OxBlog

Monday, July 12, 2004

# Posted 11:21 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

A LENINIST AT THE NYT? In a subtle allusion to the writings of Lenin, Brad DeLong charges NYT debutante Barbara Ehrenreich with practicing a "brand of left-wing politics [that] is an infantile disorder".

Pray tell, what has Ms. Ehrenreich done to deserve this denunciation from a fellow traveler? According to Brad,
Left-wing politics is, for [Ehrenreich], primarily a means of self-expression. The point is not to actually do anything to make the United States or the world a better place..

The point, by contrast, is to assume an appropriate oppositional stance, and to feel good about oneself. Witness her argument that what upper and upper-middle class American women should do is to fire their nannies in order to avoid their children "growing up with the world's class and racial hierarchies stamped on their emerging little world views"--thus depriving relatively poor women of jobs and opportunities they found it worthwhile to grasp.
Hmmm. A female columnist who complains ad nauseam but never comes up with practical solutions? I can't believe the NYT would ever want one of those on its op-ed page!

But moving on, Brad also points to the irresponsibility of Ehrenreich's anti-Gore activism during the 2000 campaign. As she wrote in The Nation:
We are being summoned to save this inveterate bribe-taker [Gore --ed.] because "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." That in itself is a disturbingly Orwellian proposition, easily generalized to "Don't challenge the system, you'll only make it worse."
In spite of all this, Kevin Drum tries to rescue Ehrenreich by explaining that
In politics both policy and persuasion are necessary. Brad has policy in abundance, but Ehrenreich would probably think it bloodless and, in the long run, ineffective, because it does not change people's minds. Likewise, Ehrenreich has polemics and persuasion in abundance, but without good policy this simply produces a mess.
But does Ehrenreich, or Maureen Dowd or Michael Moore really change minds? I don't think so. Just like Rush Limbaugh, they mostly throw red meat to the faithful. There is something to be said for mobilizing the base, but these folks only cater to the extreme half of their partisan base.

As for the NYT, would hiring a Naderite really add much diversity to their op-ed page?

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias offers a non-apology on Ehrenreich's behalf which Brad declines to accept.

On a related note, Henry Farrell takes issue with Brad's allusion to Lenin. While "infantile" is a harsh word, I think that Brad gets the historical analogy just right. Lenin used that word to denounce left-wing Communists whose radicalism threatend to undermine mainstream Communism and ensure the triumph of its class enemies. Brad is using it to attack Naderites who delivered the 2000 election into the hands of George Bush.

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