Beltway Blindness©
Jason Zengerle over at TNR has come down with a case of beltway blindness. His article on Al Franken's new radio show notes that:All well in good, but Zengerle's very next sentence is "[b]oth of these traits, admirable in many respects, could pose a problem for Franken in the rough and tumble world of talk radio."While Franken has had moments of extreme behavior--like when he tackled a heckler at a Howard Dean rally in New Hampshire or when he lit into Bill O'Reilly at the BookExpo America convention--he is not, generally speaking, a shouter. And as Russell Shorto noted in his very smart profile of Franken in The New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago, Franken is actually pretty moderate. Although he's obviously a very partisan Democrat, he's not, as Shorto writes, "an extreme lefty but rather a devout party man, one who says, for example, that the Democratic Leadership Council is a moral force for good."
Wait, what? Admirable? Maybe being moderate is admirable, but I find a "devout party man" to be less than awe-inspiring. It can be necessary to be loyal to a political party, something the better episodes of The West Wing will show, but sacrificing your principals or reason for an organization should, at best, be a difficult choice. For example, in her book Nickel and Dimed, Barbra Ehrenreich writes:
In other words, blind loyalty to your union, party or candidate is never admirable. And if blind loyalty is what Al Franken's new show offers, it deserves to fail.I don't share the belief, held by many union staffers, that unionization would be a panacea. Sure, almost any old union would boost wages and straighten out some backbones here [at Wal-Mart], but I know that even the most energetic and democratic unions bear careful watching by their members.
