Since its launch in 2003, Wonkette.com has become a top Internet destination for left-leaning political junkies with a snarky streak. In the six years since the site first burst upon the scene, Wonkette has made waves for everything from translating the musings of one Peggy Noonan, to introducing the nation to a certain "MILF" from Wasilla, Alaska.
Earlier this week, Wonkette's Managing Editor Ken Layne took a few minutes to chat with OhMyGov! about
his views on government, federal employees, defunct federal agencies,
entertainment, and President Obama's performance to date. Since we receive many opinions from federal employees about the state of our government, we thought it pertinent to balance those views (yes, we do intend to interview a right-leaning blog next) with some from outside federal cubicle land.
Layne has long been a fixture on the blog scene going back to his work on Gawker Media's dearly departed Sploid blog. Recently Layne and the Wonkette crew took home the 2008 Weblog Award for "Best Liberal Blog" - just another trophy for a site that has netted its fair share of Bloggies the past few years.
OMG!: How big is your staff?
KL: Wonkette and our DC entertainment site Wonkabout.com share three writer/editors, two weekly columnists and three interns.
OMG!: What would you say is the mission and editorial spin of Wonkette?
KL: We're here to get the comedy out of the daily political news and transmit all kinds of Washington gossip and outrage.
OMG!: How long has the site been around now?
KL: This is our sixth year of publication, and my fourth year working for the site.
OMG!: Why do you think the site is popular?
KL: We say what political people really think, but never say in public. Also, people want laughs.
OMG!: Have you ever worked in government?
KL: No, but I've covered politics as a journalist for 20+ years, from City Hall to Washington, so I'm very comfortable in that world.
OMG!: What is your greatest frustration with the government today? How about your readers?
KL: I am deeply annoyed by people who spend their lives in government and constantly denigrate the role of government in society. Any kind of hypocrite or phony drives me nuts -- but it's also the fuel for the site.
Our readers are a cynical bunch, in general, but they're also admitting to a lot of Hope at the moment.
OMG!: What is your overall attitude about federal employees? How about your reader's attitudes, judging from comments you receive?
KL: Wonkette's audience is primarily liberal and very well educated. Our readers tend to have advanced degrees, so they aren't your angry pitchfork-waving crowd at a Sarah Palin appearance. Government is not a dirty word.
What seemed to anger our readers was not spending and government size, but how that money was spent, and what we as a nation got out of it. The government was massive during the past eight years, and spending topped all previous records, but it sure didn't do much for people and kids and states and cities.
I am personally tired of seeing America look like some run-down third rate nation, and having to travel abroad to see what the modern world looks like.
OMG!: What would you like to see government do that it's not doing?
KL: Close down NASA and build a new public-private space program based on JPL and the promising private space companies. And actually build those bullet trains funded in the stimulus bill. I would also like a robot housekeeper.
OMG!: Now that we're about six weeks into the new administration, is there anything that has struck you as being a major difference between the way the Obama White House has operated and what we had grown accustomed to from the Bush administration?
This administration is all about doing big things - about an exciting future. At the moment, they have enormous good will on their side, both domestically and around the world. People sense that this is a big era, or it can be. That this is one of those eras that will define the next several generations in this country, as the FDR decade really changed the face of this country.
The Bush Administration promised nothing but a smaller government and instead created a much bigger, meaner, far more expensive and indebted government that seemed openly hostile to nearly every segment of the population except for the extremely wealthy. It delivered very little outside of the Medicare prescription program, which was a deeply flawed yet admirable step toward a modern nation's health care system.
For such a supposedly cynical group, Wonkette's readers seem genuinely excited about what could happen over the next eight years. We are intensely patriotic people, and it's exciting to think the America of the 2010s might be this gleaming high-tech highly-educated world powerhouse again.
OMG!: You won "The Best Liberal Blog" award in the 2008 Weblog Awards. After being identified as a "liberal" blog, do you feel any hesitation about poking fun at Obama or Democrats over policy?
KL: The Democrats, as a party, get no loyalty pledges from us. I've been regularly disappointed by the Democrats since the first presidential election I could vote in (Reagan-Mondale) and right on up to 2004, and I'm sure they'll screw it up again. And while I'm personally rooting for Obama, and agree very much with this administration's stated goals, we take our material wherever we can find it. "Turbo Tax" Geithner is the first real jackass of the administration, but Biden's always good for some idiocy, too. We don't need administration figures to be EVIL to get some laughs from them.
But when it comes to tawdry scandals, Republicans are the masters. I really owe them so much, the way they've just consistently delivered with the racism and the creepy sex stuff and the tacky schemes. Mark Foley, Sarah Palin, David Vitter, Rush Limbaugh, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Jim Bunning, Scooter Libby, Rudy Giuliani, Michele Bachmann ... I love them all. They've made my job so much easier.
OMG!: On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being ultra conservative, and 10 being ultra liberal, how would you rate yourself? How would you rate your readers?
KL: I don't really know, probably somewhere on the center-left. You know, I'm an adult with a small business and investments and a wife and kids and we don't watch television and we sit at the dining room table for dinner every night, so I'm fairly traditionalist in those respects. I've even voted for a few Republicans. I just don't have any particular interest in forcing everybody else to live the same way -- and I much enjoyed my many years of living on cigarettes and cocaine with nothing more than a laptop and a duffel bag to my name.
OMG!: How many West Wing reruns can you watch of the same episode without it getting old?
KL: Never seen it. But I did work at UPI next to the White House when that show was popular, so I do recall some of my former colleagues talking about it.
OMG!: How excited are you to watch HBO's Washingtonienne?
KL: Uhh, that happened during Wonkette's first year, I believe, so I was spared knowing anything about it.
OMG!: What topics generate the most views and comments on Wonkette?
KL: These days, it's the Republican infighting that's making everybody bring a bowl of popcorn to the computer desk.
Last year, it was Palin's craziness -- we actually "discovered" her in 2006, and she was a running gag on Wonkette for the 18 months before she somehow became the GOP veep candidate. We were in Denver covering the DNC when that was announced, and it was hilarious. We were knocked offline for half the day as all of America typed "Sarah Palin naked" into Google and were directed to Wonkette.
OMG!: What is the most memorable federal blunder in your mind? Why that one?
KL: 9/11. In so many ways, that exposed every asleep-at-the-wheel "where's mine?" part of our huge federal government, from the foreign services to regional law enforcement. The reaction was, amazingly, equally bone-headed and disastrous.
OMG!: Does OhMyGov!'s mission of exposing the successes and failures of government resonate with you?
KL: Yes you can! The important thing you're doing is adding the "Best Practices" sort of High Five to good government to the critique of lousy government. Jindal's total failure with that "wahhh government is the problem" televised response to Obama's serious speech to Congress was a glaring example of the moral bankruptcy of just bashing your nation's government as a marketing ploy, rather than making your government better.
OMG!: What do you think the spring holds for the Obama White House? Do you think the shelf life on his popularity is running out as the economic crisis shows no signs of dissipating?
KL: Our current Great Recession may well begin receding in the second half of this year, and I hope the stimulus programs help get us over the hump. As for popularity, the overwhelming majority of Americans want to see him (and America) succeed. He has kept his word so far, and he's just a very positive figure. That means a lot in a crisis.
Remember, people really wanted George W. Bush (and America) to succeed after the 9/11 attacks -- and Bush didn't even win the popular vote. One of the worst faults of the political media is that it's blind to the fact that not many people are political extremists. What most people want is a decent life for themselves and a better life for their kids. Our political discourse is steered by fanatics, which is one reason why so few Americans pay attention to politics.
OMG!: Who in Congress do you despise the most and why?
KL: Senate - David Vitter. House - Michele Bachmann. They are idiot clowns and great embarrassments to their home states.
OMG!: What is your favorite federal agency and why?
KL: Interior, specifically NPS. I love this country's national parks and national monuments and national forests and especially the bastardized national preserve that's in my backyard here in the Mojave Desert. My family camps every year in the alpine meadows of Yosemite, we are often in the western desert and mountain parks, and I deeply appreciate the knowledge that these places will be there forever. These are America's cathedrals, as has been said. Even after decades of abuse at the hands of the Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations, NPS people have done great work. They are heroes.
Maybe Americans will get off their lazy asses and start patronizing our national parks again. It's a lot more fun than sitting on the sofa watching pornography or football and stuffing Pizza Hut down your throat.
OMG!: If you had to eliminate one federal agency, which would it be and why?
NASA. It must be replaced by a new, lean, smart and nimble space agency ready to get companies and people in space, for the long term -- for pleasure, science, mining, energy, and above all for the lifeboats we need to establish off this planet.
OMG!: If you could have overturned one Bush policy while he was in office, what would it have been and why?
KL: Just one?
The torture abomination. We were supposed to be the good guys.
Get our Newsletter!
Click here to sign up and stay informed