This is the second in a weekly series of articles, written by John Javna, that will appear on BlogPAC.org, recognizing unsung heroes of the progressive movement — ordinary people who are working tirelessly to make America a better place. If you have suggestions about people who deserve more recognition for their work as progressive activists, please contact us at fighttheright@opendoor.com.
Cliff Schecter
A Progressive Pundit
Think about it: The Right has dozens of hard-ass TV pundits—Buchanan, Coulter, Malkin, and so on. But who do we have? Sure, a few mainstream Democrats show up regularly on talk-TV, but where are the attack-dog progressives—the ones who’ll throw right-wingers’ bullshit right back in their faces? The ones who say what YOU’D want to say?
Well, there’s one, anyway: Cliff Schecter.
Who? Okay, a lot of people haven’t heard of him yet...But that’s going to change. Even Rush Limbaugh is starting to pay attention. On Feb 22, when Schecter went on CNN to talk about "misogyny in hop-hop culture," he steered the conversation to Limbaugh’s "feminazi" fetish. The next morning, Limbaugh was talking about it on his radio show:
"Last night on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" they were talking about hip-hop, the music, the culture, and the lyrics. Somehow my name came up in this discussion. The guest was somebody named Cliff Schecter...Never heard of him...I don't understand. How does [my name] come up in a discussion of hip-hop?"
The answer: Schecter planned it. "The key to doing well on those debate shows," he explains, "is understanding that no matter what the topic is, your opponent is always going to try and turn it into an attack on the left—a moral failing of the left. So you have to go in with a way to preempt them. I knew in advance that attacking Rush would be an effective way to keep my opponent off balance." Limbaugh’s defensive response was simply an unexpected—but welcome—fringe benefit. "It’s one of my proudest moments in politics so far," Cliff laughs.
Schecter has plenty of experience devising debating strategies; he’s been sparring with the Right in public since 2000. "I’m used to being the ‘house progressive’ who fights all the wingnuts," he says. He started with appearances on Fox News; then in 2002 he wrote guest columns for United Press International—a news service owned by the ultra-conservative Moonies.
In 2004, he recalls, "I had a contract with Sinclair Broadcasting to debate conservative pundit Armstrong Williams on TV. We appeared regularly for 6 months; then Williams was nailed for secretly taking money from the government. During that time, Sinclair had something like 60 TV stations in small but significant markets all over the US...and they’re hardcore right-wingers. So I felt like I was performing a service—their viewers were getting so much right-wing slant in their news that at least by arguing with Williams, I could bring a little reality into the reporting."
A Breakthrough
At the time, Schecter was also doing political consulting and writing freelance articles for magazines like the American Prospect and Salon.com. Then in 2005, he started writing Friday columns for Americablog.
He was staying pretty active...but the truth is, no one in the progressive community really noticed him until last September. "I went on MSNBC to debate this Republican drone about the coming elections," he recounts, "and when she insisted that there were more scandals on the Democratic side than the Republican side, it was more than I could take; I just went off. I started listing Republican scandals—it was almost by osmosis-they came flying into my head so fast. I listed 12 or 15 in a row, and she was practically speechless. The next day some progressive bloggers spread the word that I’d beaten the crap out of her on TV, and they posted the spot on YouTube. It just exploded from there. By the time it was all done, the thing had about 125,000 page-views."
The next half-dozen times Schecter was on TV, bloggers spread the word and made his appearance available on YouTube as well. Tens of thousands of progressives logged on to see Cliff stand up for them.
Blogging The Presidency
As effective as he’s been on TV, Schecter’s most influential political work thus far has been The Real McCain, a web site he started in late January with filmmaker Robert Greenwald ("OutFoxed," "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price"). Its purpose: to expose John McCain "for the flip-flopper and panderer that he is."
"I was doing research for a magazine article about McCain last year," Cliff says, "and the more I read about him, the more obvious it became that his whole image—"independent thinker,’‘maverick,’ and so on—is a fraud." So when Robert approached me about collaborating on a web site that would expose McCain’s hypocrisy, I was eager to do it." Schecter supplied the written content; Greenwald supplied the short films. It was a good match: the films have already been watched more than 220,000 times...and the site has garnered extensive media coverage. It’s been in every major blog, plus the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, the Arizona Republic, CNN, and many others. To top it off, Schecter recently signed a contract to write a book on the subject—also called "The Real McCain"—which will be published this summer by Polipoint Press.
"We feel we’ve already had an impact on the presidential debate," Cliff says. "Since the site went up, McCain’s numbers have fallen among independents. He’s attacked us for running a ‘smear campaign’...and frankly, the fact that he’s been forced to respond to the issues we’ve raised, shows that the public’s perception of McCain is changing. At the very least, the media won’t automatically be calling him an "independent" anymore."
On Our Own
The Right wing supports its pundits with "think tank" jobs and other subsidies; progressives, it seems, have to fend for themselves. So it’s been a struggle for Cliff to reconcile the amount of time he spends on progressive politics with his need to make a living.
"What frustrates me," he says, "is that progressives have to largely succeed on their own, often in areas that fall between the cracks—tv punditry, for example, does not pay anything at first (and for most not much ever). The Right grabs these folks in their twenties, and gives them stipends, fellowships, writing perches, television gigs, etc. Look at Dinesh D'Souza. He may be one of the stupidest people to ever put pen to paper...and I am reading last week that he lives in an 8,000 square foot house in the San Diego suburbs. Progressives have a hard time scrounging up a 25K a year stipend."
Schecter has a 4-month-old son now, and there’s plenty of pressure to get a "real" job. But he’s still holding out. In fact, he’s found blogging so addictive that he’s started his own — www.cliffschecter.com. "I’m determined to keep on doing this as long as it’s at all feasible," he says passionately, "because I want to be there to help our country find its moorings again, to help get America back to more rational times. It’s the best thing I can do for my son. We have to put the Bush years behind us, and bury the conservative hoax once and for all."
Cliff’s Tips
At the end of every interview, we ask for a few practical pointers for activists. Here are Schecter’s offerings:
Q: How can progressive writers get a foot in the door with progressive magazines?
A: "I was able to break into the progressive publishing racket by being persistent, building contacts, and frankly, by doing things I really didn't want to do. For example: a short internship for no cash at The Washington Monthly...after earning a masters degree. You can also try calling up writers with bigger names and seeing if they’ll co-author pieces."
Q: How do you build contacts?
A: "By going to conventions like Take Back America, or progressive events like Drinking Liberally as much as possible. It is time-consuming and can be thankless professionally (although you’ll get a great buzz at DL events), but it is the nature of the beast. Of course, today, some of these connections can be made through the blogosphere, which barely existed in 2000/2001, when I was starting on this path. You can also intern for some of these publications, as I did for the Washington Monthly a few days a week in 2000."
Q: How do you hook up with bigger-name people to write with them?
A: "Well, it helps if you’ve got a good idea to start with. For the American Prospect, for example, I had an idea for an article about Democrats targeting the Southwest; this was in 2003, and there wasn’t much written about this yet. So I contacted CAP and Century Foundation Scholar Ruy Teixeira, who’d written some similar things, and had been published in American Prospect often. He agreed to co-author the piece, and it became a major feature in the magazine, pitting us in a debate with Kevin Phillips."
Q: How about some TV tips?
A: "Okay, here are a few simple rules: If you find yourself going on television with a conservative pundit, first of all, topic doesn't matter. Think of how you can steer the topic to an area where they are weak and you are strong. If they interrupt, you do the same right back. Either YOU get your point in or nobody does. Finally, dismiss them out of hand, by laughing at their points, shaking your head, asking them what planet they live on—they are to be afforded NO legitimacy in the eyes of those watching. God knows they haven't earned it."
If you have more questions, you can reach Cliff at cliffschecter@gmail.com and find him most days at www.cliffschecter.com.