Mario vs. Donkey Kong

Well, I actually don't want to talk about video games. But for the purposes of this post, let's start by considering the character of these two arch rivals...who first faced off in the seminal arcade game back in the 80's. Sure, Pong and PacMan and Space Invaders preceded these two...but their debut was the moment when video games assumed sympathetic anthropomorphic form. And what classic rivals they were: Donkey Kong, the larger, brutish, unthinking thug who had kidnapped the princess; in opposition, the hero was played by a simple plumber, equipped only with the insistence that wrongs be righted.

We've just been informed about the results of a ranking called The Atlantic 50 (not surprisingly collated by the magazine of the same name). The methodology is threefold: survey 250 Washington insiders on who most influences their thinking; assess the reach of each of these 'voices'; and then grade each for 'webiness', the extent of their reach online and via social networks.

And right at the top, what do you know--there's Mario and Donkey Kong--assuming, as I do, that Paul Krugman of the New York Times slips easily into the role of Mario...and that Rush Limbaugh (from the planet of the same name) is the quintessential Donkey Kong. Picture the 'kidnap victim' here as civil American discourse, and I don't see how you can fail to see the radio radical as DK.

What pleases me is that somehow Krugman comes out on top. If you don't know his work, he is the unapologetically wonkish Princeton economist who wound up writing a column that correctly predicted, among hundreds of lesser alerts, the folly of the Iraq invasion and the collapse of the mortgage markets. By character and accomplishment, he is the prototypical 'pointy headed liberal' that Nixon first started warning about in the 70's. He is the antithesis of Limbaugh, who is nearly always wrong, doesn't care, and if pushed, will concede, "hey, I'm not a journalist--I'm an entertainer".

For Krugman to lead this pack...in the center of what is clearly the most self-centered pocket of America east of Sunset Boulevard...where the hard right exerts influence far beyond its importance in the nation...well, I'm hoping that this says something. Because it may mean that even the people who despise him...also concede Krugman's command of the facts. They need to understand the reason of the matter...if only to prepare their next set of fallacious talking points.

And if we can ever move back to a discourse where the facts matter...well, there may be hope for the princess after all.