Jack Kemp

There is a rather good article at Amer. Thinker today called "How the Right can learn from the Neocons" by Paul Gottfried. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/how_the_right_can_learn_from_the_neocons.html In it, the author proposes that the Right form alliances with wealthy donors who could create new major media, a worthy cause. But mixed with that are some insulting remarks directed at bloggers and people who just write comments at websites, as if they all had access to funding a new cable network and were just merely immature, overgrown adolescents who are wasting their time with their blogs.

Starting with a quote from Mr. Gottfired, here is my commentt AT where I attack his not so subtle snide remarks.


http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/how_the_right_can_learn_from_the_neocons_comments.html#disqus_thread

JackKemp • 11 minutes ago
"Starting up a blog with one’s buds or becoming a website troll is a form of self-indulgence..."

Speaking as former Amer. Thinker writer (I had over 300 posted pieces) and as a current website troll here and elsewhere, I want to reply to the one faceted and extreme viewpoint expressed in Gottfried's words quoted above.

The author's premise, that conservatives need to copy the tactics of the neocons and create new well funded media outlets (I've seen internet talk of some potential new cable tv station that would more resemble the original Fox News before Murdoch's sons watered down its viewpoint) is a wise strategic move to attempt to win the culture (and thus political) wars. I cannot fault it. But...

But blogging for one's buds or being a website troll is essentially the poor (or middle class) person's only direct accessible avenue of redress of grievances. I - and many others posting in this and other Amer. Thinker comment sections - are not about to be get their own column at National Review or Townhall.com. So just because someone doesn't have very wealthy connections who can finance a major media site, that doesn't make them, prima facie, self-indulgent or overgrown adolescents. It just means they believe, rightly or wrongly, that blog or comment posting is about as good as its going to get for them. An article once appeared at Pamela Geller's site where she stated that the Left has much more developed and financed outlets for budding writers than the Right does. To make a sports analogy, the Left has a farm team system to develop talent where the Right does not. That is still true today.

They used to say that if you are poor and distraught, you are called "crazy" - and if you are a rich distraught person, you are "eccentric." Just because a number of bloggers and web site trolls aren't rich and well connected, that doesn't truly make them self-indulgent crazy adolescents.

Hillary Clinton, when she was formulating her own healthcare law in the 1990s, condescendingly dismissed either small health care businesses or small other businesses that would be hurt by her plan, as being "underfunded." As if not being very wealthy was enough to consider one's position or needs unworthy of consideration. Gottfrields remarks about bloggers and internet trolls being "adolescents" aren't that much different in tone than Hillary's in the 1990s.

A NOTE FROM TIM:

Gottfried writes a fine essay until he goes off the rails here. You do a fine job pointing it out.

I also disagree with his assertion that the key is to get big money donors. That's what the neocons did and it's part of why they are so supportive of terrible ideas like amnesty; the donors want it, not that it is good for either our cause or America. He who pays the bills is the boss. And so many of the monied types are liberals, having gone to Ivy League schools, worked in international busineses, and played with the multicultural glitterati. Most of these people see us as rubes, and wouldn't support our cause. It was different with the neocons who came out of academia and the Democratic Party and thus had a veneer of "cosmopolitanism" about them.

While I don't disagree with Gottfried's point about starting a new Fox (or two or three) I do disagree with him in thinking we can get the money to do this easily. Will the Koch brothers - norotiously pro-amnesty - give money to a group pushing to repatriate illegal aliens? Somehow I doubt it will happen.

And he forgets Matt Drudge and Jim Hoft and others who started with nothing to build influential websites. Drudge almost brought Bill Clinton down, and certainly it was his work in the '90's that kept Hillary from the Presidency. He was just a guy with a website, one of those Gottfried sneers at.

Tim

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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