skippy the bush kangaroo: classic skippy from the vaults of blogtopia*

Friday, June 30, 2006

classic skippy from the vaults of blogtopia*

[ed. note: we use the term "classic" in the sense that tv land and soft rock stations do...it's a re-run of old stuff, but we want to use nicer sounding adjectives]

while working on the post below, we find glenn greenwald waxing resignedly about the complete lack of support by most major lefty organizations for his excellent new book, how would a patriot act?:

the nation has published an interesting article by jennifer nix regarding how books can be used to force ideas and arguments into our national political dialogue, and it uses how would a patriot act? as its model. jennifer notes that the book succeeded even though it "has received very little mainstream coverage" [despite remaining on the new york times' best seller list for 4 weeks (and counting), not a single newspaper or magazine has reviewed it] and, more surprisingly, it "has not received help from the big membership groups." despite being the only book focused on the bush administration's abuses of executive power, moveon, for instance, has explicitly refused -- in response to numerous requests -- even to mention the book to its readership or promote it in any way.

many on the left seem to have some sort of instinctive aversion to promoting products which are for sale or ventures which generate profit, as though such activities are impure or even wrong.

upon reading this, we immediately thought "well, moveon has no problem promoting products for sale to generate profit...especially if it's their own."

our minds wandered back (with the help of the search feature on blogger) to the day two years ago when we received an email from moveon...which prompted us to write this editorial: note to moveon: you can't spell "progressive" without "e-g-o":

we got an email from moveon.org today promoting their new book moveon’s 50 ways to love your country: how to find your political voice and become a catalyst for change...

but our complaint with the email was the heading, and the thrust of the missive: take the moveon book to #1.

the gang at moveon asked us to order the book from amazon, so it could move up the best seller list, from the current (as of this afternoon) #2 spot all the way to #1!

our problem with that was, at the time we received the email, the #1 book was richard clarke's against all enemies.

it seemed to us at the time (and still seems to us, even though, indeed, the moveon book is now #1) that there was a tiny bit of hubris at work here. begging people to make moveon's tome #1, thus pushing clarke's book out of the top spot, would only be for bragging rights. and what good is bragging that you're better than another person on your own team?...

we're all on the same side here. perhaps this is a molehill of badly worded press releases that has spurred us on to pulling out our mountain-scaling gear. but still, we were bothered by moveon's insistance that we buy their book so they could displace the most important witness to the 911 commission, if not the most important voice of dissent in the past three years.

ok, if it was sean hannity or bill o'reilly's book, we would have pulled the credit card out immediately. but now, we have to be candid, the next time a moveon email graces our inbox asking us for more money, we'll take it with a grain of salt, and wonder if there isn't some other, less egotistical, progressive website that could use our cash.

let's not eat our own. let's be happy that there are a plethora of leftist voices now being heard. let's not insist that our voice be the loudest. you don't see us going to everyone's blog, begging for hits so we can displace the kos, do you?

ok, we admit that our policy has changed since we wrote that last sentence, and we do go to everyone's blog begging for hits, but not necessarily to displace kos (but duncan...watch your back!), however, we think the sentiments we expressed back then are appropos to glenn's situation today.

if the lefty organs can't all chip in and help each other, irrespective of personal gain or profit to our own individual causes, then there is no way we will get our messages out to the country. success is not a zero sum game, and the rising tide lifts all boats, and first they laugh at you, till the fat lady sings. ok, our metaphors broke down there at the end, but you get the idea.

the more books glenn sells, the more people will absorb the ideas of the progressive movement that glenn is writing about. and the more people aborbing those ideas, the more people who will want to buy more good books, like the ones moveon promotes.

success for glenn is success for us all.

*yes! we coined that phrase!

posted by skippy at 9:27 PM |