In defense of sleazy lobbyists

I really like what Tina Brown is doing at The Daily Beast. There's no hint of the crowd at the Beast -- it's all Tina's sensibility, her wit and judgment. So I'm thrilled to now be contributing to the new website. My first piece, published today, is a defense of (sleazy) lobbyists -- surely the loneliest and most misunderstood people in America today.

Judging from the comments about In Defense of Sleazy Lobbyists, it seems like not everyone agrees with my defense of K Street. But then, again, most people disagreed with my defense of professional journalists, and it's only now -- as more and more people recognize news is dying -- that my position is becoming more mainstream.

So spare a thought for the lonely lobbyists of K Street. They are the intermediaries par excellence of our representative democracy and thus have become symbolic victims of the radical democratizers, with Detroit CEO's and Wall Street investors, the most hated people in America. Sleazy lobbyists might not be ideal, but disintermediating them doesn't solve the problem of how to establish a more responsible and responsive democratic system. 

Comments

[Vince Williams]

Lord, what fools these mortals be. The noise they make.

I can hardly imagine a more signal honor than being the Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley and the most hated person on the Internet.

It takes real talent to attain such a status in this noisy web, there being much competition for the prize-- though none have pursued it so doggedly as the nominee.

Here we have the musings and provocations of a man (and his daemon) who declares his allegiance to Machiavellian duplicity, and calls his personal blog The Great Seduction, for God's sake, even if it is the title of his book.

Yet one feels a crushing need for the buoyant antioxidants of strong red tea to fight corrosive hormones, those which wreak havoc on the vivant's constitution, when he reads the clever tropes of that wicked Christopher Buckley and other voluble monsters from Tina Brown's “wide Rolodex”.

The Daily Beast is a wonderful name for a website, and the numbers must say something when it turns 2.3 million visitors and 11.4 million page views in its first month.

If those aren't enough eyeballs for a“raucous dinner party” and its distinguished guest list, a veritable bestiary of the eloquent damned-- I expect to see Barry Diller either in Hell or Monte Carlo.

[Vlad Achimescu]

Lobbyists are hated because they only present one side of the story, and it's usually the side of the big companies who fund them and the congressmen. Where is the democracy in that?

For example, there are powerful pro-copyright extension lobbyists (MPAA or RIAA anyone?) and small-scale copyright-reduction lobbyists (QuestionCopyright, the creative commons movement etc.). But since influence is a function of money, guess what Congress will vote for on the next copyright-extension amendment ...

Now how about a referendum? :) That's democratic, not a two-party system where both parties are virtually the same and the senators can be bribed through campaign money? What kind of a democracy is that? Why is money buying laws?