Writing is not a hard profession. Writing is actually an impossibly easy profession. I could sleep until noon every day if my cat didn’t wake me up at 5:30 AM. The act of writing itself is not hard. In fact it’s easy! People pretend that it’s hard but it’s not. What they find hard is keeping their eyes on their work instead of on Instagram. If you are willing to concentrate writing is a stone-cold breeze, and concentrating is something that you, as a literate primate in possession of free will, can choose to do. I think writers have created the impression that writing is hard because they’re afraid someone will find out the truth and pull down our whole house of cards. Don’t let anyone fool you: being a writer is cake. Trust me, if it was hard I’d be like “I don’t want to be a writer, it’s too hard.”However, getting paid enough money to live as a writer is hard. Very hard, if you do not have the sort of dynastic advantages many of the professionals out there quietly do (1). And that makes it hard to know how to navigate the intrinsic sense that you must write with integrity even as you do it for a dollar.
(1) So, so many. Writing is precisely the kind of romantic vocation one imagines for themselves while staring out the window of a boarding school with tuition higher than Princeton’s, and so a lot of privileged aspiring writers arrive in New York with the wardrobe of mid-period Joan Didion and the writing skills of… not mid-period Joan Didion. Because they are insulated from financial need they will gladly get paid $12.50 an hour to write 14,000 words a day of viral content, viral in the sense that it will make everyone who reads it feel physically ill. I truly shudder to think of how the wages of experienced and talented writers are driven down by trust funds kids and their willingness to accept poverty wages just to be able to say that they work as a writer in the big city.
I have ascribed the banality and inaccuracies in much mainstream media reporting to all being similarly educated, all middle class, all living in a small handful of a few major cities, all of which are characterized by Democratic administrations, extraordinarily high income inequality, high crime, exceptionally high levels of immigrant populations, an incredibly insular meritocratic social status system based on certificates of prestige education and white collar professionalism, etc. These journalists say the same things to each other because they see the world the same way as each other and all subscribe to social justice, critical race theory charlatanism.
DeBoer points an important additional aspect which I have known but never emphasized. They are disproportionately middle class but not just the broad middle class. They are, as deBoers says, the heirs to "dynastic advantages" - some are trust fund beneficiaries, but many are simply the offspring of higher income indulgent parents who are willing and able to subsidize their children through the first decade of financial hazing as described by deBoers.
There are many industries and sectors which are dramatically winner take all markets. Theater, movies, arts, journalism, writing, dance, and other such cultural activities are among the most brutal winner take all competitive arenas. 1% take 90% of the winnings and success, beyond basic talent and competitive determination, is largely dictated by who can pay their excessive dues (i.e. low, low income) the longest before breaking through.
Then there was the piece Has American Liberalism Abandoned Free Speech? Interview With Thomas Frank by Matt Taibbi.
Writer Thomas Frank published a piece in The Guardian last week called, “Liberals want to blame rightwing 'misinformation' for our problems. Get real.” Its basic argument was that rather than look inward for reasons the Democratic Party message isn’t succeeding, and why political extremism is on the rise, Democrats have instead opted for a strategy of “shushing the world.”
Frank addressed the “clampdown mania” of the Internet era, expressing puzzlement over a change in how Democrats look at the speech issue now, versus how traditional liberals almost unanimously viewed the issue in the not-so-distant-past.
“Criticism, analysis, mockery, and protest: these were our weapons,” he wrote. “Censorship and blacklisting were, with important exceptions, the weapons of the puritanical right.”
To say the piece didn’t go over as he expected is an understatement. Although some liked it, he was stunned by the reaction from people he once considered political allies. “People were like, ‘Fuck you, Frank!’” he says, half-laughing.
Thomas Frank is a reasonably hard left-leaning classical liberal. But still enough of a classical liberal to believe in free speech and freedom of association and natural rights. He is correct to point out that the fringes (but the noisiest elements) of the Democratic Party have become avowed racist, puritanical suppressors and completely intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them.
Even fellow leftists. The real divide, the real polarization is not partisan, it is cultural. Do you believe in the Classical Liberal world view of tolerance and natural rights and emergent order and respect for all citizens and contributors to the determination of the direction of the nation, rule of law, equality before the law, or do you believe in rule by experts, central planning, intolerance and suppression and no natural rights?
Most conservatives are classical liberals. What we are seeing happen in the Democratic Party is the gradual expulsion of classical liberals in favor of ideological Wokesters impassioned by Social Justice and Critical Race Theory. The Wokesters are going after solidly left leaning classical liberals - Thomas Frank, Matt Taibii, Freddie deBoer, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, etc. and driving them away. It is a race towards totalitarianism.
Finally, there was this reference in an Ann Althouse blog post. From "The uproar over Michael Tomasky’s hiring at TNR underscores the extent to which any institution that isn’t explicitly right wing now faces enormous pressure to go 'woke.'" That quote is from Thomas Chatterton Williams. The rest of Althouse's post quotes a irritable response from a John Ganz who begs to differ. He thinks TNR is broadly diverse in its political reporting. His evidence?
Sure, the magazine had a certain political slant, but it was not in any way monolithic. Even its politics were eclectically left-of-center: TNR gave a cover to Bernie and A.O.C., but it also gave the cover to Warren and Biden.
Yep, that's the gamut of political reporting - From AOC to Biden. All the bases are covered. I think that argument by Ganz makes Williams's point.
UPDATE: And the day is not done. Late this afternoon, a piece by el gato malo, hallucinating hegemony. Another cancelled libertarian. Cancelled from Twitter for providing accurate evidence demonstrating the absence of a scientific basis for many or most of the CDC policies. In other words, for doing the factual reporting that the mainstream media would not. And no, I don't know anything about his aversion to capitalization.
when your social graph looks like an ouroboros swallowing its own tail and all you hear is echo chamber, it's easy to presume that yourself not just right but righteous. it’s easy to presume that you must be the majority.
when you become sufficiently adept at shouting down dissent, people stop bothering to voice any where you can hear it. but they do not change their minds. they become ever more sure of what a jerk you are.
[snip]
they stare in disbelief as those speaking against their narratives thrive despite the relentless attacks they launch against them. they gawp, incredulous, as their once august mastheads and and media franchises circle the bowl into disrepute and penury.
they blame sabotage. they blame stupid, gullible, deplorable readers. they blame the referees for not calling fouls despite the longest, most absurd run of hometown reffing in media history. they blame everyone but themselves. and that is why they're going to fail.
there is nothing left but empty credentialism and weaponized social dogma rooted in the dishonest application of post-modernism hollowed out to carry hypocritical payloads of un-interrogatable salients about how everything is race or gender or cultural oppression. it's just the childish game of "punch no punchbacks" wrapped up in impenetrable semiotics and jihadi rhetoric.
it’s an empty movement that serves nothing and feeds on nothing but division and divisiveness. astoundingly, the secular priesthood pushing it is so out of touch that they see this as “healing” and “coming together.” i do not use the term hallucination lightly, but this is definitely that. it’s smug, sanctimonious, and oppressive. it’s ubiquitous, unrelenting, and flat out amoral. it inverts everything it touches and calls up down and sideways stationary. it has about as much to do with reality as a hogwarts class on hippogriffs.
and people have had just about enough. the dam is breaking, it’s becoming OK to call this out as the dishonest hogwash it is, and the outlets where one can do so freed of the editorial slant of the dominating left and the winged monkeys of cancel culture cannot intrude are forming and coming to prominence. a child born today may well never even know what a “new york times” or an “msnbc” is. and that’s going to be to their benefit.
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