Ummm... Winners of the Pulitzer Prize are "fringe figures"? That's almost as strange as when a certain ex-President kept talking about how "the Establishment" was against him...

First, winning a prize, or even an election, does not magically make someone part of "the Establishment," unless we take the phrase "the Establishment" simply to mean the latest set of winners of a particular set of prizes, elections, and other contests. Which would be a shame, since it would lose us the other, much more valuable sense of the term: the ongoing network of the particularly well-connected and influential.aaSo do I think it reasonable that a Pulitzer Prize winner might be called a "fringe figure"? Absolutely. Is it possible for a President of the United States to legitimately claim that "the Establishment is against me?" Beyond a doubt. You're thinking of Richard Nixon, of course. But it's also clear that, for instance, most of the Washington, DC "Establishment" -- the ongoing network of social power and influence-brokering -- was, after a brief honeymoon, largely opposed to Bill Clinton. Isn't that silly! Claiming that the "Washington, DC Establishment" is opposed to the guy who's President of the country! But it was true. Clinton wasn't as prone as Nixon to paranoid beardmuttering about it, and furthermore Bill Clinton's response to social rejection, unlike Nixon's, has always been to try even harder to make people like him. But it's not absurd to observe that sometimes the "Establishment" and the ostensible "winners" of the moment are different and distinct entities.aaSecond: you're just wrong. Ted Rall isn't a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He was a finalist in the editorial cartooning category in 1996.

That Lafferty quote -- one of my favorites, it's a perfect statement that deserves to be quoted again and again -- is actually "squalid", not "sordid".

Oops.

First, winning a prize, or even an election, does not magically make someone part of "the Establishment," unless we take the phrase "the Establishment" simply to mean the latest set of winners of a particular set of prizes, elections, and other contests. Which would be a shame, since it would lose us the other, much more valuable sense of the term: the ongoing network of the particularly well-connected and influential.aaUnless one believes that there are some prizes (and some elections) where it is not possible to even be nominated, let alone win, unless one is part of the Establishment (the Point Reyes Light aside). I suggest that Rall, whose primary employer is Chronicle Features -- which is to say, the Hearst combine -- and whose cartoon was pulled from the New York Times to which he is regularly syndicated is an Establishment figure, no matter how you slice it. What is remarkable about America is its ability to co-op almost all forms of dissent into the Establishment, through sheer political pantheism.aaIn re Clinton and Nixon -- again, by the time they gained the presidency they were firmly Establishment figures. Look at the way Clinton was talked up for the 1988 cycle, or his role at the DLC (or that he was already the object of media satire, in the remarkably prescient movie Pass the Ammo). Nixon had been a national office holder sixteen years before he became president.aaNo, what's more interesting is that schisms in the Establishment can be so deep that even contending figures within the Establishment can see themselves as being outside it. Or, yes, everybody runs against Washington, apparently with full sincerity.aaSecondly: Oops. Sorry. I saw an attribution of Rall having won the Pulitzer and didn't double-check. My mistake, and I apologize.