that will reflect badly on all of us. Worse, his personality is such that when he does go down, it will be very, very ugly and will give Limbaugh and O’Reilly plenty of material to work with.
To be quite honest, I had not previously paid a lot of attention to Sirota; something about him immediately raised a red flag for me (the red flag labeled “unstable narcissistic nutjob”) and I had more or less tuned him out. Perhaps I have done so at my peril.
“…Sirota is taking increasing criticism from a broad swath of the progressive movement…”
Some links to support that would be nice. I don’t get around the blogosphere much.
“…his cause is not my cause and his movement is not something I recognize as representative of what the blogosphere is all about.”
And what do you see as “his movement?” How does it differ from your own?
I’m not trying to pick any fights here, I just want to know.