“I will preface this by saying that I am not a Daily Kos reader, although I am aware of its presence. I am, however, a progressive liberal, which will probably mark me as a target, but so be it.
The subtitle of "Taking on the System" is "Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era." While Moulitsas does provide some bullet points on what one should or shouldn't do in order to be a proactive citizen in the United States, he limits these "rules" to the start of each chapter, as a sort of here's-what-you-want-to-do brief guide. He then uses examples of situations, both political (e.g. campaigns) and cultural (e.g. Fiona Apple's "Exquisite Machine" album debacle), which demonstrate successfully, or unsuccessfully as the case sometimes is, the "rule" in question.
This is what actually made the book interesting for me. I was thoroughly interested in reading Moulitsas' take on recent political and cultural history. While liberally slanted, he does toss in a positive conservative example here and there, making the book a bit more balanced than I think some more liberal Kos fans might appreciate.
I do have to wonder where this book will be five, ten years from now. Will it just be some forgotten manifesto that has no bearing on the future, or will it simply be used by the occasional cultural scholar as they research how people thought about their era. My feeling is that "Taking on the System" will be used in the latter form. Regardless, I found the book interesting and entertaining in the current era.”
missed wrote this review Friday, December 12 2008.
(
reply |
permalink )
