progressive blogosphere. Video also at link:
http://flprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/06/digby-speaks.htmlThank you very much, Ned. That is overwhelming. I hope you’ll bear with me here. I’m not accustomed to public speaking. I write pseudonymously.
Those of you who know my blog know that it’s nearly impossible to draw me from my secure bunker in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. But when I was approached by my friend Rick Pearlstein about accepting this award on behalf of the progressive blogosphere, I knew it was an honor that I could not refuse. Not for myself, although I’m grateful, but for my fellow bloggers.
We are proud to be part of the great progressive, liberal tradition of Paul Wellstone, and we are grateful for your kind acknowledgment. Thank you.
As there has been a lot said recently about the netroots and our influence on the Democratic Party, this is especially rewarding. Let’s just say we’ve ruffled some feathers. We’ve been called everything from “some guy named Vinnie in a bathrobe in an efficiency apartment” to “blogofascists.” Some critics dismiss us as useless elites, the “Metropolitan Opera crowd,” or a noisy Upper West Side cocktail party for the college graduate class. Still others take us to task for our vitriolic, unhinged tone.
The other day, Tim Russert agreed absolutely with his gracious host, the concerned centrist Sean Hannity, that the Democratic Party was being unduly influenced by bloggers, who were dragging the Party kicking and screaming to the Left. Then there is the criticism that we are fascists or Stalinists, demanding that everyone march in lockstep to the edicts of our leadership – generally assumed to be Markos, of Daily Kos, who apparently directs us with secret signals deeply embedded in the code of the Daily Kos website, while we carry on an elaborate ruse of spirited political debate and disagreement in public. We are, in short, something of an enigma. I like to call this phenomenon “Irrational Fear of Hippies.” And this has, in my view, become irrational fear of political passion.
Of all the criticisms I just mentioned, that is one that we are all willing to accept. We are passionate about politics, and in this era of Republican corruption, excess, and failure, that passion sometimes manifests itself as anger. But how can you not be angry? So many institutions have failed us in the last decade that being vitriolic seems the only sane response.
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