I think it would encourage so-called ‘transparency’ if
Neocomrade Politi will have written "that the American public seems to have channeled all its rage about the financial collapse into AIG" because that is what his corporation would like to see happen. Over in some yet-to-be-fredhiattised backwater of the former WaPoCo, older values linger, and thus Comrade Joe_JP can find a lowly reporter lowly reporting in what seems a contradictory vein. However it is clear enough that editorials and op-eds and "Today's Newspapers" indicate the hard line of the newly predominant faction, because the Daily Standardisers can produce that type of neoproduct without consultin’ either Main Street or Wall Street or anybody else but one another.
The Daily Standardisers' own (very chaste and temperate) rage is channeled through an unsigned hiattorial that should be read in conjunction with the other evidence on the table at Slate. Needless to say, the collective voice of Daily Standardisation warns us that would be petty and childish and counterproductive to make any serious effort to get that $165,000,000.00 back from AIG(FP)'s best and brightests. They even venture to announce that Comrade POTUS thinks so too (or damn well oughtta):
| Obama observed that "we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment." Those remain wise words. |
Of course even back when the Post was still the Post, there was always some question about whom or what its anonymous editorials and op-ed matter were aimed at. It has been plain for years that various foreign factions who want this or that from Hyperpowerful Sam think it somehow conduces to their getting their druthers to make an appeal through the WaPo.[1] Whether they will still think so now that there are in effect two moonpapers servicin’ DC and USA, who can guess?
On the domestic, and especially the economic, front, I should guess the Washin’ton Daily Standard will not be quite identical with the Washin’ton Times, and of course it is bound to be a carnival of technical ignorance by Jingo standards. Comrade Baker has already set up to be a perpetual pain in the neck for the business spinsters at the WDS. The blog blurb speaks of "commentary on economic reporting" quite generally, but it seems like two-thirds or three-quarters of Prof. Baker's commentary is devoted to attempted correction of Planet Hiatt. Like their Weekly kin, hardcore Daily Standardisers would basically prefer never to have to think about economics when they could be plottin’ the next foreign invasion or occupation instead, but nowadays they are compelled to attend to Lord Mammon's affairs a little and decide how best to misrepresent them.
As Comrade Joe_JP notes, today's misrepresentation, at the comparatibvely low level of Neocomrade D. Politi, is an attempt to deflect attention away from J. Cramer of CNBC. Naturally the Daily Standardisers would prefer other major channels of agitprop to be as far out of the spotlight as possible, even when the product purveyed is indistinguishable from their own. "Two of a trade will never agree" is built into Finanzkapital as we know it, as standardisers are willin’ to defend it when they cannot change the subject. AIG(FP) is not a direct competitor of the WaPoCo and its reputation stinks so bad already in the national nostrils that Neocomrade F. Hiatt and the merry band cannot be much tempted to attempt a last-ditch rehabilitation. So evidently it is quite OK for ignorant lay sheep out in Televisionland and the electorate to revile AIG(FP) -- as long as nothin’ comes of the revilement in Beltway City, that is.
Or anythin’ in Albany either, one presumes, although today’s hiattorial does not deign to mention the Obama-like showboatin’ that Cuomo, Esq., is up to in New York State. Can it be that the neocomrades propose to set daily standards only for the Fedguv and the District of Columbia, allowin’ remote provincial backwaters to carry on as they please without bein’ gleichgeschaltet with full rigour? It is too soon to tell, most likely: F. Hiatt has only perverted to the neocomradely community altogether comparatively recently, possibly only since the 2006 midterm elections, and thus the exact contours of the Brave New Post are not yet altogether distinct as viewed through the twistitorial mists, as concealed by such old-fangle reporting as still goes on to some extent. Rome was not sacked in a day.
Our own analysis assumes that neocomradeliness is militant and extremist by its very nature, which implies at least two concrete and falsifiable predictions: (1) that Neocomrade F. Hiatt is gonna tolerate less and less dissent on his corporation’s opinion pages as time goes by, and (2) that eventually he'll get around to standardisin’ for Albany and Manhattan (and pretty well the rest of the human race), exactly as Kristol Minor has long done over at the Weekly Standard. Time will tell. [2]
Happy days.
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[1] This morning there is no perfect example of that genre, but "Thomas A. Schweich, a visiting professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, [who] was a special ambassador to Afghanistan during the Bush administration," comes pretty close . That Party scribbler cannot pretend to speak for the régime of M. de Kharzay, but then, M. de Kharzay is not really top banana in Neo-Afghanistan, is he? Given the current interregnum, exactly how the militant extremist GOP is to govern its colonies and protectorates is unclear, but anybody can see that Neocomrade T. A. Schweich is tryin’ to drum up support for the Bushevik Party line. Will the Daily Standard venture to print anybody who disagrees, as of course neither America's Moonpaper nor the Wall Street Jingo would dream of doin’? Please stay tuned!
[2] In light of the origin of neocomradeliness in the stricter sense (i.e., the Hate-’68 factionette, mostly academic, that formerly centered around Kristol Major and The Public Interest) the intellectual intolerance of 2009 neo-neocomrades like F. Hiatt needs to be accounted for as well as deplored. Part of the explanation, I suppose, is the fact that so many of the current Freddies and Billies are second-degeneration cons, mere señoritos restin’ on Daddy's laurels. Pedantically speaking, these hereditary gentry are not neo- at all, havin’ never entertained any opinions significantly different from Daddy's.
A fresh neospecimen like F. Hiatt is extremely unlikely to have apostasised from moderation and liberalism circa 2004-6 because it has just lately come to this specimen's attention what an annus horribilis 1968 was. And to judge from his C.V., Freddie never even began to be an academic. The easy and natural guess, though unedifying and uncharitable, is that F. Hiatt thought he saw which way the world was goin’ and jumped on the bandwagon. If that guess is correct, however, the neocomrade may conceivably turn his coat again, dependin’ on exactly how the aftermath of Mortgagegate 2008 and the Crawford Crash plays out. That is to say, much depends on whether "the world" decides to go some different and less con-friendly way than F. Hiatt calculated back before all the bubbles burst.
Throwin’ AIG(FP) off his sled to the wolves allows Neocomrade F. Hiatt to distance himself a little from two-hundred-proof con-friendliness. At the same time, he has not burned any bridges to individual AIG(FP) con artists inasmuch as he wants the perps to get away with their bonuses even if the big bucks must come to them along with some discouragin’ words of moralism and ‘populism’, even a few somewhat unkind words from the Washin’ton Daily Standard opinion pages. "Sticks and stones can break my bones / But words will never hurt me" looks like being the immediately applicable proverb.
Yet I daresay agitprop artists like Neocomrade F. Hiatt do not much relish that particular proverb, for what does it profit a man to have become chief ideologist for the WaPoCo if the exalted position does not empower him to do some serious bone-breakin’ from time to time? It is not easy to believe that a specimen like F. Hiatt would have jumped on Juggernaut's bandwagon merely for the ride. But I see I have come full circle, since such disbelief is identical with "neocomradeliness is militant and extremist by its very nature." In the absence of a genuine libido dominandi, the diagnosis of neocomradeliness is counterinidicated. Naturally the political woods are full of Big Management Party base-and-vile who echo their betters’ neoslogans without thinkin’ about them enough to be held very culpable. (And God knows best about the Big Party!)
