The Next Hurrah

One of the bloggers who helped cover the Libby trial is Marcy Wheeler. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy. She posted this at her blog, The Next Hurrah.

But the real reason I dedicated so much time to this story is because I believe it matters. I said I’m an ordinary citizen, but I do bring a particular perspective to the story. For a PhD at the University of Michigan, I studied a literary-journalistic form called the feuilleton. The feuilleton is a kind of conversational essay that appeared in its own section of newspapers, first started in response to Napoleonic censorship. In the two hundred years since, feuilletons often became important when political polarization or government censorship degraded the traditional news into ideological talking points. At such times, the feuilleton served as a place where writers, speaking in ordinary language, could tell of important events in a more meaningful way.

One example I studied was how, during the 1970s in Communist Czechoslovakia, a group of citizens started writing and sharing feuilletons among friends, telling an unofficial version of events, copying them over and passing them on in a form of self-publishing. These citizens would go on to lead a Revolution, the peaceful Velvet Revolution. One of these citizens would even become president.

You see, I came to this story knowing the power of ordinary citizens speaking the truth.

Marcy and others at Firedoglake did a great job, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

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