Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Media Whores Online is taking the rest of the year off. I can understand the impulse – this is a dispiriting time for the left-leaning. After 11 days away from a computer, I have barely been back in town 48 hours and am still reeling from the aftershocks of last week's debacle. With a long winter on the way, hibernation may be a natural reaction.
But it's the wrong reaction. We clearly need new leadership and a set of new strategies to restore what Joe Klein calls (in this week's print New Yorker) the "larger themes" to the public agenda. With ideas like compassion, education, prescription drugs, and the like co-opted by the death-tax Texans, the Democrats have lost this round of the political branding game.
If anything, we need to turn up the volume. Opinion cauldrons such as blogs should talk more about strategy. We need more statistical ammunition. We need new marketing tactics. We should find our common ground, coordinate our efforts, and reach out more.
George W. Bush succeeded because he is nobody. The man with the greatest nuclear power on earth cannot even pronounce the word. As a tabula rasa, Rove and Cheney and the other "advisers" were able to pour the daily message into his ear and have it come out his mouth intact.
First 9/11 and now this. American power must be wielded responsibly – and that means a viable opposition party. The American left must grow up already and start to play hardball. As the American electorate (possibly) unwittingly welcomes World War III, the stakes could hardly be higher. We need new forms of organization, communication, and action.
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Greatest Hits
· Alternatives to First Command Financial Planning
· First Command, last resort, Part 3
· Part 2
· Part 1
· Stealing $50K from a widow: Wells Real Estate
· Leo Wells, REITs and divine wealth
· Sex-crazed Red State teenagers
· What I hate: a manifesto
· Spawn of Darleen Druyun
· All-American high school sex party
· Why is Ken Lay smiling?
· Poppy's Enron birthday party
· The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle
· The sentence of Enron's John Forney
· The holiness of Neil Bush's marriage
· The Silence of Cheney: a poem
· South Park Christians
· Capitalist against Bush: Warren Buffett
· Fastow childen vs. Enron children
· Give your prescription money to your old boss
· Neil Bush, hard-working matchmaker
· Republicans against fetuses and pregnant women
· Emboldened Ken Lay
· Faith-based jails
· Please die for me so I can skip your funeral
· A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party
· Nancy Victory
· Soldiers become accountants
· Beware the Merrill Lynch mob
· Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise
· First responder funding
· Hoovering the country
· First Command fifty percent load
· Ken Lay and the Atkins diet
· Halliburton WMD
· Leave no CEO behind
· August in Crawford
· Elaine Pagels
· Profitable slave labor at Halliburton
· Tom Hanks + Mujahideen
· Sharon & Neilsie Bush
· One weekend a month, or eternity
· Is the US pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwait?
· Cheney's war
· Seth Glickenhaus: Capitalist against Bush
· Martha's blow job
· Mark Belnick: Tyco Catholic nut
· Cheney's deferred Halliburton compensation
· Jeb sucks sugar cane
· Poindexter & LifeLog
· American Family Association panic
· Riley Bechtel and the crony economy
· The Book of Sharon (Bush)
· The Art of Enron
· Plunder convention
· Waiting in Kuwait: Jay Garner
· What's an Army private worth?
· Barbara Bodine, Queen of Baghdad
· Sneaky bastards at Halliburton
· Golf course and barbecue military strategy
· Enron at large
· Recent astroturf
· Cracker Chic 2
· No business like war business
· Big Brother
· Martha Stewart vs. Thomas White
· Roger Kimball, disappointed Republican poetry fan
· Cheney, Lay, Afghanistan
· Terry Lynn Barton, crimes of burning
· Feasting at the Cheney trough
· Who would Jesus indict?
· Return of the Carlyle Group
· Duct tape is for little people
· GOP and bad medicine
· Sears Tower vs Mt Rushmore
· Scared Christians
· Crooked playing field
· John O'Neill: The man who knew
· Back to the top
 
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