Impotent When Independent

Mark Kleiman makes an important, if depressing, point about the appalling case of Corey Maye: despite the widespread, cross-ideological outrage that the case has elicited throughout the blogosphere, he’s probably not any closer to being spared than he was a few weeks ago. I don’t mean to gainsay the truly terrific work that many bloggers, particularly Radley Balko, have done. But unless some major “mainstream” journalists or political figures pick the case up, I’m not sure what we can do. Dennis the Peasant had related thoughts about the founders of XFL (TM) media and Dan Rather recently:

And that, folks, is the reality of the dismissal of Dan Rather: It wasn’’t about The Power of the Blogosphere (TM). Nor was it about liberal bias in the nation’s newsrooms, sloppy reporting by a geriatric hack or a lack of fact checking by an obsessed and deranged producer. It was about corporate profits and corporate politics. It was about how corporate executives go about their business.

I think that’s right, and you can say the same thing about Trent Lott. Again, I think Atrios and Josh Marshall deserved all of the plaudits they got. But, on the other hand, it’s not as if Lott’s ongoing relations with white supremacy only came to light with his retrospective endorsement of the Dixiecrat ticket; anybody who didn’t know about them didn’t want to know. If Bush wanted Lott as majority leader, he’d still be there. What blogs did is to provide the necessary pretext, and they still needed other media outlets to pick up the story.

And that’s what scares me. We’re dealing here with perhaps the most reactionary state in the country; even if the case is picked up by some broadcast journalists, I’m not sure what leverage can be exercised over Barbour. Remember too that we’re in a country in which the President of the United States just nominated someone who believes that the Fourth Amendment presents no restrictions on the ability of policeman to shoot unarmed pretty thievery suspects in the back of the head (and to the enthusiastic plaudits of most of the conservertarian blogosphere.) It’s hard to see the Mississippi electorate rising up in outrage about an African-American shooting a police officer, even in a case this evidently unjust. But I certainly hope that this can get national attention; bloggers need to to whatever they can.