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Wednesday, January 04, 2006
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DOUG BANDOW WANTS MY SYMPATHY And he’s got it, to some extent. Everyone says Bandow, who has lost his Cato Institute and syndicated column gigs because he took Abramoff money for writing pieces of interest to Abramoff’s clients, is a nice guy. He’s an excellent writer too. And in a candid essay in the LA Times, he pleads guilty to having done a stupid thing. He also makes the perfectly credible point that he has always maintained the integrity of his viewpoints. He has never been false to what he believes. He has merely been willing to peddle his beliefs for money. Doesn’t much of Washington punditry, he asks, do something like this? Aren’t we in a very gray zone? Many supposedly "objective" thinkers and "independent" scholar/experts these days have blogs or consulting gigs, or they are starting nonprofit Centers for the Study of …. Who funds their books, speeches or other endeavors? Often it's those with an interest in the outcome of a related debate. The number of folks underwriting the pursuit of pure knowledge can be counted on one hand, if not one finger…. Of course it’s one thing to be a staff writer - on a magazine, at a think tank - and another to represent yourself in a personal newspaper column as an independent voice, when in fact you‘ve got an undisclosed paying sponsor. I don’t think this sort of distinction is all that gray. Another thing. I’d need to know a lot more about Bandow’s house to take this one lying down: But I could never live on what [my freelance writing] paid alone. I affiliated with the Cato Institute, which always encouraged my work. But in the early years my wage there didn't cover my mortgage, let alone anything else. When people who live in UD’s neck of the woods -- insanely affluent Bethesda/Northern Virginia/Northwest DC -- suggest that poverty made them do it, UD gets a little irritated. If Bandow turns out to live in the sort of modest dwelling a writer of his sort typically lives in, fine. But if Bandow’s holed up in a mcmansion, he’s lost my sympathy. Nobody says you get to be rich and a committed political writer at the same time. One final thing - Bandow pretty much represents himself as having lost everything because of his small part in the big Abramoff story. Yet the tagline of his essay tells us that “Doug Bandow’s commentaries and essays will be published in two collections by Town Forum Press in 2006.” |