Awesomity

I have a feeling that K.O. and RachelMaddow rule Michael Scherer's world. At least he's open about being a partisan hack.
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Say, if there are any Glenn Beck viewers who want to wipe the smirk off Scherer's face, here's how to do it.

Hey, hey, easy on the home-schoolers.
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And, damm*t, you beat me to the "C."

We also forget that this is the very thing that scared the centrist establishment into including their viewpoint on Meet The Press --in this country, the left will be appeased or shamed into silence, but the right will not.
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Really, Stuart? Is that why millions of Iraq War protesters were dismissed as unserious hippies, but our news media can't get enough teabagger coverage?
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My hypothesis is that opposing the Iraq War was against the interests of those who own our Congress and our media. Opposing health care reform, OTOH, supports those interests.
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...and for having been so complacently satisfied with the Pentagon Papers/Watergate era press corps that we stopped working to replace them.
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Do you own a TV station or a newspaper? Neither do I! Ownership of these is concentrated in the hands of a very few wealthy people and corporations.
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Do you think it's a coincidence that Joe Klein opposes a public option for health care and prosecution of high level Bush-Cheney figures for torture? Same as the FOX network, and the K Street lobbyists.
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Glenn Beck serves to push the right side of the Overton window further right. This allows the likes of TIME and the Washington Post to pretend that they aren't disseminating the same right-wing corporate propaganda.
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SZ
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What's the deal with your recent fall from grace among your fellow comrades?

I'm not criticizing Z.S., Exile. He is mentioning a theme I've seen Bob Somerby discuss, as well.
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I think there's something else bigger going on, is all.
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Point taken. I am merely noticing an emerging trend of condescending responses to our beloved SZ. It's surprising, that's all.

ifthethunderdontgetya:
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First of all, you make very good points, but I tend to disagree.

Is that why millions of Iraq War protesters were dismissed as unserious hippies, but our news media can't get enough teabagger coverage?

Yes.
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If there wasn't talk radio to get the word out in local communities, I don't think that Fox would have picked up on it necessarily --there are plenty of white teens being kidnapped every day. If there hadn't been a Fox News Channel, there would be no televised coverage of these events, apart from a little sensationalism with the assault rifle people, probably (and C-Span).
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If there weren't churches connected to those radio shows via faxed talking point memos, these slogans and buzz-words wouldn't have been spread consistently between national and corporate organizing and community efforts.
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Finally, the Republican party, from RNC to national candidates to state representatives to Congress all got on board with the speed required to represent these talking points in serious, national political media.
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The Iraq War protesters, on the other hand, pursued a failed, disconnected, largely symbolic non-strategy of expressing themselves first, effecting meaningful change last (if ever).
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Remember, there were significant protests a decade earlier during the first Gulf War, weren't there? It appears that there were no lessons learned from those marginalized, thoroughly ineffective, demoralizing wastes of organizing time, money and effort by the organizers and protesters of the second invasion.
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I think this has something to do with the old idealism and symbolism that much of the baby-boom grass-roots left accepted as identifying articles of faith. The protesters attempted to recreate scenes from prior decades during which mass movements emerged that were relatively successful, connected morally and strategically to Ghandi's heirs the Civil Rights movement, the union movement that culminated in the power of organized labor to strike and disrupt the economy, and the Bonus Army of World War I veterans that occupied Washington.
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To attempt to recreate those successes in the post-Vietnam mass media dominated US --where mass-marketing driven media had truly coalesced into its present institutional form-- was suicidal. To repeat the attempted recreation of these movements again and again was worse than suicidal --it was symbolic.
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The left is the victim of its phenomenal successes forty years ago --the successes that were achieved by recreating what had been done successfully by other movements in decades prior.
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The right tried at one point to organize this way, failed, and started work on a new strategy, one that operated on the premise that without an indigenous media there can be no movement, which ultimately proved highly successful in creating both the modern populist conservative movement and its populist conservative media.
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When you correctly mention:

Do you own a TV station or a newspaper? Neither do I! Ownership of these is concentrated in the hands of a very few wealthy people and corporations.

, let's not forget that when the conservatives started out on their path to media ownership, there were only the three major networks, and no way into the world where Walter Cronkite had declared that America had lost the war --and Dan Rather got up in a press conference and insulted their president. The entirety of youth culture was anti-conservative, and had its own media --records, movies and FM radio-- that was as popular and ubiquitous as one could hope for. The national newspapers had become presidential muckrakers, fully invested in one side of the partisan destruction of a sitting president. For nearly a decade this dominance went on virtually unopposed.
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It was the forgotten world of sports talk radio on the worthless AM dial where they staked their claim piece by ad dollar-less piece, right?
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When you say Do you own a TV station or a newspaper? , I'm sure that was what Karl Rove heard all the time when he was head of the College Republicans.
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There is also another, much more formidable, structural problem with liberalism itself that we don't talk about very often --not that honesty with each other has been all that prevalent, especially during those uncomfortably recent primary days. Corrente lays it out fairly cogently in a post entitled "The New Benevolent Democrats" (please forgive the length):

Before the primary it had been so long since Democrats held power I never noticed how much Democratic philosophy and policy advocacy had changed. But during the primary I started to note what I would call a split in the Party between those who sought economic justice for the middle class, and those who sought social benevolence for the poor.
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I'm always on the side of helping the poor, but in policy terms, I've always thought what helps the poor most is to empower the middle class. Policies that target only the poor through subsidies and welfare programs, and sort of ignore the plight of the middle class over the last several decades, don't leave those on the bottom with anywhere to move up to. Further, often the needs of the poor can only be met through vigorous funding of public programs, not simple charity. And, at this time of economic lopsidedness, often policies need a broader scope than limiting social programs to the least among us. When social programs include the majority of working people they are extremely empowering and hold great staying power. Medicare and Social Security are two examples. Both programs are taxpayer supported by the broad populous. Neither is a welfare program. Social Security, particularly, is a program where what you put in is basically what you get back. It puts everybody on the same playing field and no one who pays into those programs thinks they are recipients of the gift of health care or the gift of retirement security.
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Our greatest social achievements came at a time when we had a strong labor movement, but that era is over. So who are the policy makers now? They are largely academics, white elites who seem more intent on policies of benevolence than in risking their upper middle class status in the name of supporting a larger middle class through empowering policies of justice.

The phrase "It is noble to serve a cause greater than one's self" is common enough these days that it seems to require no explanation, but it means two entirely different things to the movements of the past, really.
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When one thinks of this maxim in terms of the union movements of the early twentieth century, or the military code of honor, one can easily see that the motto is identity affirming on the part of the "self" who is asked to sacrifice. The "cause greater than one's self" is made up of people just like the "self" --the individual is noble for sacrificing personal, immediate interest for the their own ultimate cause. The identity of the group is identical to that of the individual, and the submission is therefore to perpetuate the identity of both in a struggle against an opposing identity.
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In the other meaning of the term, largely born out of the desire for vicarious participation in the morally righteous civil rights movement, I believe, the "cause greater than one's self" is meant to be greater than one's individual and group identities. One helps the literal other in a struggle against another opposing identity. Such is the cause of liberal benevolence, I believe.
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It is very, very difficult to make a self-nullifying cause into a mass movement in the post-mass media era of branding and identity --especially with no media to market that lack of identity, and especially when such a cause is historically inimical to being a member of the middle class in America.
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I could go on and on, obviously, but I'm waiting for a half-millisecond between keystrokes now due to this awesome preview pane...
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Thanks for reading and considering this, ifthethunderdontgetya.

Neorationalist86:
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I am merely noticing an emerging trend of condescending responses to our beloved SZ
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Perhaps if enough people actually read through my commentary, then there would be enough condescension to constitute a trend.
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As it is, criticism is appreciated. juniusredivivus did a superb job taking me down stylistically the other week. It makes for good commentary --if we do it to the writers, we should do it to ourselves, too.

Thanks for reading and considering this, ifthethunderdontgetya.
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Why, certainly! Although I think to an extent, we are talking at cross-purposes. I was making a point about the media in response to your statement: We also forget that this is the very thing that scared the centrist establishment into including their viewpoint on Meet The Press.
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And I think you were making points using my examples of how the existence of a 'left' and a 'right' media in this country is a fiction (it's all corporate) to make points about the left as a movement that isn't getting anything accomplished. So it's all good.
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More explanation on my blog of what I was referring to.
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It is very, very difficult to make a self-nullifying cause into a mass movement in the post-mass media era of branding and identity --especially with no media to market that lack of identity, and especially when such a cause is historically inimical to being a member of the middle class in America."
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How the hell is reforming the entire private-insurance-based health care system (or the Iraq War) a self-nullifying, "social benevolence for the poor", issue? You couldn't come up with a much better example of a "social program...[which] include[s] the majority of working people". Sorry, maybe I'm dense but I don't get the point.

Shephard Wong:
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This is what I'm talking about:
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/25/labor/print.html

No, the more terrifying thing is that he might believe it himself.

I can't figure it out either.

Thanks, Stuart. When I say I have had random results, I mean one of my hyperlinks showed up in red. One time!
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I saw you had a couple links show up in red in just one comment, and I thought: That SZ knows the answer!
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That's exactly what I thought: that the hippie liberals he so despises are EXACTLY the sort of people who only eat red meat twice a month and chicken once a week, and who pour money into their local farmer's market.

Not to mention the craven jeering of "Oh yeah? Well, why should I care about the environment until you are 100% carbon-neutral, hunh? Answer me that, greenie!" Because obviously, that's how it should work: first the greens go carbon-neutral, then the people who live off the government, and only THEN when everyone else is shouldering the burden will the Real Americans consider giving up their SUVs.

Nothing like looking out for #1.