Mother Jones journalist Kevin Drum uses me as punching bag
It's always nice to see your name on the internet. When I heard that Kevin Drum had "responded" to his critics, I went and read the article, since I had sent him a tweet and wanted to see if he addressed my issues:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/04/respond-critics-bernie-rev...
He never responded to my tweet, so I assumed he ignored me. Nope. He used my message to him as a prop for another article about how wonderful and reasonable he is and how terrible Bernie Sanders supporters are.
He doesn't care about student loan debt:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/08/heaviest-college-debt-bur...
He doesn't care that it affects people other than college graduates.
He doesn't care about responding to people on Twitter or motherjones.com or anywhere really. All he wants to do is use people for his pontificating articles. What does that serve other than lining his own wallet?
If you're going to use social media to prop up your failing magazine that has to beg people for money every other day, at least have the good graces to engage with the people there before you use them as a caricature.
Comments
I sent him this email:
Dear Mr. Drum,
You used me for your article without ever engaging with me. You found the first statistic you could to back up your argument and published my name without ever giving me a chance to respond.
Replying to one of your tweets is one of the easiest ways to send you a message. Nobody can see my reply to you on your account unless you choose to engage with me. It is not a license to use me to make money on your website. It might be a semi-public form of communication in that my friends know I wrote it, but until you used me, I was effectively anonymous.
I never claimed to be quoting a statistic. I was talking to you about my experiences and those of my friends, because I wanted you to understand that the issue is more complicated than how you're portraying it. That's the point of social media. It's not a place for you to farm quotes and shame random people.
What you did is legal, I'm sure, but it is dishonest and immoral. How do you excuse this behavior? Do you have any justification for using people like this?
I suspected when I tweeted you that you didn't care about student loans or anyone you can't relate to, and now I feel so even more strongly.
--Kevin M. Kelly
prog - weirdo | dog - woof
Drum's "numbers"
...... rather conveniently hide the difficulties that practically all student borrowers face. He does this knowing fucking damn good and well that the official statistics, especially the unemployment stats, are already goophered to make the employment picture look far better than it actually is. Example: Our 5% official unemployment figure, which is arrived at by an artificially small estimate of the size of the workforce. Real unemployment is more like 6 percent or more one source. And student loan debtors face major underemployment challenges as well.
Mr. Drum also ignores the fact that this country desperately needs its middle-class blue-collar manufacturing and industrial jobs back. We and our children need to be able to make enough per hour to live decently as adults before going to college, with higher education providing advantage after that.
It sounds like Drum is just another Turd Way limousiner hack. And if Mother Jones has fallen to publishing Turd Way limousiner pablum, that would indeed go a long way towards explaining why it's in the financial straits it appears to be in.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
His use of statistics is fucking atrocious
Is Mother Jones the sort of magazine where the actual issues don't matter? All he does is cherry pick.
prog - weirdo | dog - woof
Yeah, Kevin Drum does suck a bag of dicks.
I'm not too familiar w/ Mojo, but I'd like to think that Drum is the only misfit there.
Whatever they pay him, it's too much
Say what you want about Donald Trump, at least he knows how to use Twitter.
prog - weirdo | dog - woof
There is a diary at
the other site about Drum. The diarist bolder the sentence where Drum said that Bernie's campaign or Bernie himself is a con
It's on the wreck list and Hillary's supporters are cheering it and of course Bernie's are calling him a sack of shit.
Of course if that type of diary was written about Hillary and the person writing it bolded the words 'con', I'm pretty sure that the tip jar would be flagged and hidden.
Bernie's supporters are getting banned and timed out but her supporters are not.
I'm still working on not getting banned because I want to be able to rub it in their faces when she sells them out like Obama did.
The message echoes from Gaza back to the US. “Starving people is fine.”
Do I even wanna know?
How is he a con?
All these $27 dollar donations
are going into 'The Sanders Fund'...free haircuts for life!
Or something.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Bernie's promising a revolution!
And there are no barricades or tumbrels. So he's a con artist, says Drum.
Basically, it's the pundit's rejection of what Bernie actually said -- that the revolution in politics will come from us, not from him -- to stuff a straw man.
I'm guessing ('cuz I'd rather not look) that the HRC crowd is pleased, and maybe suggesting we eat cake.
It sounds like Drum is jealous. Another dumb Hillbot.
He wants to lose his head or something? Or maybe he wants to become Robespierre.
Hillbots are pseudo aristocrats, basically people that have the typically douchey attitude of an aristrocrat, w/o the wealth and rank that comes with it.
He's the typical neoliberal from Orange County
I lived there for 4 years and moved back to Oregon when it became clear I would never be able to buy a house within 100 miles of where I worked in Irvine. Blizzard's revenue on World of Warcraft during that time was roughly $12 billion dollars, and they paid minimum wage ($6.75 an hour in Cali at the time) to work in a place where the median income was $100k a year and rents were $1500/mo.
"Nice progressives" like Kevin Drum smile and nod and spout platitudes while millions of people around them are corralled into ever shrinking low income areas. It might as well be segregated, because you won't find any immigrants in Irvine - they've all been priced out of the area. The little people who make his lifestyle possible are treated like scum, they have no chance to improve themselves or their station in life, and he can't understand any of their problems because he never has to see the reality of their lives.
I'm generally not a fan of using privilege as an argument on the internet, but for this guy, I'll make an exception. He needs to check his.
prog - weirdo | dog - woof
I quit Mother Jones
...some time ago when the thieves in their subscription department started calling two issues in print a FULL YEAR.. and demanding I pay up for another year or get nothing.
I chose nothing...
I haven't missed it.
Greed is only slightly worse than ineptitude in my book. One can be changed by force of will and charity with others, but it's so addictive, it seldom is. The other could be rectified in many instances by education and a willingness to cooperate, but people keep putting that fix off. So fuck 'em and may those with either attribute just fuck the hell off.
******************************
Muerte al fascismo. Muerte a la tiranía. colapso total de los que promueven tampoco. A la pared con el unico porciento%
Kevin Drum is an Ahole and a Hellery Shill
From his post on Apr 29.
No, Kevin, you are the "Con artist", a shill parading around as a "journalist".
The truth is that Mother Jones employs several Hellery propaganda whores and Kevin Drum is the worst of them all. MoJo is breathing it's last breaths as a progressive magazine. I have no doubts the magazine is taking $$$ from Hellery directly or from a HRC superPac.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
You're in good company-he called Atrios out last month
There's a list of names I could call that ignorant sell-out, but I don't want to waste my invective on such an easy target....
The Atrios piece:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/everybody-wrong
EPI just released a study you may be interested in...
...find it here:
The Class of 2016 The labor market is still far from ideal for young graduates
I want my two dollars!