Never to your face

Linda Hirshman's complaint that she was cut from Talking Points Memo for daring to criticize the "divinity" of the Obama campaign says less about Obama (who was not involved in this at all) than it does about the subtle social pressures which operate within political groups.

The email exchange between Hirshman and TPM's Andrew Golis was conducted in the kind of code with which political dismissals are regularly couched. Because hardly anyone is ever courageous enough to say "you're spouting the wrong political line" almost every blacklisting of this sort is conducted under the cover of "improving the readership" or "preserving balance", etc. Executions within ideological groups are nearly always carried out under a commercial pretext instead of a political one. It's a subconscious testament to how little legitimacy ideologues accord their own ideas. They are embarassed to invoke them.

And that's probably because they pretend to be above them. But real motives often go unmentioned on purpose. Barack Obama proclaims himself driven by idealism and Hillary Clinton declares herselves motivated by the "children". I'd be more comfortable if they admitted they were in it for themselves.

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