Serendipitous

Two unrelated stories today dovetail quite nicely.  John Aravosis takes issue with some who have apparently criticized him for the awful sin of actually making a tolerable living fighting the good fight for liberals.  His post and the comments, are all worth reading.  Steve Gilliard and Digby both have interesting things to say on the topic as well.  I'm not going to excerpt any of the posts; click through and read them.

Then, at Confined Space (which should be a daily stop for labor news), Jordan Barab notices who crisis manager Chris Lehane works for when he's not working for Democrats:

Chris Lehane, 37, helped the Clinton White House spin the Whitewater investigation, spoke for Vice President Al Gore on the 2000 presidential campaign trail and advised former Gov. Gray Davis during the 2001 energy crisis and 2002 gubernatorial campaign.

Now he's working for KFM Joint Venture, the contractor building the Bay Bridge's new eastern span. The Oakland Tribune has reported welders' accusations that many of the project's welds are defective and that unsafe working conditions existed on the job site. An FBI investigation is under way, and lawmakers are calling for probes of their own.

And it's not just the incipient construction fiasco that Lehane is helping KFM manage, but also the dispute between KFM and former KFM employees alleging unsafe working conditions and manganese poisoning.

Now, I've heard it said many times that a lot of the Democrats' PR, marketing, and advertising types worked for corporations in non-election years.  I took those assertions on faith, but never had it brought home just this way. 

Talented liberals should not have to choose between (a) working for corporations full or part time, instead of working for a better America full time, or (b) living well below the means that their talents would otherwise afford them.  When talented liberals are dependent on large corporations for a good part of their income, they have a hard time advocating fiercely for the people the rest of the time.  And that's how you get the DLC.

The Republicans, of course, have no such conflict.  Republican apparatchiks work for corporate interests 100% of the time, whether they're working for corporations directly or working for them indirectly by working for a Republican organization or at one of the many Republican foundations funded by plentiful corporate donations.

I don't have a clear answer to that structural asymmetry, but certainly those of us who actually care about the people of the country should not criticize leaders like Aravosis, Gilliard and Atrios for making a decent living working full time at liberal advocacy.  Poverty should not be a test for sincerity.

- paperwight