Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Sometimes Nice Is Really Nice
Want to feel better about your country, fellow citizens, the world community, and the left/center of the political spectrum? Check out this Christmas roundup of the year's nicest and naughtiest from David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, who bring us The Progress Report, a daily feature of Mr. Podesta & friends' shiny, new think tank, The Center For American Progress, which is surely among the nicest presents those of us on that center/left spectrum received this year.
The Center, a baby among think tanks, has gotten off to a sparkling start. It's choice of "Fellows" is snazzy and smart, and The Progress Report is nothing short of startingly good - an invaluable resource that raises to a shiny new level that unique internet instrument of argument by linked collage of primary resources.
Thank-you Mr. Podesta, and thank-you to everyone else associated with The Center, for the daily proof it offers that being nice, being tempered, being civil, being a liberal, is in every way compatible with being tough, being wry, being appropriately angry when only anger will do, and being iron-willed in one's determination not to play any of the roles assigned to the left by either the SCLM or its puppetmaster*, the American right.
*Granted, "puppetmaster" isn't exactly a temperate way of describing the relationship, but after the evidence of the last several weeks, I can think of none better, from the SCLM's response to Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean, to their predictably meaningless coverage of Saddam's capture, to the recent preview both events provided of their coming election coverage, which the vast majority of the SCLM still seem to think is about them, not about issues, God knows not about American citizens as actual actors in the drama of their own democracy, and certainly not about evaluating who is telling the truth about what, or about finding the narrative in the actual facts, in what actually happens, rather than imposing pre-approved narratives that assure our establishment media that they are members of the club, all dues paid up.
**I do have some questions about the niceness of those Moroccan "mine-detonating monkeys," but better than mine-detonating kids, or other human types; best of all, please can't we just get rid of these bloody death traps, once and for all, and forever?
The Center, a baby among think tanks, has gotten off to a sparkling start. It's choice of "Fellows" is snazzy and smart, and The Progress Report is nothing short of startingly good - an invaluable resource that raises to a shiny new level that unique internet instrument of argument by linked collage of primary resources.
Thank-you Mr. Podesta, and thank-you to everyone else associated with The Center, for the daily proof it offers that being nice, being tempered, being civil, being a liberal, is in every way compatible with being tough, being wry, being appropriately angry when only anger will do, and being iron-willed in one's determination not to play any of the roles assigned to the left by either the SCLM or its puppetmaster*, the American right.
*Granted, "puppetmaster" isn't exactly a temperate way of describing the relationship, but after the evidence of the last several weeks, I can think of none better, from the SCLM's response to Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean, to their predictably meaningless coverage of Saddam's capture, to the recent preview both events provided of their coming election coverage, which the vast majority of the SCLM still seem to think is about them, not about issues, God knows not about American citizens as actual actors in the drama of their own democracy, and certainly not about evaluating who is telling the truth about what, or about finding the narrative in the actual facts, in what actually happens, rather than imposing pre-approved narratives that assure our establishment media that they are members of the club, all dues paid up.
**I do have some questions about the niceness of those Moroccan "mine-detonating monkeys," but better than mine-detonating kids, or other human types; best of all, please can't we just get rid of these bloody death traps, once and for all, and forever?
