I would bet that Joe Klein doesn't listen to conservative talk radio and tends to forget that it exists. I know that I don't listen to it, and find it easy not to think about it. Unless someone posts a clip, you have to catch it while it's on, unlike blogs.

The only reason Joe Klein knows about *liberal* blogs is that they take him, personally, to task for his published political views. And that is the only kind of "vitriol" that actually concerns him. He knows about conservative hate radio but it doesn't affect him because he is, in essence, a conservative fellow traveller and he doesn't come in for any attacks from that side.

This original post is based on a fundamental error: believing that anything Je Klien says is an accurate representation of what Joe Klein really thinks. He's a poseur and a faker from way back and the only way to grasp what he is actually saying is to understand that, at bottom, its all about Joe Klein and how he feels about himself. He looks like he's talking about politics, facts, Iraq, whatever but what he actually says needs to be put through a decoder to make sense. And the magic decoder? It looks something like "replace all subject X with Joe Klein"

So if the subject is "democrats" replace it with "joe klein" if the subject is "people who got it wrong" replace it with "joe klein" if the subject is "important people" replace it with "joe klein" and then you will understand his seemingly instinctive deference to and defense of his ostensible subject matter. Its really always him.

aimai

It is probably true that Joe Klein and the rest of them don't listen to conservative talk radio, or of they do, they just expect that kind of blather. But what really hurts him and his ilk is that they fancied themselves liberals of a kind, and resent the criticism from the left.

Ah, yet another tu quoque argument. Well, of course politicians pander to John Gibson too, and for just the same reasons; it's just that they're not the same politicians as those who pander to left bloggers. Exactly what is your point? That if John Gibson does it it's OK? That Joe Klein can't complain about you unless he "balances" it with a complaint about them? This is really getting childish.

David,
I think you have a point about some confusion in the original post, but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Klein is arguing that left liberal blogs are "angry and vitriolic" and that is why they are listened to by (by implication) weak and unprincipled dems. That's part of a larger storyline that gets peddled all the time. Under that storyline the fact that angry and vitriolic right wing talk radio and tv signficantly controls right wng politicians (and the base they need to lock up for elections) is ignored. Ignoring it isn't accidental. It allows Klein and his ilk to pretend, when they do comment on the right side of the aisle, that republicans miraculously pander to their base without prompting/hectoring/threats (on principle) or miraculously have party loyalty and strenght when they are simply respondig to the same electoral imperatives the dems do.

Dissapearing one side of the equation from the story *is* part of the story. And people who read Klein and his type on a regular basis are very familiar with it. And that's actually one of Klein's complaints--that the bloggosphere has a long memory and the tools to look stuff up. Klein and other old time journalists aren't used to having their readership call them on particular things they've said in the past. And I think here he's projecting his own dislike of his own readers onto the democratic politicial hiearchy and assuming that they too respond to the left blogs with fear, loathing,and unwilling respect.

I'd be happier if I thought hat was the case, but I don't. Unlike Klein I don't think the whole of the polticial world can be understood by interviewing myself in front of a mirror.

aimai

Exactly what is your point?

Aimai states part of it quite well, i.e., that in the common version of the politeness debate the focus is on the anger of the lefty bloggers and not on the anger that is partly the original trigger of that blogger anger: the treatment of the political opposition in many conservative talk shows at least since the nineties.

Ignoring the conservative anger almost completely (usually it is addressed in one fleeting sentence of something like: "Yes, we all know that conservative talk radio is full of vitriol, but...) makes the liberal/progressive anger look deranged, inexplicable, something that just cropped up in the middle of the night like poisonous mushrooms.

So I'm not asking for some sort of equality in the treatment of various types of political rage but I do think that the absence of similar concerns about the anger of the right distorts the story that is being told about blogging rage.

the story that is being told about blogging rage

I always read this story as a load of self-congratulation about one's status and importance as a journalist. Which is a profession, you must recall -- not like a blog, where just anyone can start ranting about politics (because they care, which for the professionals is kind of cheesy and degrading, and not because they have a journalism degree and the years of experience). The web threatens these guys, the pundits more than most.

Vitriol on the right comprises crticism of Democrats and is accompanied by winks to the MSM, comity and dinners at Karl Rove's house for David Broder, and cocktail weiners. Vitriol on the left comprises a bunch of nobodies dredging up what someone said last week, last month or last year. There are no cocktail weiners. Which would you prefer if you were a member of the MSM?

I think we have been desensitized to the point where this nastiness is the norm, the accepted norm. Pretty sad statement on the state of our national dialog, name-calling and don't talk about the issues.

Well, it's dangerous to talk about the issues because the issues are so serious. In many ways, you absolutely cannot expect the corporate media to address 9/10ths of the real issues facing the nation. It is a better strategy to try to grab someone in government and talk to them directly, hope they make X issue an issue in their campaign, people vote for them and give them "the mandate" on it. But bloggers can't give them mandates. Bloggers are no more representative than any other thin slice of the population.