Sam
Smith, 2015 - I was recently described in an otherwise kind article in
Washington’s City Paper as a "political gadfly." This was
neither the first time nor will it be the last. It has happened to me so often
that I was able to tell the writer where the word came from (a fly that bites
and annoys cattle). In fact, it has happened to me so often that I once had a
dinghy called the Gadfly.
Gadflies are
only barely further along in the evolutionary chain of things than maggots and
slugs. They are frequently found resting placidly on a pile of excrement. As
readers well know, I never am at rest sitting on a pile of shit.
Being called
a gadfly is a little like being bitten by one. It’s also, notes Jon Rowe, like
Ralph Nader being called a "self-styled consumer advocate." Where,
Rowe wonders, does one go to get a license to become an properly appointed
consumer advocate? To the Washington
Post Style Section?
People in Washington who call
other people gadflies tend to be either players or people who wish they
were. A player is someone trying to be Assistant Secretary of HUD, someone who
represents a major polluter and claims to practice environmental law, someone
who is paid large sums of money to shout down Eleanor Clift on national TV or
who pays large sums of money to get politicians to wrestle with -- and
ultimately defeat -- their own conscience. Players are annoyed by gadflies
because they won’t play according to the players’ rules. On the other hand,
gadflies don’t clutter up the bureaucracy making dull speeches, and they don’t
create toxic waste sites or corrupt the political system. They tend to eat Mr.
Tyson’s chicken rather than fly on his planes. And at the end of the day, they
have less explaining to do to their children.
Players tend
to be quite insecure which is why they need such an elaborate support system,
including the Washingtonian magazine, the Gridiron Dinner, the Washington
Post Style section and the Diane Rehm Show. Players consider
themselves serious; gadflies not. Russell Baker, a serious man, addressed this
matter best in a column in which he pointed out the difference between being
serious and being solemn. Baker observed that children are almost always
serious, but that they start to lose the trait in adolescence. Washington is the
capital of solemnity and few of its elite are truly serious.
Gadflies, on
the other hand, are usually serious. A gadfly tends to be someone with ideas,
energy and a modicum of talent but who lacks a PR firm, ghostwriter and a
proper flair for networking. A gadfly is someone who actually wants to get
something done, but often can’t -- largely because of all the players in the
way.
EF
Schumacher once said, "We must do what we conceive to be the right thing,
and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be
successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong
thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the
cure."
Gadflies
would agree. They think for themselves. But in Washington thought is something players
purchase, just like they purchase gas, condoms or political access. People who
think are considered part of the service industry with commensurate
compensation and social regard.
When
gadflies feel like using a bovine analogy, they think of themselves as
mavericks -- animals whose only sin has been to wander off from their
colleagues. Mavericks also, as they say in Texas, drink upstream from the herd,
which if you know anything about cattle is not a bad idea.
Take a
run-of-the-mill gadfly such as myself and then some average players -- say the
editorial board the Washington Post -- and compare their records over a
couple of decades. The gadfly approach to freeways, urban policy, Vietnam,
the environment and Bill Clinton will, I think, hold up pretty well. The
problem gadflies face is not that they are irrelevant or wrong but that their
timing is a bit off. The FBI used to categorize members of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade as "premature anti-fascists." Similarly, many gadflies are
just moderates of an age that has not yet arrived.
