1115.org

I think this post by Kevin Drum is really important:

Still, since I became politically aware during the 70s and early 80s (a decade later than [Joe] Klein), I have at least a little bit of appreciation for what’s driving him. For somebody with a moderate temperament, some of the excesses of that era are bound to leave scars. In my case, though, I was only aware during that period, not active. Like most lefty bloggers, I only started following politics in a serious way in the late 90s. So for me the ghosts of school busing are just that: ghosts.

My political frame of reference is different. It’s Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America; it’s the insane wingnut scandal-mongering of the Clinton administration, culminating in Kenneth Starr and the Republican loonies trying to impeach a president over a blow job; it’s the press beating up on Al Gore in 2000 and a conservative Supreme Court then awarding the disputed election to its favored candidate; it’s a series of brazen, multi-trillion dollar tax cuts aimed at the GOP’s rich donor class; it’s the K Street Project; it’s the 30-year stagnation of middle class wages, partly due to an unholy alliance between conservatives and neoliberals on trade and unions; it’s a disastrous war in Iraq led by a president who had no clue what he was getting into (and still doesn’t); and during this entire time a Democratic Party seemingly adrift and unwilling to really fight back.

Drum concludes that Klein’s frame of reference precludes him from seeing what is really going on in favor of false balance. I’ve been obsessed with this historical blindness for years, and I’ll have more to say on this soon. But for now, I find it unbelievable that a prominent columnist at the major weekly news magazine can look at the political landscape and see a few people in “Free Mumia” shirts at a protest march on one side, and Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Tom DeLay, Mitch McConnell and others on the other side and say “both sides are insane, I loves me some centrism.”