Political humor of the day: Crushing the gatekeepers

I'm not getting to the second part of the Iraqi deaths post for a couple days, as I'm working under deadline right now and will be pulling looooong days tippity-tap-typing on the 'puter (my non-pseudonymous alter-ego earns his living writing--and that's all you need to know), but I had to point out this bit of ridiculousness from the ever self-important Kos:

I don't know if I'd previously announced this or not, but I'm currently writing a book for Penguin Books, scheduled for September 2008 publication, on modern day activism.

In short, traditional activism was predicated on influencing the gatekeepers -- getting concessions from management in a labor dispute, or getting editors, producers, or pundits to alter their coverage of an issue or event, or pressuring the government to change course in its actions (like ending the war in Vietnam), and so on. There was never any expectation that the gatekeepers were going anywhere. The best we could do was force a change in their behavior.

Today, we are able to target the gatekeepers directly, working to change their behavior, yes (like with Time and Joe Klein), but also working to eliminate them or, when that's not possible, bypass them. We are building an alternate media, alternate party infrastructure, and alternate institutions of power and influence. As I wrote seemingly a lifetime ago in Crashing the Gate, the gatekeepers were welcome to work with us, get out of our way, or get crushed and rendered irrelevant.

In any case, that's the broad point of the book. Now, I'm looking for examples to fill the book of effective people-powered activism that has done just that -- bypassed the establishment gatekeepers (in media, politics, business, Hollywood, wherever), trampled them, or forced them to play nice. I've got several examples already sketched out, like the rise of Cindy Sheehan (and the fall as well, as a cautionary tale), the Draft Webb movement, the efforts of Mac and Linux fanatics to undermine the Microsoft borg, Energize America, the Lieberman/Lamont race (and "The Kiss" float), the immigration rallies, and so on.

Now leaving aside Kos's ahistoricism (apparently he's never heard of Mario Savio or the direct action tactics of the Wobblies, etc.) and the silliness of his examples (how exactly is running a multimillionaire primary opponent against one of the most warmongering members of the Senate, and losing, an example of this brand new phenomenon of "crushing" the gatekeepers and rendering them irrelevant? And of course large political rallies pressing civil rights issues are also an entirely new experience in American history! And so on.), what I wanted to draw your attention to was the bolded comment above. I can only imagine that what he refers to as Cindy Sheehan's "fall" refers to the shunning of Sheehan by Democratic partisans (not to mention the rhetorically nasty attacks she suffered on the pages of DailyKos itself) for, get this, daring to challenge the seat of Nancy Pelosi because of Pelosi's gatekeeping extraordinaire position that "impeachment is off the table."

I got nothing more here, that just speaks for itself.

I've brought this to the attention of Monsieur IOZ, because his rhetorical scalpel is far more honed than mine for nonsense such as this. I'm hoping he'll address this with his patented brand of scorn, but if he doesn't... Well, just click the link and read through a few postings and you'll get a sense of what he might have said.

And while I'm directing my nonexistent traffic to other bloggers, I'll note that I shamelessly borrowed the "Political humor of the day" label from Eli over at Left I on the News, who should be added to your blog reading schedule, if he's not there already.

[update - I was correct in thinking that IOZ couldn't resist commenting on the "rather extraordinary statement of triumph-by-defeat by the Little Colonel of Donk politics himself."]