NP: The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema

Kevin Drum had a pretty good post about a formal Democratic response to the current GOP leadership, in the style of the Newt Gingrich-led "Contract With America" back in the Clinton administration. Obviously, it's steeped heavily in transparency and accountability, but it got me thinking. Would anyone in a position to actually do anything about it ever implement something like this, verbatim?

Say what you will about the netroots movement, but you can't say it's gained enough real stature to act as a legitimate, decentralized think tank. I suspect that if, say, Nancy Pelosi advanced this particular agenda, critics would spit through their teeth that the Democrats are letting the inmates (i.e., the bloggers) run the asylum, and it would likely stick. And god forbid if proper attribution isn't given to whatever anonymous netizen came up with the idea, or felt that the idea was ripped off from them.

This is the inherent problem with online constituencies everywhere, whether it's netroots or fandom. Nobody outside of the community itself tends to take the community all that seriously. So any good ideas that come out of them have a real risk of being both ignored and effectively blacklisted as having originated with "those online weirdos."

Sure, the blogosphere has made some strides via the immediate gotcha culture, and on the Democratic side, as a fundraising tool. But as attractive as that decentralized think tank notion is, I don't think it's tenable just yet.