Forbes.com has its list of the “The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The U.S. Media“. Here’s some of the people on the list: Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Chris Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, Fareed Zakaria, Fred Hiatt.
I don’t want to live anymore.
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[…] Filed under: Culture, Media, Politics — Luke @ 10:59 pm Update (1/23/09 10:22am): DougJ isn’t too happy about it: Here’s some of the people on the list: Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Chris Hitchens, […]
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[…] Why on earth does the Washington Post see fit to publish a pseudo-economist who was completely wrong about the big economic issue of the year? It’s probably the same reason, of course, that they exclusively (except for Meyerson) publish columnists who were completely wrong about the Iraq war. Or maybe it’s just because Fred Hiatt is such an influential liberal. […]
cleek
Forbes is trolling
Media Browski
Hello, my name is media browski. This word mister Forbes– this word "liberal" you keep using–I do not think it means what you think it does.
Downpuppy
I don’t think they’re trolling so much as very, very stupid.
Consider:
Or maybe they stole their kid’s homework for a 7th grade social studies class.
4tehlulz
>>Forbes.com
Stopped reading right there.
J.
BANG.
Bob In Pacifica
Be black and ride on BART. Someone will shoot you.
chris mohr
Chris Matthews? THOMAS FRIEDMAN???
Wow. Forbes must be looking through liberal-land through Alice’s Looking Glass. Tweety eventually did turn on Bush, but so did tons of former sycophants who finally could no longer swallow the kool-aid.
Changeroo
What on earth qualifies Forbes to opine on this subject? More in their area of so called "expertise" is their prediction in their blog this a.m. that the Dow and S&P were headed to another 15 to 20 percent drop over the next several trading sessions, starting today. Right.
Wilson Heath
Forbes got punked? (Probably not, based on my web searches on the attributions for editing the list, but it was a nice thought.)
File it under "center-right" propaganda — if this is the new media elite during the Obama era, then those of us in the actual center can still be dismissed as DFH’s.
Gunner
Liberal has come to mean "anyone who doesn’t march in lock-step with conservative ideology". It may be wrong, but it’s simple and easy to follow, and that’s all people care about.
The Other Steve
I got bigger problems. iTunes just decided that it should delete everything from my iPod and resync it. 40 gigs… All I wanted was 3 podcasts synced up, but now I have to wait 15 minutes to send 40 gigs back.
God I hate Apple. Why on earth would it think "Hey, I know, you probably want me to delete everything don’t you?"
The Moar You Know
To both the magazine and their rotten subscribers, these folks are liberals. To us, they like the swastika but don’t insist on branding everyone with one.
I’m very glad to see that Forbes still maintains their sacred tradition of gettin’ it wrong, as usual.
Ripley
I think the real question is: What the hell is the point of this list? What, they couldn’t just post an associate editor’s vacation slides or ahi recipes?
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
Maureen Dowd????? Andrew Sullivan??? What the hell is Forbes trying to do, make Bob Somerby’s head explode?
former capitalist
Uh, Doug, I don’t think you should be the intended target here.
Tim H.
Figures. Their cutoff point for liberals is around Friedman. Everyone else is a DFH and a commie.
Joey Maloney
Mmmmmm, ahi.
Zifnab
What? No David Brooks? No Brian Williams?
Well, shit, if that’s your litmus test why isn’t William F. Buckley on that list?
Xenos
Forbes is ridiculous vanity project – of, by, and for the plutocracy. I will pay attention to them as soon as they admit that Malcom Forbes, Sr. was gay.
Never mind the rumors, or the parade of cute boys marching up the gangplank to his yacht every friday night — the guy gave a purple motorcycle to Elizabeth Taylor.
At times like this I really miss Spy Magazine.
DougJ
That whole thing was pretty fucking funny.
jenniebee
In other clueless news, The Obamas do what together?
I think it’s safe to say that the New Yorker won’t make a cover out of what that commentator says. At least, I hope they don’t. Also.
h/t Bloggess
nonymouse
did they list the secsual orientation of all those people, or did they just pick a few at random?
Walker
I am amazed that Sullivan is illiciting more disbelief than Hiatt. At least Sullivan was not an active Bush cheerleader. I have no clue how Fred Hiatt got on that list.
Ash Can
"Liberal?" Head, meet desk. These people who insist upon making up and pushing their own crap definitions of words need to get acquainted with my friend, Mr. 2×4-With-a-Nail-Through-the-End.
Sam Simple
Part of the reason the right-wing noise machine has been so success ful is that liberals have allowed them to define us. Andrew Sullivan is about as liberal as I am a plant.
DougJ
@jenniebee
Funny.
TheFountainHead
Shorter Forbes.com: "ZOMG! Luk @ teh Liebural monkees flewing oot uv ours asses!"
TheFountainHead
@jenniebee: Video of the Week
DougJ
@Walker
I like Sullivan better than Hiatt, who is an idiotic douchebag. But Sullivan spends half his fucking blog talking about dead conservative guys I’ve never heard of. And he’s all about J-Critty, albeit in a Catholic rather than evangelical way. He loves him some pre-emptive wars. I could go on and on.
PattyP
No one could have predicted that an article in Forbes would be just completely full of shit.
Punchy
Is this the same Christopher "Drunkass" Hitchens? A liberal?
Hey, in other news, becuase Obama didn’t propose $900 quadrillion in tax cuts and capital gains tax eliminations, Senate Republicans are unwilling to support Obama’s stimulus bill. Apparently they really want that 41 number in the Senate down to about 37 in 2010.
TheFountainHead
You gotta give them points for trying…
Barbar
I loved the comment on the Forbes thread to the effect of "now you know how conservatives feel when liberals pretend that Bush is conservative."
burnspbesq
@Sam Simple:
In Forbes’ world, a conservative who has principles and sticks to them is scarier than an army of DFHs. And they have no word in their vocabulary to describe a person like that. Hence the silliness.
peach flavored shampoo
So I’m reading that the orchestral music at the inauguration was pre-recorded, and I feel totally vindicated. I kept telling everyone around me that it seemed impossible for them to play in such cold weather without any problems with their woodwind instruments and the numbing of their hands.
Turns out I nailed it. They Manilli’d the whole shebang.
Rick Taylor
Andrew Sullivan considers himself to be a conservative. He wrote an article, "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back."
jibeaux
My iTunes does this thing when I plug in the iPod where it says it’s syncing, getting my new nerdy podcasts, etc. But it never actually does unless I go to the pull-down menu and tell it to sync. It just lies to my face instead.
I think that’s Christopher Buckley…WFB died without endorsing Obama, unless I missed a pretty huge story. He also cut out his illegitimate grandson that Chris got on the side, from his estate.
TheFountainHead
Linky linky?
Hawes
From a strictly Poli Sci point of view, those guys are "Liberals". But the Poli Sci "Liberal" is really a moderate to conservative American political figure. Liberals believe in free trade, limited government and civil liberties. What we refer to as "Liberals" in this country are really "Social Democrats". We believe in the social contract, communal solutions to communal problems and civil rights.
It’s yet another example of why listening to Rush Limbaugh makes you stoopud.
Bootlegger
@jenniebee: "fisting"! Now that is some serious affection.
DougJ
@TheFountainHead
Link.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
WTF? No David Broder, the Dean of……. well, something? Methinks someone will be receiving a sharply worded letter.
Reverend Dennis
Proof positive that Forbes has experience neither with liberalism nor with being influential.
Librarian
I just hope that in 2010, and 2012, the Democrats remember, and remind everybody of, the explosion of right-wing hate that is currently going on, including Rush saying that he hopes Obama fails. They should repeat that line ad nauseum if they were smart.
Xenos
Hitchens is no liberal – he is a Trotskyist. Nowadays he has adopted some neocon positions, but the structure of his thinking remains Trotskyist, just with Jihadism replacing Corporatism as the source of evil he can cite in order to justify outrageous state powers.
Just another version of David Horowitz, although a lot smarter and more fun at parties. Or not, maybe.
The whole point of defining liberalism as a center-left ideology was to exclude such bomb-throwers.
Bootlegger
@peach flavored shampoo: They did "play" their instruments, they just weren’t miked so only those nearby could hear how out of tune the frozen strings and reeds were.
Ash Can
@Punchy:
Besides the fact that, according to House Minority Douchebag Eric Cantor, it contains too many benefits for people who, you know, might actually need them.
scarshapedstar
Let us not forget the late great Tim Russert, and his favorite liberal insider, Dick Cheney.
jrg
The only way this list makes any sense at all is if you define "liberal" as "someone Republicans don’t like".
I don’t know why that upsets everyone so much. If Forbes’ definition of "liberal" is true, then the GOP may never win an election again. If you keep calling centrists "liberals", sooner or later the centrists will believe you.
TCG
Everyone must take their marching orders from Arch-Liberals, Comrade Oprah and Fred Hiatt now I guess.
You learn something new every day.
Deborah
I think their list comes down to "liberal = conservative who thinks Palin is an embarrassment to conservatism."
Deborah
Double post, huh?
random asshole
Have you considered the possibility that the article is blatantly making fun of liberals, essentially saying that you can’t actually be liberal and influential. Hence, to fill out any list of this type, you’re left with Christopher Hitchens, whose entire "claim" to liberalism consists of the fact that he’s not a Christian.
Face
TOS hates Apple. I had no idea.
Zifnab
@jibeaux:
Ah. Yes. Thanks for the correction.
Shawn in ShowMe
Who were you expecting, Matt Taibbi and Katrina vanden Heuvel? Forbes was ranking liberals, not Commies!
J Royce
Part of the reason the right-wing noise machine has been so success ful is that liberals have allowed them to define us.?
Exactly.
The Right-wing is just the Ancient Regime in modern clothing. They use Establishment wealth to buy up the commons, including and most importantly the media, and then parade around pretending to be the King Daddies Who Protect You.
It works so damn well because the Regime has had thousands of years of trial-and-error to perfect their foul tactics. What works is declaring yourself on the side of some human common good (like family, country, God) and then creating a (minority) enemy that is supposedly against these things and claiming you will fight them. It’s been done against Indians, blacks, gays, gypsies, Jews, etc., etc. Always the Right picks a minority to demonize, so they can "defeat" them and take power.
Education provides the antidote. The nice way is properly funded public education that teaches history, civics and various cultural arts (ie, liberal arts). The hard way is war and ruin. Historically people choose the hard way, which does, admittedly, work just as well in the very long run. The people sadly alive during said "hard way education" somehow take little solace from this.
It’s the old joke: "if you can’t be a positive role model, then you just have to be a horrible warning."
Thank the Conservatives for making America’s current and coming period one of history’s horrible warnings. If a Conservative ever tries to grab hold of your education system, it would be a service to mankind to beat that Con electorally (easy way) because if you don’t, it will be the hard way. Again.
JL
Oprah made the list because she is black and likes Obama.
Maureen Dowd meows also!
Who edited this crap?
jibeaux
What the hell that actually means is just a headscratcher if you ask me.
The Other Steve
In fairness to Communism, the Soviet Union was never technically Communist. They lost their way from the glorious path under Stalin who tried to implement capitalist concepts and failed.
JGabriel
Walker:
I agree. There were a good number of questionable selections in the Forbes list, but Hiatt was the one that struck me, too, as especially egregious.
4tehlulz
@jibeaux: Apparently Forbes doesn’t know that white women like Oprah too.
Oliver's Neck
Well, see, the problem here is with the term "liberal" which is being abused by both Forbes and, frankly, everyone here. You see, in terms of political theory "liberal" means…
Oh, hey Ash Can. I was just explaining… My, that certainly is a lovely board-with-a-nail-in-it you have there. Wait! But I’m not making it up! I’m getting a degree in poltical theory, see?!
Ouch, my brain!
Reverend Dennis
@jibeaux:
It means that she’s a popular, successful person of color who isn’t a rapper or an athlete.
Rick Taylor
It’s interesting that Paul Krugman tops the list. In a way I agree, he certainly had an influence on me. But before this administration I doubt anyone would have classified him as a liberal; he strongly favored free trade for example. He became a liberal for pointing out Bush was misleading the public on the effects of his tax cuts, and for opposing invading a country that did not currently threaten us. The debate has become so skewed to the right, that "liberal" seems to be a term that means "not entirely insane."
Just Some Fuckhead
The attempts to turn ‘liberal’ into a terrible word continue.. but this line of attack could work.
JL
@Shawn in ShowMe: Katrina might make next years list. The token females were already taken.
shortstop
Apart from the hilarious definition of "liberals": Is Drum influential? Who knew?
Rick Taylor
@Punchy:
This has me baffled. Not that the Republicans would oppose the stimulus bill; that was inevitable. But I don’t understand why the Democrats started by trying to compromise with the Republicans when it was inevitable they would take any such compromise as a starting point to be negotiated further to the right. I’m hoping that Obama has some clever plan that I don’t see because I don’t understand politics very well.
Ash Can
@Oliver’s Neck: LOLZ! Not to worry; I wasn’t including classical terminology in my general description of "crap" definitions. My idea of a "crap" definition is more along the lines of, say, Forbes magazine saying "these people are liberals because they don’t carry pictures of Sarah Palin in their wallets/don’t make over $500k a year/won’t grant me an interview even after I’ve begged all year/write articles that their editors don’t tear to shreds and send back to them with orders to write the damned things over."
Paul L.
@Rick Taylor:
Andrew Sullivan deludes himself.
He also considers himself a Catholic. Even after he was outraged with Benedict became Pope.
Nice to see Rachael Maddow’s twin Ezra Klein made the list.
The Moar You Know
@Ash Can: I used to have one of those, then replaced it with a neat little thing I read about the other day; Mr. 2×4-With-One-End-Wrapped-In-Barbed-Wire. Although Mr. 2×4-With-a-Nail-Through-the-End is more lethal, conservatives seem more scared of Mr. 2×4-With-One-End-Wrapped-In-Barbed-Wire. Perhaps it’s the scarring factor.
John PM
What, no John Cole on the list? If Friedman and Hiatt are liberals, then Cole must be a raging hippie.
BTW, I think just as important is the work "influential." It is because the people identified are "influential" that we are in such deep sh-t.
P.S. – I loved Andrew Sullivan’s book "The Liberal Soul."
Rick Taylor
(posted to wrong thread and unable to delete)
Bootlegger
@J Royce:
I seem to be both.
Scott H
Anyone who isn’t a spittle-flecked reactionary is now a liberal.
JGabriel
Rick Taylor:
There’s also the whole aspect of Krugman calling his book, and his blog, The Conscience of a Liberal.
Whether or not other people would have classified Krugman as a liberal, I don’t know. But apparently he always classified himself as one.
While I agree that the debate has become far too skewed to the right – and in fact think the whole Forbes article is a classic example of refocusing the Overton Window – Krugman probably isn’t the best example to illustrate that thesis.
.
Napoleon
@Rick Taylor:
At least Krugman self identifies as a liberal unlike Sully
Rick Taylor
I wanted to change clever plan to subtle plan, but I couldn’t edit the above fast enough.
jibeaux
@Reverend Dennis:
So why do I picture a totem of Shaft, perched on a golden column, surrounded by bowing supplicants?
Bootlegger
@Paul L.: Why didn’t you make the list Paul?
Tattoosydney
What a load of old shit.
jibeaux
It’s a good thing I didn’t actually go and read the link. That makes even less sense than racial icon.
Bootlegger
@Tattoosydney:
Pretty much sums up the entire Forbes empire.
The Moar You Know
@Paul L.: Weak. Even for you, and that’s saying a lot.
J Royce
It is important to remember that Liberalism is what broke the hold of the Aristocracy (Ancient Regime) and forcibly put the Upper Class out of power. They hate Liberalism with the heat of a thousand suns.
The difficulty the Right has is in hiding their true intentions from the people it plans on re-enslaving while garnering their support. That’s where the Right’s embrace of Religion comes in, and also propaganda, destroying liberal education, enthroning celebrity adulation, and mindless feel-good militarism.
Conservative commoners are just the unwitting tools to reinstitute a ruling power of an elite. And Conservatives have done this again and again to society, because the Right appeals to tribal and primal human traits.
In essence, the Right is an Eddie Haskel character who cozies up to the neighbor’s kids and offers to lock the babysitter in a closet so the kids can eat ice cream and watch teevee all night, when his real goal is to take the silver and get into the booze cabinet. It leaves an awful mess to clean up.
And those kids deserve a spanking —
Joshua Norton
They must mean "Liberal" the way Looneytarians call themselves "Classic Liberals" and Euro wingnuts are called neo-liberal. In other words Republicans who want to smoke dope and get laid.
However, pigs is still pigs.
Oliver's Neck
@Ash Can:
Yeah, I got that. I just wanted to mock my own desire to make a serious post on the "proper" definition of the term. Thanks for providing the ground upon which I could self-mock.
I’m off to the hardware store to get the parts for one of Moar’s version of the "political discussion stick" and then I’ll join you in your noble quest.
comrade rawshark
@Oliver’s Neck:
Public Enemy fan?
Tattoosydney
The first term I think of when I hear Dowd’s name is not "Cat-wit", but it’s pretty close.
Shawn in ShowMe
Forbe’s top 5 Enemy Combatant List
5. Robert Redford
4. Oliver Stone
3. Phil Donahue
2. Howard Zinn
1. Noam Chomsky
Why these scary old men haven’t been sent to Gitmo is beyond me.
thomas
I couldn’t click thru to forbes because I’m a dfh and they would find me out, so I have to know. Did they include David Gregory? The had to because he knows Keith and Rachael. If not it’s a disservice to the radical left at MSNBC.
And Walter Kronkite, did they include Walter??
The stoopid, it hurts.
bayville
Credit to Forbes, they got the Top 2 correct…but then proceeded to roll 23 consecutive snake-eyes.
A near impossible accomplishment.
jhh
All of these have their quirks. But at least they are not pathological like Coulter, Hannity, and Limbaugh.
Hitchens is former left wingnut, who writes well, copiously, and totally unpredictably. He was a dead end defender of the fictitious (actually fraudulent) claims of a Saddam connection to 9/11. Maybe he was drunk, who knows. Likes attention.
Friedman also writes copiously, but not so well (watch those zany metaphors) and leaps–predictably– from one well worn idea to another, making hay out of re-discovering the CW of smarter folks when it is already old hat and repackaging it for corporate types. And so he was a Iraq cake-walker ("suck on this") for quite a few 6 month Friedman units before he discovered the Iraq quagmire. [I find this surprising for someone with a degree in Arabic.] A convert to things green who lives in a >10,000 sq ft house (having a wife who used to be a billionaire helps). A camera hogging self promoter ("buy my book"). See Matt Taibbi for a recent take down.
MoDo is a perpetually dyspeptic critic of all and sundry. W’s nickname for her was apparently "the Asp" and he exiled her out of fear of her pointed tongue (not sure this was a smart move). On good days her quips rise to Mencken level. Unpredictable, and sadly, embittered.
Fred Hiatt is a Responsible Beltway Insider with No Apparent Original Ideas. Reliable supporter of the Bush administration, don’t know if it was real or just takin’ care of business. In any case, I no longer bother reading WaPo editorials. We’ll see if he flip flops for Obama. Seems not to be much of a personal limelighter.
I have a soft spot for Andrew Sullivan, a hyperactive free-thinking gay Brit who is an economic liberal (in the original, Adam Smith, sense). He thinks out loud, writes almost as well as Hitchens in terms of style. (Growing up in one of the realms of HM the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, and Australia helps heaps in that regard). He is open to having his mind changed by reality and the plight of actual, living human beings, which explodes the heads of the wingnuts at NRO. I am however, still sore at him for loudly denouncing as Fifth columnists all the "pre-mature" critics of the Iraq folly, and vilifiying the prescient Paul Krugman (who like Al Gore, is having the last laugh, courtesy of the Nobel committee and real world economic developments). Comfortable in the spotlight, but open and clear about it.
Fareed Zakaria seems to be this year’s Wise Man of the Middle East. Not sure what to think yet. Wonder if he will get a post with the Obamans. At least he has first hand knowledge of the languages and cultures. These days, the US gets its area experts (like its laptops and a majority of its top scientists) by importing them, which is why cutting off immigration would be intellectual, economic, and military suicide. The US is the only country I know where having a foreign accent can be a big plus. (Think Henry Kissinger). As a native Yank with an acquired Aussie 2nd passport and polyglot tendencies, I love it.
The Other Steve
Ok, I looked at the full list and I’m not totally disagreeing.
Some of the names are questionable(Chris Matthews!?), but they do have Josh Marshall, and Markos on there.
priscianus jr
Poor dears. In the face of the Obama storm, they are desperately trying to shore up the sinking unreality-based insider consensus that is the very bulwark of the MSM.
Zifnab
Hiatt is on there because he runs the "liberal" Washington Post editorial section. Paul Krugman tops the list because people at Forbes Magazine actually read him (I’m sorry, but Markos has to be one of the biggest grassroots fund raisers in US History, and you’ve got him pegged at, what?, seven? – how much money does Krugman bring in?),br>
A number of these guys flipped for Obama in the last twelve months and simply happen to have large soapboxes. But where is the leadership of the AARP that spearheaded the fight against Social Security "reform"? Where are the leaders of ACORN and MoveOn – you know, the guys that actually got politicians elected?
This is just a who’s-who of Forbes dinner party invitation recipients.
Martin
You guys do realize that to the folks at Forbes, ‘media’=>’liberal’. They exclude themselves, of course, as does the WSJ, Fox, etc. when they do equally stupid shit, but they just assume as a rule that everyone in print and on teevee and radio is left of Bernie.
I’m surprised that Forbes missed Hannity if they managed Hiatt.
rjv
Liberals are what they say we are. Obey.
DougJ
I guess they must be liberals, then.
itsbenj
well, consider the source. Forbes is a hyper-conservative all around. of course, to people like this, Chris Hitchens is ‘liberal’. because when they say liberal, they mean a special combination of ‘nuts’ and ‘perennially wrong’. which is a bad description of what it means to be politically liberal, but a pretty good description of Hitchens.
its only been 3 days in the Obama administration though, folks, give shit like this a little time. 4 years from now the ‘most influential liberals’ list is bound to be much, much more liberal. the overton window is going to do a great deal of leftward moving in the next few years. after Clinton and Bush, our government is skewed so far right, as well as our national discourse, people barely even have a sense of what a real left-wing viewpoint is. they’ve heard nothing but right-wing caricatures of what this means for pretty much a decade nonstop now.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
R-Jud
In re "cat-wit": I think I understand how that works. My cats hack up gooey hairballs, crap in the houseplants and shred my husband’s sweaters, but still contrive to please me enough that I continue to house and feed them. MoDo hacks up a column every week and still gets paid by the NYT.
Rick Taylor
@JGabriel:
My point wasn’t that Forbes made a mistake by calling Paul Krugman a liberal. I think in this environment, he is one. But that itself is a sign of how things have shifted.
Mike
So Forbes thinks that McCain has lost his influence?
OriGuy
Thinking about the fate of the Ancien Régime makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
Caladan
I guess anyone to the left of the colossal blow hard Steve Forbes is a "Liberal". Yet another reason why the GOP is doomed to electoral exile.
If Sullivan is a Liberal, then I’m the Easter Bunny.
The Raven
All right. I’m going to be really, really generous here.
No, it wasn’t right to put Markos up at the number 10 spot, with David "Who the Hell is David Shipley?" Shipley at number 9. That was just stupid.
Hitchens? If these are posthumous nominations, then sure. He used to be a liberal in the way that, oh, Dennis Miller used to be. Before both of them went totally batshit insane.
Sully? I didn’t know that gay=liberal. You learn something new every day.
MoDo? She’s psycho. Not liberal, psycho.
But FRED HIATT? Aw, c’mon. Just put Dinesh D’Souza on the list too. Go on and add the Pope and John Ashcroft to the list while you’re at it.
Cpl. Cam
I guess at Forbes "liberal" means "anyone who is not a billionare and Oprah."
warren terraj
They didn’t have Olbermann on the list. Olbermann who has higher ratings than Maddow or Matthews. And they didn’t have Colbert or Maher on. Or the CNN liberals or Colmes. Yeah, whatevah???