Joe Klein cries because Greenwald criticized his class.

[BurtWorm]

In the sense of "Beltway gasbag" class not "elegance" class. Here is Greenwald's reply to Klein's whine:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/10/klein/index.html


Answers for Joe Klein

In response to this post from last night, Time's Joe Klein asks:

I don't understand this. Is he saying that people like Broder and Ron Brownstein and me shouldn't talk to people outside the Beltway?

Look, the blogospheric media critics have served a valuable function at times, and at other times it's just vitriol for vitriol's sake. I thought an essential part of the critique was that some of us are out of touch with reality...but now Greenwald is saying that any efforts to actually report what's going on outside the Beltway are bad, too?

It ought to go without saying that I argued nothing of the kind. My point was that Beltway pundits are far too insulated and detached from the people whom they baselessly claim to represent, not that leaving the Beltway is bad. The fact that it is supposed to be some sort of commendable or distinguishing attribute that Broder goes on field trips to America in order to study how the "ordinary people" think -- much the way a zoologist travels to the jungle to observe the behavior of different species -- illustrates that point.

Klein's reply creates an opportunity to try to convey a crucial point. Directly contrary to how it perceives itself, the elite Beltway opinion-making class could not be any more unrepresentative of how most Americans live and how they think about their government. Their careers require access and information, which in turn requires the currying of favor with the political officials they purport to cover, to say nothing of the media corporations for which they work.

To most Americans -- the vast majority of whom believe that our country is headed in the wrong direction -- the "Beltway" is the source of the problem. That is the epicenter of the political and media culture which is so profoundly failing the country. Every Beltway institution -- from the President to the Congress to the media -- is held in such low esteem by Americans across the board.

But for the Beltway pundit and our media stars -- those who see David Broder as their Dean -- the "Beltway" is the opposite. For such individuals, the "Beltway" is their habitat. It is the source of their importance and status and wealth and prestige. They naturally love the "Beltway" because they are integral parts of it and that system -- and those who rule it -- lavishes them with all sorts of rewards. As a result, they are naturally inclined to view it with great enthusiasm and to defend it as the superior system. Dogs don't attack the master who feeds them, and people don't generally attack the system that glorifies them.

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[BurtWorm]

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