So the biggest liberal blog finally noticed. To read the comments, however, is to see everything that’s wrong with the fake left. They’re cowardly and devoid of imagination, unable to imagine a world outside the right-wing paradigm.
Love Them Libs
Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
Comments are closed.
13 Comments.
@ Ted Rall: Well it sounds like you now know how Lyndon La Rouce feels. He has been lobbying almost the exact complaint of this post for almost half a century now.
I think there are a number of issues in selling your ideas. The left has increasingly defined itself as “NOT the right” in this country. Which as time goes on becomes more and more of “lets adopt the opposite idea of our opponents to differentiate and distance ourselves from them.” You are advocating the use of “right-wing tactics” to achieve leftist goals. Naturally this meets with confusion and skepticism given the previous philosophy which has been accepted and practiced by the left for orders of magnitude longer then your Manifesto has existed.
I don’t think things are going as poorly as you think. As someone in a field where new ideas are the currency there are stages to Idea acceptance.
1. Denial/Dismissal: The idea is ignored or dismissed as lunacy.
2. Overshadow: beginning acceptance of idea but most claim that it is just a curiosity and not as valid or useful as other ideas.
3. Steal: Momentum catches and your idea begins on an unstoppable trajectory towards wide acceptance that is obvious to all. Rats and moochers poor out of the woodwork to ride your success and or claim they claim up with the idea first and that you are an unoriginal hack trying to steal their ideas and pass them off as your own.
Looks like the ideas in your Manifesto have made it to stage 1 and are working their way towards stage 2. Ruthless persistence will see you through.
Also to be fair, while you have hit many venues, the only attention getting venue that hits the populous en mass that you have had the opportunity to do is MSNBC. As a result, as far as the majority of the left (as well as the right and center) are concerned, your book might as well not have existed before that interview because they certainly didn’t know or hear about it before then. Taking this as a key point of view (as frustrating as it might be) you have only been hocking your idea to the general populous for two days now. You simply can’t expect a radical idea to be taken up by the general populous in two days.
If you are serious about this (and I believe you are) you are going to have to accept rabid dismissal from the entire political spectrum for at least a year before it softens, and that will happen on if you spend that time by continuing to gain attention for the ideas and maintain level-headed well reasoned stubbornness that wears down the stubbornness of those you wish to convince. That should get you to about stage 2. Then you need to do a lot more to keep things moving from there.
Selling ideas becomes harder as the group you are selling them to becomes larger. It becomes exponentially harder as the ideas become more radical, and much hard still as it defies what has become accepted as conventional wisdom to the group you are hocking it to. Given all this you are making one of the hardest possible sells for any rational idea possible. You have elected to climb Mt. Everest, and not from base camp, you have decided to start in the Mariana trench. It is not impossible but it is going to be a long term commitment with a lot of daily effort and earth moving amount of persistence.
That is an amazing and excellent post. Thanks!
You’re also going to need a gang Ted. Again, may I recommend the Young Turks?
Just contact them and ask for a phone interview. Tell them your CV and they’ll have to say OK; cause believe me Ted, they’ve had people with way less qualifications then you on. If they press further, just tell them about your August trek through North Afghanistan.
Here’s their email:
theyoungturks@googlegroups.com
Ask your fan base to send them emails.
Why am I saying this?
1) Because Ted, you have the goods, just a little bit of marketting could get waaay more attention. On google videos I get 131 hits for videos involving you (because people hate to read), but maybe 15 of those are easily watchable youtube hosted videos where you get your political view across.
2) Because the Young Turks Cenk Uygur, is a media machine, who gets his own “Cenk Attack” segment on Dylan Ratigan’s show, or the Ed Show, at least thrice a week.
May the great Tedmanbashi prevail.
Sincerely
TLW
I can’t ask them…that has to come from them.
OMFG Ted, here’s video of you talking on air with Rachel Maddow! Call in a favour buddy.
democrats08.policlicks.com/video/This-Morning-I-Inhaled-America
Tried that. Got no reply. Maybe Rachel has turned to the dark side of the force.
DailyKos is not the left. Seriously, are you kidding? DailyKos exists for one thing and one thing only: to elect Democrats. Markos has made that abundantly clear, deleting accounts of people promoting third party candidates. I mean, how you equate DailyKos with the left is beyond me. They promote Democrats period. They also post snarky blogs of no particular interest. They’ve accomplished nothing, other than completely bogus polls for 18 months.
Sadly, this appears to be true. I don’t understand how something so mindnumbingly dull gets so much traffic online.
I can’t ask them…that has to come from them.
Long tired of running after favours? 😀
OK 😉 I’ll shoot them an email – I need a favour from you, how do I link my name “TLW” to some sort of profile or my blog?
N-Joi.
TLW
Thanks in advance…but I don’t understand the linkage question.
Try Thom Hartmann, he will definitely accept you.
You’d think that. But you’d be wrong.
It’s really sad that all liberals can’t get along, there are so many schisms. This is why the right keeps dickassing us, yet we are suppose to be the better ones.