Kinky Friedman

Over the past several weeks, I've been seeing posts on many a-list blogs pushing the narrative that "Kinky Friedman is a racist," or at least that "Kinkey is Pat Buchannan in a more colorful garb." Having some familiarity with Friedman as a cultural figure and as such taken some interest in his independent campaign for Governor, I was alarmed to see these posts.

My alarm turned to something more like disappointment and resignation though when I dug a little deeper and figured out this was a pretty poorly constructed negative campaign, trying to swing support to Democratic candidate Chris Bell, and that many of the people I enjoy and respect in the NetRoots were participating.

This coordinated negative push is mis-conceived and will be unproductive.

Living Liberally vs. Politically Correct
One of the better concepts to come out of the NetRoots is the "Living Liberally" meme. The idea here is that a liberal/progressive movement needs both a social foundation for its base, and an attractive/enjoyable culture to grow. This is a keen insight, and it's one of the things that makes the Drinking/Laughing/Screening Liberally family of events so valuable.

What's confusing and distressing to me is why people who understand the value of that can't see how they undermine the same process by participating in this negative campaign against Friedman.