Re: Revised Kilkenny and Kilstein Article

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Paul-

Here's a slightly touched-up version of the piece I sent you on Friday; just cleaned it up a bit for style and whatnot.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

Meet the Anti-Power Couple

   History is filled with couples who have been kind enough to illustrate some or another place or time or culture that happens to need illustrating. Something important is expressed by such pairings as that of Antony and Cleopatra, Sid and Nancy, and William F. Buckley and his wife, with each breeding pair giving us some clue about the respective environments in which they thrived or at least set each other on fire.

    Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein are not quite akin to most power couples of the past. They are not all that powerful, for instance, and at any rate they do not seem comfortable even with the idea of power. We ought not expect anything interesting from the two of them in the way of personal exploits - no civil wars, heroin addictions, or journals of increasingly mediocre conservative commentary are likely to emerge from this marriage. They are vegans, for instance.

   The background to their relationship, meanwhile, is insufferably romantic insomuch as that the two of them met when each was poor and unknown and then together became slightly less poor and moderately well-known. "She was starting as a writer and I was failing as a comic and we were both working at a book store," Kilstein recalls. "So we quit, left our closet in NYC, and hit the road." Their self-imposed exile worked out better than self-imposed exiles tend to do. A stand-up comedian, Kilstein now spends quite a bit of time touring internationally, while Kilkenny is among the handful of youngish political journalists to have gained a solid readership by the direct and unorthodox means of the blogosphere. Together, they host Citizen Radio, a weekly public affairs program that regularly features as guests such leftist luminaries as Noam Chomsky (who himself has made three appearances so far). On January 10th, the show will switch to a live format with a studio audience of sorts; the first of these will be conducted at The PIT and will include Janeane Garofalo alongside other, similarly nifty guests. Meanwhile, the couple is in the midst of talks regarding another project of considerably higher visibility. Also, they're very much in love with each other and will probably have a bunch of little babies together at some point.

    What does the accelerating success of this progressive young couple tell us about the here and now and perhaps even the little bit later? Kilstein, whose act draws heavily on politics and religion, has won particular acclaim in Europe, the denizens of which are hungry for reassurance that Americans still understand irony; that he is far better known internationally than he is in the U.S. may probably be explained by this desire for an America that can once again evoke laughter of the intentional sort.

    Kilkenny's increasing prominence as a journalist and commentator is perhaps more telling, and at any rate ought to be reassuring to those worried about the degeneracy of America's opinion-making class. In a manner that would have been impossible fifteen years ago, the 26-year-old writer managed to build her own audience by virtue of ability, a commitment to actually getting the story right, and other such novelties of modern media; she's now a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and True/Slant along with more traditional outlets like The Nation.

   That real journalists with talent are now replacing fake ones with credentials is particularly heartening if one considers how many mediocrities have risen to the top over the past decade or two. On the right, for instance, Kilkenny turns to Peggy Noonan when in need of something to ridicule ("Every column is a hysterical cry for a man to stick a penis in her and make the world right again"). On the left, she looks to Maureen Dowd when in need of a reminder regarding how vapid the commentariat has become ("She's useless, and she's taking up valuable real estate. I've never read an interesting idea in her columns. All she writes is bad puns when she isn't plagiarizing or repeating gossip"). Like her husband, Kilkenny is too nice to make such criticisms on her own and must be prompted to do so by vindictive feature writers. She's quicker to praise those journalists who actually break important stories and provide accurate analysis - people like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now ("fearless and wonderful") and Glenn Greenwald of Salon ("the most morally consistent journalist I've ever read").

   Even if she represents a restorative dynamic in American journalism, Kilkenny remains pessimistic about the uphill battle against such terrible-yet-respected commentators as Thomas Friedman and no-talent reporters like everyone. "The news," she notes, "exists to turn a profit." It used to, anyway.