A not insignificant columnist once asked me who my favorite columnist was. As with the "favorite movie" or "favorite book" question that answer would vary depending on what popped into my head, but at that moment "Jon Chait" was what came out of my mouth. This was in spite of his support for the Iraq war, and in spite of his "I must destroy Howard Dean" blogging in '03-04. Note that I never counted myself as a Dean supporter, though I was certainly a Dean sympathizer, and certainly there was a case to be made that some candidate other than Dean should be the nominee (whether or not you agree, there were arguments). Still, the fact that in '03-'04 Chait thought that an important use of his time at the website of a major political magazine was trying to derail the Dean nomination suggested some rather odd priorities.
Even after all of that, I liked Jon Chait. He was too young to be perpetually battling the dirty fucking hippies in his head, as Joe Klein does, and seemed to have managed to not entirely embrace the 90s Children of Slate Contrarianism for Contrarianism's sake. He often seemed to understand that many Republicans were, in fact, bad people, that Republicans were in power, and that generally a good use of time and column space was to target them rather than, say, Al Sharpton or "some guy with a sign" somewhere. When he was in the mood he wrote well, with an acid tongue that emulated Kinsley's best with an extra bit of venom.
But the Iraq war and the rise of bloggers seemed to change that. Long clinging to his support for that war, Chait suddenly discovered those dirty fucking hippies. They were bloggers! They must be stopped! And, so, he went through his Joe Klein period, concerned about the smell of patchouli wafting through the hall of the DNC.
He's come a long way from his "hey, kids, get off of my lawn" phase, though he still seems to fail to understand much.
First, he doesn't quite seem to understand what the word "propaganda" means. Honest but persuasive speech which employees legitimate rhetorical tools not meant to deceive doesn't qualify as "propaganda." Hyperbole, exaggeration, anecdote, metaphor, humor, can all be employed without intent to deceive, even if hyperliteralists might find that the statements are not literally true.
As for the term chickenhawk, it isn't propaganda, it's what we call an "insult." There's no requirement for war supporters to enlist, any more than those who support tax increases needed to mail extra money to the federal government. Iraq chickenhawks are those who support the war, speak of the conflict in existential terms and describe support or opposition of that war in terms of "bravery" or "cowardice" while obsessing about 300/Lord of the Rings War porn even though there isn't the slightest chance in hell they'd sign up. Jonah Goldberg isn't a chickenhawk because he didn't sign up, he's a chickenhawk because there was never any chance that he would. It's an insult, and it's an effective one, because they know it's true.
As for this:
The prevailing sentiment here, however, is not a distrust of pointy heads. Rather, it's a belief that political discourse ought to be judged solely by its real-world effects. The netroots consider the notion of pursuing truth for its own sake nonsensical. Their interest in ideas, and facts, is purely instrumental.
This is just weird. The point of giving a shit about stuff is that you give a shit about ideas. The point of caring about outcomes is that you care about the idea behind the outcomes. The suggestion that there's no concern for facts is a baseless attack, and his Salon/Edwards anecdote doesn't support it (I never criticized Salon for the story, but I had my own sources on the subject at the time).
Expressed ideas do have real world impacts. I'm all for high minded academic research, though I'm not sure what that has to do with largely fluffy political opinion magazines, but I do object to those who imagine that they think their grand thoughts without concern for outcomes. It's grotesque absurdity that pundits and opinion journalists spend their time writing about things even though they don't care about the outcomes. What an odd way to spend one's time. It's just a conceit by those who like to imagine themselves to be above the fray, that their subjective (if well-researched) opinions are imbued with the Truth.
Anyway, give him another 3 or 4 years. Perhaps his personal shame about his Iraq war support and his sudden obsession with Joe Klein's dirty hippies will fade. Then maybe, when caught off guard for a moment, I might think of Chait as my favorite columnist again. One of them anyway.
