"certain concepts—intersectionality, neoliberalism, Gramsci—have become unmoored from their specific referents and now float freely, like wayward blimps, into sentences where they have no other role than to advertise..."
My first full-time job after college was with the Center for American Progress, a policy institute in Washington, D.C. The Center was about a year old when I began working there, at the beginning of 2004. It was known as a “think tank.” I did not know what went on at a think tank, but the words conjured an institution dedicated to “the transformation of genius into practical power,” which Emerson had convinced me was the goal of intellectual life...
My primary role at the Center was to write something called the “Progress Report.” The report was a daily newsletter meant to apply the Center’s “spin” (a word that sounds quaint now) to the day’s political news. Practically speaking, this meant organizing the news into a pithy narrative designed to reinforce certain political lessons...
My colleagues were a mix of idealistic Ivy League graduates, veteran political operatives, public relations aides, academic policy experts and a few people who seemed to have been brought in for their skill at softball (beating Heritage in the Hill league was a high priority)...
What was held to be paramount at the Center, rather, was to “win the narrative” of the daily political news cycle. This required... a certain kind of rhetoric...To be a progressive at the Center for American Progress was to be on the side of reality. It was also, I learned, to believe reality was on one’s side. This was very convenient.
Under Podesta’s successor Neera Tanden, the Center has become one of the most influential policy institutions in Washington, D.C., and a blog the communications team started in my final months there, Think Progress, is, by some measures, the most popular liberal political website in the country.
I had learned at the Center what words to use to communicate with our progressive friends on the Hill, one now can learn a similarly pre-scrubbed terminology for communicating with one’s socialist allies in Crown Heights. I am hardly the first to note how certain concepts—intersectionality, neoliberalism, Gramsci—have become unmoored from their specific referents and now float freely, like wayward blimps, into sentences where they have no other role than to advertise, in big, flashing type, the author’s moral righteousness and commitment.
You can read the whole thing at The Point
