Chris Bowers, at the kool kidz new blog, Open Left:
New Establishment Rising? The End Of the Flat Blogosphere
(Actually bumped at 2:31 p.m. – promoted by Chris Bowers)
SummaryOver the past five years, as the audience and political effectiveness of the progressive, political blogosphere has exploded, the “short head” of the progressive, political blogosphere has undergone a transformation from a loose collection of small, independent, solo projects into a sophisticated media and activist structure driving the national political scene. This transformation has the side-effect of significantly increasing the entry costs into the “short head” of the progressive, political, blogosphere for new, independent actors. As a result, what was once a fluid, “outsider” and “open” form of new media is now, quite possibly, crystallizing into a new “establishment” all its own.
No shit, Sherlock!
Bloody hell, how long have we saying that on this blog? We’ve certainly not been alone in saying that ad revenues and reformist sucking up to power has been creating a new blogospheric Democratic party nomenklatura.
So what’s Bowers’ and Stoller’s answer to this exclusionary trend in online politics? Why to make themselves a new establishment of course. The tussle now is over control of that new establishment and access to its ranks:
Introduction
This article was originally scheduled to appear in the first issue of JONI, The Journal of Netroots Ideas, to be published by the organization responsible for the YearklyKos Convention. Instead, it will serve as the first installment in a collaborative project between Open Left and JONI. Articles scheduled for print publication in the journal will first go through a series of directed discussions online, and those discussions will eventually be incorporated into the final JONI project.
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Good grief, these US ‘progressives’ do love their acronynms and job titles, don’t they? (see also Feministe and their ‘thinking bloggers’ award.)
What is it, do American political bloggers feel their ideas have no legitimacy unless uttered by someone with a string of self-awarded titles, prizes and qualifications, or alternatively, someone who’s down with the Kos crew?
How is that ‘left’? How is that ‘open’? All posts are to be vetted by Kos loyalists – while I’m all for new political space being opened up, where’s the democratic accountability when what’s written must be pre-approved by a political cabal?
I don’t disagree entirely with Bowers’ and Stoller’s analysis of the development of the US progressive blogosphere but it is just that: the US political blogosphere, and the US political blogosphere is not the be-all and end-all of politics.
The left is much, much bigger, less insular and more international than a few Kossacks and their friends in the media. Note to Chris and Matt and their US progressive blogmates: it’s not all about you.
It’s the sheer bloody self-importance and arrogance of it all that gets to me. This about sums it up:
“…. has become a near impossibility for a new independent, individual actor to join the elite ranks of the national, progressive political blogosphere.”
That it is an impossibility may be true – but that Bowers sees it as essential that an elite exists to be promoted to says that this effort isn’t about opening up poilitical space for the masses, this is about making the elite even more elite. What’s ironic is that Bowers and Stoller seem to think that this is a good thing, a groundbreaking thing that they’re doing. But then they are are sensible liberals, more noted for reformist policy wonkery and process politics than anti-imperialism.
But no, sorry. It’s meet the new establishment, same as the old.
Rather than acknowledge their own roles – and that of other self-styled public intellectuals up the arse of the Democratic party- in creating the crystallisation of privilege and the exclusion of ‘lesser’ voices from the public discourse which they describe (years after everyone else noticed), they’re seeking to appear populist, whilst in reality being nothing of the sort.
How leftist or open is that?
