Letters to the Editor
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No doubt a great book...
... but will the right peole read it or will it effectively preach to the choir? Will this change anybody's minds? How does one entice the political opposition into reading (and accepting) a critique of itself?
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Excellent!
Hope it goes well w/ Amy Goodman. You ought to be a regular on that show. Democracy NOW!
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bungo pony
No doubt a great book...
... but will the right peole read it or will it effectively preach to the choir? Will this change anybody's minds? How does one entice the political opposition into reading (and accepting) a critique of itself?
The goal is never to change the minds of that pernicious faction itself or to convince them of anything, but to expose what they are. A political faction like that is grounded in tribalism and the last thing they are is susceptible to changing their mind. Writing a book is a way to get one's arguments out to a larger audience, to make arguments in a more thorough and deliberative way.
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-- bungo pony
The right people will read it if those of us who have finished reading it will only pass it on either in the form of the book or through the form of knowledge gained by reading the book.
All Glenn, or any author of a book of this type, can do is present the case in readable and understandable form. The rest is up to us.
Actually, to me, that's the value of blogs such as this. It's not the number of eyes on a blog that counts. It's the number of ears.
Pssst. Pass it on.
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Good luck...
"A political faction like that is grounded in tribalism and the last thing they are is susceptible to changing their mind..."
Name a political faction that is not stubborn or grounded in tribalism.
I would love to see if National Review would be interested in chatting with you. For them to show the same courage that Salon had in inviting Jonah Goldberg to discuss his book. I know many here screamed their disapproval but I thought it was quite interesting.
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Mythology
It's particularly approriate that your book title includes the word 'myths'. One of the things I've been noticing lately is that all the most ridiculous controversies and loudest shoutdowns, the Obama 'bitter' quote being the latest example, revolve around instances of people saying something true that happens to shatter popular mythologies.
The closer to the bone the truth is, the louder and more persistent the shoutdown is.
I still like to use the Natalie Maines controversy as the primary example of the phenomenon, but a little thought would reveal that there have been hundreds of such "the Emporer is naked" moments over the last several years. The degree to which Americans engage in denial in order to assuage their consciences and preserve their creation myths is a wonder to behold.
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I ordered the book last week
and just received an email from Amazon saying that it just shipped :-)
Looking forward to reading it soon.
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I especially like the imagery
Comparing Bush to Saddam's statue in Baghdad. Very subtle, light touch.
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Sorry, Paul
The closer to the bone the truth is, the louder and more persistent the shoutdown is.
— Paul DirksThis one is already taken:
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
— H. L. Mencken -
Side Note -- AP Article ignoring McCain hypocracy
At first, I was elated to see on Yahoo the following lede: "McCain: More conservative than his image" by Libby Quaid.
It was a teaser at the beginning about how conservative McCain truly is, but then sadly it deviated ignoring his hypocritical stances. From falsely touting his commitment to Campaign Finance Reform (despite surrounding himself with lobbyist on his campaign roster as well as the negating of his agreement to public financing during the primary), to stating his past comments on "agents of intolerance" while the article ignores McCain's embrace of them during campaign season, the article ends up painting a false picture of McCain.
Depressingly, the AP continues its inferior reporting. But, this is worse, because it portends to tell the truth about McCain while making him seem more "centrist" (a loaded word these days in the press) than he is.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080414/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_the_conservative
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Good luck with the book, Glenn...
The absurd comments of Meagan McArdle at The Atlantic only demonstrate how timely and important your book is. I'll be looking for it at my local bookstore.
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Need Stronger Medicine
I'm sure the book will be a great success. Even without the benefit of reading it, I worry that the prescriptions for how to counter-act the forces of evil are not adequate. It isn't enough for the Democratic candidate to argue that the Republican candidate is a dishonest, conniving nitwit. Nor is it enough to "challenge" media types who persist in setting forth misleading narratives. We've tried that, and it has failed.
We need to become much more creative about taking on the other side. We need to get a group of attack dogs ready to jump all over the Politicos and the WaPo editorial boards -- and by that I mean bloggers who are ready to jump on the TV and be combatative and telegenic. Our Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but not actually insane. And on the side of the angels.
Also, we need to organize our elected Dems and get them singing from the same page. If elected Dems would all refuse to comment on "bitter-gate" or "juice-gate" or "bosnia-gate," these stories would suffocate. The purveyors of this nonsense need legitimate cover, and we should deny it.
We might also start to develop our own with techniques -- that is, techniques that the right hasn't already developed. One idea that I've long thought should be tried would be to purchase one hour of time on paid media each week at the same time -- could be on VH-1, or CNN, or whatever. And have our candidate spend the hour talking with various folks about the issues. (I don't think we're required to speak in sound bites of :30 if we don't want to.) Or forbid media appearances on outlets we want to minimize. For example, no one from the Obama campaign should speak with anyone at MSNBC as long as Chris Matthews is on the air. And so on -- there's a million things we could be doing if we just chucked the blinders that "conventional wisdom" and our consultants have put on us.
Bottom line is we need to up the aggressiveness ante a fair piece, as well as going on serious offense. (Where's our 527 to run ads of with pictures of the 1st Mrs. McCain?)