Department of futile gestures, Part 2: Joe Conason & Andrew Sullivan are "colleagues," at least according to Conason. Maybe it's just because I'm an academic, where the word colleague still means something more that "co-worker," but I find Conason's use of the word, at best, wishful thinking & at worst a symptom of what Mediawhoresonline would call "Kool Kids Syndrome"--the media ideology that says, "Really, despite our slight political differences, we're all members of the same fraternity." That's what "balance" amounts to, in the final analysis. I wonder if Sullivan thinks of Conason as a "colleague." I had thought Conason had more sense, though I had already begun to despair of Salon. Joan Walsh's piece in today's number, "It's My Country and I'll Cry if I Want To," [premium subscribers only] put me in mind of that old Phil Oachs song, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal":

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every coloured boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the AFL-CIO board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New Republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the Democratic Party.
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.

But that's mostly an aside. Conason not only abuses the word colleague, he engages in a rhetorical sleight of hand made famous recently by the Washington Post's defense of Susan Schmidt; that is, he claims that the letters Salon received objecting to hiring Sullivan were "similarly worded." Exactly what is being impled here? I would like to know how many letters there were & how many were "similarly worded." Did people copy my letters to Salon, posted here previously? Is there some orchestrated effort that the editors of Salon find offensive? I'd thought that the editors were, at least, liberals & that they might see "orchestrated effort" as a form of political organizing, a concept that used to have some currence on the left, especially in the labor movement. (It was an "orchestrated effort"--or many of them togehter--that finally brought the Vietnam war to a close, though our leaders at the time made sure it was as dishonerable a close as possible.) Were Eric Alterman's & my letters similar, how about the one sent by Dr. Menlo? Or some of the other folks who commented over at American Samizdat? This just seems like a smear to me. Come on, Joe, are your really saying you're being targeted by fanatical leftists?

Eric Alterman & the Media Horse have defended Salon in the past & so have I, but Alterman's column today gets it about right, I think, except that I'm more skeptical of the whole idea of "balance" than Alterman, who notes that he has in the past suggested conservative writers Salon might hire instead of Horowitz & now Sullivan. I'm of the mind that balance is bullshit, frankly. When the right starts hiring real leftists to comment from inside the corporate media then maybe I'll change my tune.