Righteous Indignation

On May 9, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen complained about the "digital lynch mob" that flooded his e-mail inbox with indignation over his disapproving review of Stephen Colbert's address to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Based on this naively unexpected support for Colbert's brilliant and badly needed satirical public dressing down of the president, Cohen makes the specious argument that the anger and frustration on the left, of which his e-mail responses are only one example, poses a dangerous threat to Democrats' success in the upcoming 2006 elections. This is simply a repackaging of the same old tactic that helped get Democrats in their current mess to begin with: Blaming outrage at conservative government policies for liberal defeats. We should tone down our anger and compromise (a word which now functions mostly as a Democratic euphemism for capitulate) with the conservatives, rather than develop strong, clear progressive stances. It is more accurate to say that the real threat is that posed by liberal establishment old-timers who betray all progressives by failing to support the strategies necessary to pull out of this miserable downward spiral. Our anger is a powerful mobilizing tool. Acquiescence is the real danger.