One of the most depressing stories of 2007 has not been written.
This is the trend of turning blogger outsiders into political insiders.
When Markos Moulitsas takes gigs at Newsweek and The Hill, he is figuratively moving to The Village, even if he never leaves his home in Berkeley. Part of the process of being taken seriously is that you’re pushed into taking yourself seriously. While Kos has actively resisted this in many blog posts, his writing gigs now make him a major media voice, whether he wants to be or not.
This is not something isolated to Markos. I have lately noticed many Netroots bloggers, from John Arovosis to Jane Hamsher to the Great Digby herself, start to take themselves more seriously lately. It’s true that MyDD has always had an "insider" feel to it, based on an early decision to concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts of campaigning. But these days, when I check in at any of these blogs, I often get the feeling I’m getting pronouncements, the official word, rather than just someone’s opinion.
This is a danger not just in politics but in business as well. When I
write about open source at ZDNet, I find myself using certain "go-to"
guys — Bruce Perens on licenses, Matt Asay
on business strategies — and seeing the leads of such companies as Red
Hat and Sun Microsystems in development as immutable, locked-in. Meet
the new boss, same as the old boss.
The fact is movements have leaders, those with lasting value create
institutions, and institutions get locked-in to a particular world
view, locking those who follow the area into that view as well.
What’s really important as we move deeper into the Internet Era is that
we not get locked-in to the usual suspects, lest we just trade one
elite for another one. The responsibility is ours to keep looking for
new voices, for new points of view, and for new ideas, creating a cycle
of continuing challenge, an intellectual social mobility, which will
refresh these movements even after they gain power.
For instance, I expect to become far more important sympathetic to certain
Republican goals after Democrats take power. As that party undergoes
reform it will become far more interesting. I also intend to look more
toward business issues, and other issues, in order to refresh myself
and what I do here.
This is something everyone can do. Listen to new music. Seek things outside your RSS reader. Try Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky button once in a while.
Think of your mind as an oven and make certain you’re always making new bread, lest what you made yesterday grow stale.
