Thursday, January 23, 2003 
The political spectrum here in the U.S. has become increasingly muddled over the years. Conservatives adopted the lingo and some of the verities of liberal progressive thought and more recently the rump of the left has toyed with attempting to coopt the aspects of right-wing thought it finds least unpalatable. We've got a darling of the right proposing a Wilsonian nation-building scheme in the Middle East and a reflexive left in bed with anti-American protest organizers.
So I've started a game. When I'm watching a politician (or, increasingly, an anchor or pundit) bloviating on the TV screen, I try to figure out if they're one of two new political species I've made up: right-wing liberals and leftist conservatives.
For example, when I find myself agreeing with Ann Coulter and Instapundit that Hillary Clinton has adopted the wrong argument in favor of affirmative action (claiming that by "the content of their character" Martin Luther King, Jr., was implicitly including the concept of race instead of excluding it, when a stronger argument lies right there: they we do not yet live in the world that King dreamed of), I am forced to admit that Hillary is a left-wing conservative. She knows in her gut what side she is on and she will adopt inflexible thinking in order to seek the outcomes she favors.
Most of the libertarian types and people like David Brooks are Right-wing liberals. Joe Lieberman is a left-wing conservative. John McCain is a right-wing liberal. I'm not saying there aren't any pure lefties or righties anymore. Pat Buchanan is a right-wing conservative and Ralph Nader is a left-wing liberal, so these people exist, but they have become increasingly marginalized.
We have a left, such as it is, that harkens back to the days when it was in the vanguard, when Roosevelt cobbled together an unwieldy coalition that did not fully spend its force until around 1994. They are conservative, in their desire to return to a time when liberal arguments circa 1949 could win just about any political debate.
Increasingly, it is the people whose views evolved from the right who are looking for new paths forward, but they are also in bed with those who would happily skip back through the '50s, past the '20s, and land us somewhere in the gilded age of the 1890s (again, we find the Ann Coulter type of right-wing reactionary in this camp).
So of course the spectrum is a muddle. People are spread out all over the various axes. The center shifts. It all depends on how you frame the issues and who did the last push poll. But I've got my eye on this weird new taxonomy, and I'm going to keep spotting these weird righty liberals an lefty conservatives when they show themselves.
categories: memewatch x-syndicate
10:17:12 PM 
say what []
Gawker has published another round of SF sucks/no it doesn't. It's kind of a weird obsession, and somehow it seems related to the dashed dreams of the dotcom crash.
Growing up in New York, we never even thought about any other cities. We took for granted that we were at the center of the world. Maybe it's when you move there that you need to come up with lists of why it's cool and convince yourself that this isn't just a phase and you won't be moving to the suburbs someday or back to your parents' house.
Then there's the "just kidding" ploy, as in "have you no sense of humor?" Whatever.
I'm used to SF expressing its inferiority complex and displaying that weak-newspaper boosterism but it's a little embarassing hearing it emanating from New York.
The cool thing about America and the Internet is that you can live wherever you want. Stop worrying what other people think about your home, already!
categories: memewatch
8:55:47 PM say what []
Ken Layne would run Salon a lot more like a blog:
If I ran Salon, I'd cut the staff to a dozen—six on editorial, six on business. I'd cancel the subscription program, "Salon blogs," that audio crap, the lousy replacement for Mr. Blue, Table Talk, The Well and all the other chaff. Get out of that ritzy office space—two floors?—and take 1,500 square feet above a bar in Chinatown. Hold meetings at the bar.But why ditch Salon blogs and the Well? Don't they both make money?
Next, I'd get rid of all the right-leaning columnists. It's pointless to pretend you're all things to all people when you're clearly a left-leaning San Francisco site for left-leaning yuppies. If that's the readership, embrace it. Return to the partisan days of the Clinton impeachment. Make fun of Dubya. Profile Jackson Browne or whoever.
Mimic what's best in Slate: the entertaining exchanges between writers, the daily news summary, the updates throughout the day. Make Rosenberg Salon's Mickey Kaus, but keep him focused on tech. Quit publishing 3,000-word magazine stories. Nothing over 1,000 words.
Cancel that expensive AP feed and get a free feed from Moreover ... or forget that stuff and just concentrate on original writing. Web readers know where to find breaking news, and Salon ain't the place.
Trash that boondoggle content management system and do the whole site on Moveable Type. Enable comments. Pay the best contributors to maintain blog-columns: Heather Havrilesky, Tom Tommorow, Carina Chocano, Joe Conason, etc.
Finally, go to Apple or Sun or whatever Bay Area tech company and say, "We want $2.5 million a year. You're the sole sponsor." Then fire four of the remaining six business people.
Look under the couch cushions, collect the loose change, and buy back all the outstanding stock. Make the company private again.
Could it work? I think so. Keep payroll under $1 million. (Sorry, Mr. Talbot.) Expenses at $500K. Free-lance at $500K (that's $2,000 per day, more than enough for a couple good columns/features). The eight staffers can share the $500K annual profit.
While it wouldn't be as lean and mean as Gizmodo or Gawker, my version of Salon would still serve its 3.4 million monthly visitors with plenty of news, opinion and entertainment. You're welcome.
categories: salonika
8:38:23 PM say what []
