Life Within the Movement Bubble
Though I’ve been critical of Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, I don’t share the dislike of Hannah Giles that I’ve seen in the blogosphere. Given her age, inexperience, and the crowd that got her interested in politics, I wouldn’t expert her to avoid the forgivable mistakes she’s made, and she’s not a bad writer. Thank God I never received the exposure she’s getting when I was her age.
I am, however, truly puzzled by this piece she’s posted at Big Government. I presume that she is entirely earnest when she writes:
Young, truly devoted liberals, who can defend and properly communicate what they believe and formulate their own ideas to help their team are hard to come by. Very hard. Now, it is true, the Left in Washington has a giant stronghold in Hollywood. There are dozens of young actors/comedians/musicians/artists who side with the political left and promote their policies publicly, encouraging the average youth to behave and think as they do.
But what young warriors do the liberals have? I’m not asking about the automated liberal-spewing machines, or the professional foamers in the blogosphere. Not the kind of public-school-educated robots who grew up obeying Hollywood and defying their parents. I’m talking about leaders, the thinking types.
Ponder this for a moment: currently, names like Aaron Schock, Jason Mattera, James O’Keefe, Evan Baehr, Brendan Steinhauser, Lila Rose and Ben Shapiro are popping up on the public radar. Besides being under 30, this crew is desperately fighting for America on the conservative policy/political side of things, and the scary/really cool thing about it is they have the smarts, creativity, guts, and resolve to do so.
The only young liberal that I would consider in their league is the 25 year-old Ezra Klein of Newsweek. He is extremely intellectual, creative and effective at communicating his ideas to mass audiences. That’s right, his ideas. He doesn’t just parrot what the leftist elites in Washington are saying. And that deserves credit; it is hard to formulate your own thoughts on issues and devote yourself to ensuring they are communicated accurately and efficiently.
Don’t get me wrong. I am impressed by the career Ezra Klein has made for himself, as I’ve written before. Though I don’t share his opinions on health care, I’ve benefited from his explanations and analysis, and I’ll bet we see great things from him in the future. But the notion that he is alone among smart young liberal writers — as opposed to one among many — is absurd, as I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge.
Ms. Giles assertion, if it is indeed earnest, suggests to me that she exists in a rather extreme media bubble. Am I wrong? I issue this challenge: Take a look at the work of Charles Homans, Ann Friedman, Chris Hayes, Brad Plumer, and Dayo Olopade — an abbreviated list of exceptionally smart, intellectually honest liberal writers chosen because they’re the first five that sprang to mind. I’m sure I could list a dozen more as deserving of mention.
Can Ms. Giles deny that they’re intellectual, creative, and adept at communicating their ideas? Or that they’ve produced fine work on numerous occasions? I hope that the conservative movement produces young journalists as talented as these folks, but I am not optimistic. Arguing with Ezra Klein is a perfectly good start for a young right-leaning political writer, especially one who is writing about health care, but if he’s the only smart young liberal of whom you’re aware — well, I can’t say it’ll necessarily stop you from rising in the conservative movement, but you won’t have much success finding, understanding, and responding to the most persuasive liberal arguments, let alone winning converts.
Once again, I think you are being a naif when you assume that people like Hannah Giles are interested in (or even capable of) seriously analyzing or discussing ideas. Her article was just an exercise in promoting her little friends and maintaining the conservative fiction that they are somehow the party of ideas. The only other motive I can see in Giles’s piece is an attempt to get Ezra Klein out on a date with her, which would probably be a mistake for Ezra to take her up on, as she seems kind of skanky and doesn’t appear to come from a good family.
— Mark in Houston · Mar 7, 05:46 PM · #
I went to private school, myself, but that comment about “public-school-educated robots” (next to a jab at “leftist elites,” no less) is enough for me to dismiss this piece as self-satisfied drivel. Moving right along…
— E. Ericson · Mar 7, 05:57 PM · #
O’Keefe is an intellectual, a thinker? That should set the bar pretty low. She did manage to diss Hollywood twice in four paragraphs. What is with the public education thing? By this I assume that she means “Real Americans*” are home schooled?
Steve
* Real Americans is a totally right-wing owned slur.
— steve · Mar 7, 06:15 PM · #
The funny thing is that Klein is living within a progressive bubble. I guess it takes a bubble-kid to appreciate a bubble-kid. Bubble-love? But, really, it’s a bubble world, after all. Just ask Don Ho.
— mike farmer · Mar 7, 06:43 PM · #
The elite pretending to believe things they know are not true because it moves the common men in a direction that favors the elite. How much of our politics is based on this?
— cw · Mar 7, 06:55 PM · #
Careful, cw, keep talking like that, and they’ll call you a Marxist.
— Freddie · Mar 7, 06:57 PM · #
I think you guys are being awful hard on someone as young as Ms. Giles — read the opinion section of any college newspaper and you’ll see people repeating all sorts of orthodoxies of thought. This is especially true when they’re snapped up so early by an ideological movement. I hate the idea of contemptuously dismissing these young people rather than engaging them. That doesn’t mean indulging their absurd statements. Indeed I’ve tried to point one out. And if Ms. Giles demonstrates she is actually being disingenuous as opposed to young, impressionable, and stuck with the wrong me tors, she should by all means be dismissed. But I see no definitive evidence of that.
— Conor friedersdorf · Mar 7, 07:38 PM · #
I’m nine months younger than her, if it makes any difference, and still not impressed. But your point about giving the benefit of the doubt is a fair one.
— E. Ericson · Mar 7, 07:58 PM · #
Conor, the difference is that most people who write this sort of thing for college newspapers don’t get their work promoted by national media outlets like Fox News and the Breitbart websites, like Giles has. If Giles wants to play in the world of national media, she has to be judged by the standards of what a good writer and thinker would write in that world, rather than a mediocre one at a college newspaper. And I’m not seeing any reason to assume good faith on the part of Giles, given what she’s come up with so far and the company she keeps.
— Mark in Houston · Mar 7, 09:12 PM · #
Also, I’m kind of surprised to see that at this website of all places, Giles’s list of great young conservative thinkers isn’t being shredded. I may not always agree with what writers like Daniel Larison, Reihan Salam or James Poulos write, but the idea that they are unmentioned in a list of supposedly talented young conservatives that includes losers like Jason Mattera and Ben Shapiro is pretty ridiculous. (But then again, I can see why they wouldn’t want to be on such a list, or be mentioned as some of Hannah Giles’s Best Thinkers Ever!)
— Mark in Houston · Mar 7, 09:17 PM · #
I rather doubt that Giles is aware of Larison, Salam, or Poulos. Ideological bubbles can be rather narrow things.
And it can take a while to expand one’s horizons. I think when I was her age, I was still calling myself a socialist and worrying about what I’d do when Bush invaded Iran. I’ve changed a bit in the past five years.
— Ethan C. · Mar 7, 10:34 PM · #
Mark,
For the record, I certainly think her list of talented young conservatives is absurd.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Mar 8, 04:05 AM · #
Most unforgivably, she uses “us” as the subject of a sentence in that piece.
— pc · Mar 8, 03:40 PM · #
Still no update on the Gitmo Three? Your original story at The Daily Beast was published January 20 and your last update here was posted February 1.
You wrote, “And yet conservatives are so far content to ignore the story.” But it seems you are far more content to ignore your own story. Presumably you no longer find the alleged conspiracy plausible, or else surely you would have highlighted any new facts or evidence that support the theory. If so, you owe your readers a correction or retraction. Perhaps you also ought to take a break from criticizing the journalistic ethics of others for a while.
As a reminder you wrote: “But it is notable that the ongoing coverup of circumstances surrounding their deaths implicates enlisted men; naval officers; interrogators from the CIA or the Joint Special Operations Command; the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology; and civilians in the Defense Department and the Justice Department. When a country’s armed forces and civilian leadership conspire in coverups involving dead bodies, it is inevitably corrosive to the rule of law, the morale of the brave folks who risk their lives to protect us, and our standing in a world that rightly abhors deadly corruption at secret prison sites like the one now revealed to be at Gitmo. We’ll continue to suffer all those consequences whenever we use ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ so indefensible in their particulars that government officials sooner break the law than admit their real-world consequences.”
— Derek Smithee · Mar 8, 08:33 PM · #
I don’t understand. Why not the middle option, where Conor still finds the “alleged conspiracy” plausible, but there hasn’t been any new facts or evidence yet?
Why would their need to be? Proponents of the “suicide” story weren’t able to address the evidence as it stood then.
— Chet · Mar 9, 05:43 AM · #
Hannah Giles is smoking hot. She and Ezra would have pretty kids.
The comments section on that article is hilarious.
— MQ · Mar 9, 05:13 PM · #
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now. Keep it up!
And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time! :)
— supra shoes · Mar 12, 09:23 AM · #