Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Its the Message Not the Medium

Usha Nellore's oped touches on something I've harped on in the past.
This analysis is ludicrous. YouTube and MySpace are not exactly akin to rocket science or arcane physics. Any fool can master and manipulate these two media, given the time and the motivation. And Republicans can find enthusiastic fools for hire to use them just as easily as the Democrats.

Progressives may have the edge when it comes to Web 2.0, but they have a great deal of intellectual heavy lifting to do. As Matt Bai noted in his book The Argument, “There’s not much reason to think that the Democratic Party has suddenly overcome its confusion about the passing of the industrial economy and the cold war, events that left the party, over the last few decades, groping for some new philosophical framework.”

Most progressives are so thoroughly uninterested in their own intellectual traditions and roots, partly due to the very ugly skeletons they will find in that closet, but more so because they are only interested in attaining political power. Scratch underneath the zealous rhetoric and there really is no there there.

Wrapping failed and outdated Great Society themes in contemporary progressive language, delivered via high tech media isn't transformational, its vapid.

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