By Ezra
Who is Joe Klein arguing against here? Even a left-wing strawman would find this recitation of his positions a smidge reductive. And to say that "it would be wildly stupid for me to get into a pissing match by naming names" is basically irresponsible. Either Joe Klein is arguing against real human beings with a role in the national dialogue or he is not, but until he names some names, the context of the conversation suggests he's talking about the left wing blogosphere -- he's simply retaining plausible deniability around his insinuation. And to make matters worse, Klein then updated to say, "Atrios may or may not be an ideological extremist--I was wrong to say he was, since I don't know enough about him--but he sure is a purveyor of extreme and terminally smug rhetoric," which is both a dodge and somewhat lazy.
Duncan Black was a professional economist at the University of California at Irvine and Bryn Mawr. I can promise Joe that he doesn't think -- indeed, that just about no one thinks -- "corporations are fundamentally evil." Corporations are fundamentally profit-driven, and to not know that is a failure of education, not ideology. And extreme rhetoric is neither here nor there in this discussion. It's a way of ensuring the insult Klein walked back -- ideological extremism -- is replaced by another attack, this one basically aesthetic.
All that said, I'm digressing here. The nut graf to understanding Klein's thoughts comes after he professes pride in his "wanker of the day" awards and says that "Lots of you assume that my relative moderation is some sort of carefully calculated chicken-hearted pose rather than an actual belief system. But I've come to my views honestly, after years of watching extremists on both sides of the spectrum refuse to accept the complexities of reality with disastrous consequences." I've no doubt his views are honest and arrived at thoughtfully. But that doesn't make them right.
What Klein isn't doing here is engaging the substance of the critiques made against him. Instead, it looks like he's allowing his a priori belief that "extremists on both sides of the spectrum refuse to accept the complexities of reality with disastrous consequences" to take over for argument. From there, he can term Atrios an extremist -- in rhetoric, if not in ideology -- and discount his criticisms. Thus, every "wanker" award becomes a badge of honor, as the insults of an extremist imply that Klein is the opposite, i.e, someone who accepts the complexities of of reality with beneficial consequences.
