My cousin is a lobbyist in Washington DC, but he has not yet earned his Gucci shoes. he's working for adult education, part of my family's fine tradition in education. When I met him for the second or third time at this weekend's family reunion, he told me that I should check out Project 21. I have. The reviews are mixed.
It is at this point that I speculate about several different things. The first is why the writers at Project 21 are not as good as I am. The second is how much traffic do they get vis a vis recognition as a website & as a real project. The third is how do people get hooked up into this racket and who approaches whom.
My first instinct is to copy the lot of the writers into my notifications. Spamming is rather crude, and so is telemarketing. But how else are people going to find out certain things? Should we all wait for our family reunions and find out which of our cousins are inside the beltway so that we can hear about more black republicans? I'm not sure of the answers to any of these questions, but that's the advantage of being an individual free of the kind of sponsorship I imagine one gets from Project 21. I get to think independently and admit when I don't know the answer to complicated questions. I also get to ask real questions rather than idiotic rhetorical ones putatively attributable to 'liberals'.
On the way into the site's editorials, I noticed some nice bold fonts about how participants in the Project have been interviewed by Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. I'm not sure how anyone of significant intellect can consider these a plus. It sounds almost like a deal with the devil. While many of us may lament the passing of Fred Friendly and still be sick to death of the self-importance of Cokie Roberts, is there anyone left in the media who have as much sense as Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers or Brian Lamb? Maybe I'm just a snob, but I would at least expect that there were some conservative snobs of my ilk remaining in the national mainstream press. Instead we have these belligerent oafs whose very comportment in an interview marks you ideologically. It's enough to frighten sensible and thoughtful people out of the game.
Perhaps the trick is to simply remain aloof, dignified and articulate on camera and leave the real mental and ethical wras'ling to the blogosphere. We are supposed to be disintermediating anyway. This brings us back to Project 21's website. Way behind the technical times in internet publication, they are. Is it moribund? Hard to say. It's probably not fair to judge the Project based upon its ability to get people onto the air with individuals I find somewhat ridiculous, but I am so tired of and accustomed to the likes of the Freepers, that I have become a bit cynical.
In the meantime, I will try to gather people unto me through this joint publication which serves the purposes and priorities of the Old School, and to my more uninhibited diatribes over at Cobb. I can only hope my cousin tells two friends.
I have to say, however, that I like what I see of the Project so far. It looks as if it definitely has a future. I'm going to try to entangle myself into it.
Mike, what needs to happen is we need to separate conservative blacks from black conservatives. we need to do the same thing with republicans.
the difference is between the noun and the adjective. YOU for example are black. you just so happen to be conservative and republican. there are OTHERS who are conservative and republican. they just so happen to be black. the emphasis is different.
part of this project entails understanding the difference between organizations that are started by and for black people and then take on conservative issues....and organizations that are started by and for conservatives and then take on black issues.
project 21 (cuba gooding used to be a member) like most black conservative organizations, was started through white conservative funding to put a black face on conservative policies. in this way it's much like the fairmont conference and other similar attempts.
you are going to have to start from scratch. i think what we're doing here is a start.
Posted by: Lester Spence at August 25, 2003 07:10 AMi will remain interested in p21 because it appears to be viable as a sort of open source think tank/speaker's bureau for blackfolks who are dissenters from the lifetime democrats, hard afrocentrists and anti-establishment progressives.
again what i am hoping for from the national african american dialog is a comfortable if not leading role for the old school which is independent and taken seriously. listening to the voice of a. phillip randolph this morning reminded me of the bearing of such a representative individual despite the fact that he was purely on the labor side of capitalism's equation.
secondarily, i am hoping for a competent moral weight restored to the republican party with the old school playing a vital role.
i reject the idea that honor is confered upon blackfolks by membership in a conservative cabal of any sort. rather the reverse is the case in a truly representative democracy. so i don't mind at all the appellation of conservative black vs black conservative as you describe. for a short time i accepted the title of 'neocon' back in the first days of thomas sowell.
what has got me in something of a quandary is the matter of floating authentic ideas of the old school through media which is going to be partial and not ready to accept black diversity as it truly exists. this is why i think it is crucial that professionals like yourself lester, are vital to this emergence. we cannot afford to waste the lessons learned in our generation to soundbite oneupmanship.
we also need to be very wary of where the money is coming from and for what purposes. we cannot play the kind of games that david horowitz does. at the same time, we should be prepared to float someone into the mediasphere who can hold their own and remain faithful to a set of readily identifyable principles. someone who is not merely self-serving. somebody with a little bit more soul but not less fight than mcwhorter.
i agree that we are off to a decent enough start, but we could use a few more writers around here. do you have any ideas?
Posted by: Cobb at August 28, 2003 07:41 PMQuickly (just made a comment in response to your last blog and i've got the same constraints):
* I'm thinking an entirely new apparatus is in order and the best that p21 can do is give us ideas as to structure (either positive "let's do it this way" or negative "let's NOT do it this way"). One that deals with the old school in all of its strength and diversity.
* Remember the minor cabal you had on your website some years ago? Me, Darkstar, and a few others? One option is to identify writers who already have blogs and expand the Old School BRand. (we had a conversation about branding too, some years back iirc.) come up with a neat symbol that we could then jettison into the blogosphere.
Posted by: Lester Spence at September 1, 2003 03:25 PM
Mike:
You need to get with Darkstar re: Project 21.
Posted by: P6 at August 25, 2003 05:54 AM