More on Jay Rosen's report . . .

from Joe Trippi's appearance at an Emerging Technology Teach-in.

How about the 60s lefty concept of a teach-in, in the first place, as though we could all come and listen to a few harangues and consider ourselves "taught?"

What struck me about the whole report was the assumptions made by the pols and the press. One is that Trippi's application of age old fundraising and grassroots organizing techniques to the internet was some kind of "paradigm shift." In case he didn't notice, the dot.com bubble has burst, just like Dean's new-age campaign. If Joe Trippi is such a genius, why is he commentating for MSNBC?

I originally had more comments, but then I read Rosen's link to Jeff Jarvis, who links to Matt Welch, who succinctly nails down what's wrong with this picture: "'. . . [T]here's just something about Cluetrain bloggy techism, insurgent populist campaigns & left-of-center political positions that go together like peas & carrots.' Maybe that's true, but I honestly suspect that it's not."

I think Rosen's piece is worth reading for the way it documents what Welch noted. There's a kind of hermetic seal around liberal thinking, where nobody ever questions his own assumptions. Failures are all examined in terms of technique, not product. I think this is why a lot of liberals are becoming libertarians, they realize that government is not going to deliver on the promises of the New Deal or the repackaged versions of it. They still don't like the restraints that conservatives support, but they're too intelligent to believe that socialism, bureaucracy or the U.N. really will ever work.

Update: I received an email from Professor Rosen who was rightly offended by the first version of this post. I had already realized that I had misread his original piece and changed my post to remove the first impression I had that he was describing his own views, when he was merely reporting the tenor of the Teach-in. I'm very flattered that he had read my blog at all, but greatly embarrassed that I had made such a blatant error in my first reading of his report. I owe him at least this apology and can only be grateful that the first draft isn't in print and widely distributed. I have a number of CYA excuses, but it would be unfair to Mr. Rosen to try to justify my own error.

As Glenn Reynolds has noted, it's a nice thing about blogs that they can be edited immediately and continuously.

I know nothing about Mr. Rosen's politics, and therefore disclaim any intent to criticize him, since he is a reporter, not an apologist. The body of the post is the same as I had left it before I read Mr. Rosen's email.