Siun at Firedoglake: Losing Our Edge?

[Hissyspit]

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/05/losing-our-edge

Losing Our Edge?
By: Siun

With YKOS 2 over, I find myself trying to understand what I’ve just seen and why I found the experience so disheartening. While I love having time with so many wonderful firepups and FDL colleagues, acceptance of conventional wisdom frames that seemed so pervasive was maddening. And this acceptance for me was most evident at the presidential forum.

And while Hillary was allowed to portray herself as the tough one taking on Cheney over the lack of exit planning (to raucus applause no less), no one mentioned that her plan to “begin redeploying our American troops but to do it in a careful and responsible way …” does not translate into an exit plan at all but a scheme to retain residual troops – some say to the tune of over 50,000 troops in Iraq for an undetermined time. (I requested a statement on the Senator’s residual troop plan several weeks ago but have yet to receive an answer.)

In fact the only candidate whose plan for Iraq was brought into question was Gov. Richardson – the one with the most progressive and rational position on Iraq...

- snip -

Senator Dodd did step up – insisting that we don’t have to wait for 2008 to bring change and called on his colleagues in Congress to stand for something on Iraq. As he so wisely noted “It’s more important to have 25 votes that mean something than 51 votes that don’t mean anything.”

But the meaningless talking points seemed to be all most of the candidates would offer and the challenging netroots-y questions I think we wanted raised were never asked.

Questions like:

“What were you thinking Sen. Obama when you spoke of a unilateral attack on Pakistan?”
or
“Who on the panel will rule out an attack on Iran? And why is blocking such an attack on Iran in the Congress ‘off the table?’” (and in fact not only removed from current legislation actually replaced by Bush inspired hate amendments)

While we, the people and the netroots, were allowed to hoot and holler, the questions and moderation of the forum relegated this forum to an almost perfect copy of every mainstream media “debate” we’ve seem so far. And no one spoke of the people of Iraq or Afghanistan – or of their imminent need for relief in the face of an increasingly brutal occupation. No one spoke of the desperation of the people in Baghdad where:

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[madrchsod]

1. interesting .....

i like this response----"Are you saying that the right questions were not asked or that they were not answered. I was not there. ->Organizing Dems is a whole lot worse than herding cats.<- Did it for 40 years and I know."

[SoCalDem]

2. It almost becomes a "given" when an upstart firebrand gains acceptance

in the "mainstream" media. Once that happens, the "image" of the entity has to moderate, because money starts to enter into it.

When a website is one of many, railing about the injustice, and speaking truth, it's easy to say what you want, but when you become "famous" and start going on radio & TV, and making money from advertising, self-censorship rears its ugly head, and the issues get toned down.

Once large groups of people start paying attention, it's normal to want to appear "respectable", and that alone weeds out a bunch of people :)