Lefti on the News comments on something I’d noticed too, that the liberal blogosphere almost completely ignored the antiwar protests this past weekend. In fact, it’s a demonstrable fact that mainstream media gave the protests way more coverage than did progressive blogs.
For the most part, they [liberal blogs] completely ignored those hundreds of thousands of people. Not only didn’t they do anything to promote or even mention the demonstrations before they happened, which you might have expected if they really were against the war as many profess to be, they didn’t mention them after the fact either.
If someone thinks these demonstrations were a waste of time and accomplished nothing, they should use this opportunity to say so. Say something. Completely ignoring the actions of hundreds of thousands of people makes them even worse than the corporate media. Which is saying something.
A number of explanations come to mind.
1) Many liberal blogs aren’t really opposed to the war. Or they’re conflicted. In any case, their opposition to the war is tepid at best.
2) They don’t want to get too ‘radical’ or take a firm editorial stand because that might alienate readers and then their click-through revenue from BlogAds might drop. (Actually, it could go up. Every time I get more ‘radical’ here, readership increases. Go figure.)
3) They are focused on Democratic politics, on what the Right is doing, and what the other blogs are saying. It’s a big self-referential debating society without much actual action emerging from it, sort of a Mini-Me of the Sunday Talk shows.
Some no doubt have swallowed Right wing smears on ANSWER (of which I am a member) without investigating the facts. If they did, they’d see the smears are baseless. I’ll be happy to explain to anyone who asks.
Yes, some people have a problem with ANSWER (and if they do, they ought to get over it. Any “problem” they have with ANSWER should pale in comparison to the problem they should have with imperialism and its murderous wars of aggression). But only a tiny fraction of the 500 demonstrations (albeit the three largest, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago) were organized by ANSWER, so there was plenty to write about even ignoring ANSWER if they wanted to do so.
Leaving comments to blog posts won’t end the war, nor will chattering endlessly about what the Right is saying. Organizing and taking action will.
The blogs and websites are merely the trumpet call to arms, the battle is in public with real people in real situations. We must never forget that the street is where politics come alive, in the everyday lives of ordinary people, but we do need that trumpet call loud and clear and often.