Over in Breaking Blue, you might have noticed a tussle about John Edwards. I criticized Edwards for not living up to his values, for building a nice home for his family that cost a fair amount of money. 'Two America's, I thought snidely - he certainly has made it clear which one he wants to live in. I might have added a 'heh' for good measure. You see, criticizing a candidate, one of ours, who has legally made a lot of money and lives in a nice home for some sort of hypocrisy is a baseless character attack, and I'm ashamed that I reiterated it (thus my new nickname). The process by which the right stuffed it into my head, and by which I accepted it, is instructive.
First of all, a few months ago, I had put some stock in Edwards as the most progressive candidate, and felt betrayed when he went all neoconservative on Iran. And since I have felt betrayed so many times by my Democratic leaders, it felt natural to impugn his motives. I was all emotionally primed to accept a negative character attack. Edwards has also set himself up with a message that requires a lot of trust. He's in the elite - a meritocratic elite - but an elite nonetheless, and he's asking for trust in bridging the worlds of the elite and the public. It's a difficult message to deliver, but it's the one that FDR successfully delivered, and it's the message of all great progressive Presidents.
Well of course, the way to jam this message is to wedge a leader like Edwards from a 'grasstop' like me. Now, as a movement progressive, when there's a field of similar candidates like the ones we have, I'm going to criticize with an eye towards pushing them all in a more progressive, moral direction. And to be honest, the Iran belligerence really shook me up. I get that some rhetorical heat is necessary, but Edwards attended a very neocon conference while other Democrats did not, and spoke aggressively about Iran.
This is going to happen. There are going to be places our candidates are going to feel the need to make compromises, compromises that we might find abhorrent. The right capitalizes on this. Yesterday, a reader emailed me an article discussing the Edwards' new home from the Carolina Journal. The Carolina Journal is a publication put out by the John Locke Foundation, a local right-wing think tank the North Carolina blogger warned me about. From there, the story, or non-story rather, was passed to the Drudge Report where it was widely linked. And then someone emailed it to me, professing to really really like John Edwards but having nagging doubts because of things like this.
And then, primed for this emotionally, and looking for a reason to go after Edwards, I knocked him in Breaking Blue using this material that had been sourced, packaged, and distributed by the right through their network. I try really hard to be fair, and to look for information before forming an opinion. I have a pretty wide network of sources, people who pass me gossip that I informally weave into my blog posts. But in this case, I was angry, and did not act analytically. And the right was there, taking advantage to embed a meme about John Edwards into my head.
It's going to be an ugly campaign. I don't share the illusion about the right, and about myself, that I am somehow above the propaganda. It affects me. TV is powerful, and so are rumors and a really well developed right-wing narrative built into our cultural system, and into my head. I have to work against this every day, and I expect that this is true for many of us. We must work to identity the memes that the right puts out, and stop using them ourselves.
Update: Elizabeth Edwards has more here.
|
|
|
Permalink :: 101 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
