On the Respectables' Tolerance of Pseudo-Conservatives
Apropos Josh's observation about the recurrent vileness spilling out of the mouth of the Rev. Pat Robertson, I'm repeatedly struck by the benign tolerance practiced by ostensibly standards-soaked conservatives when one of their wild ones goes wild again. I'm thinking of the bland silence, studied indifference or plain bemusement from professed masters of good manners like David Brooks, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, et al., when Ann Coulter, say, or Rush Limbaugh, or (to take a case I mentioned at TPMcafe a few weeks ago) Tucker Carlson, or, sadly, Christopher Hitchens, or David Horowitz writes or says something that isn't arguable or "controversial" but flatly untrue (see Coulter and Horowitz, passim), plain loathsome (Limbaugh on Cindy Sheehan), or murderous (Carlson, above).
Fill in your own examples.
Respectable conservatives bash away at the likes of Michael Moore--sometimes for good reason, as I've written--and even at those whom Moore features on his website. But the wild ones continue to be offered platforms by organizations that are also ritually visited by the likes of Dick Cheney. The slanderers get invited back, and back, to talk shows. Doors do not close to them.
I persist in thinking that there is--there ought to be--such a thing as a serious conservative, meaning someone of Burkean inspiration, concerned with the preservation of values, traditions, institutions, manners. I do not regard "national security" as an ugly euphemism. I do not think all conservatives are folks who've been mugged by inconvenient facts. But too often, from conservatives I persist in thinking should know better, I've encountered the attitude that Limbaugh, Coulter, et al. are, well, sort of adorable. Really what they seem to be saying, or assuming, is: No enemies on the Right.
I remain old-fashioned enough to think that a sense of decency should not be a sometime thing. And that "my movement right or wrong" is not a serious attitude. But much of the right's warp today suggests that the ostensibly serious are perfectly content to live with the wild ones, those who are not at all genuine conservatives but what the great historian Richard Hofstadter, following T. W. Adorno, called "pseudo-conservatives."
Hofstadter, by the way, thought that "the pseudo-conservative political style...[was] one of the long waves of twentieth-century American history and not a momentary mood." He also wrote that "it may already have passed the peak of its influence." He wrote these words in 1954.
Comments (42)
Sure, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter probably attend functions at, or participate in discussions at the same forums that the respectable conservatives, the George Wills or the William Buckleys, do. But, for the most part, aren't they all catering to different audiences?
Is George Will interested at all in the Rush Limbaugh radio audience? Even within the Fox empire, it doesn't seem as if there's any expectation that the people watch O'Reilly scream at people then turn off their TV sets and settle in for a cigar, a brandy and a copy of the Weekly Standard.
It seems like the Republicans have done a very good job of dividing turf and that they don't often cross lines. It's not like George Will shows up as a guest on Limbaugh's show. O'Reilly doesn't encourage people to buy The National Review. The The Nat Review folks probably wouldn't even let Michelle Malkin blog on their Web site.
To an extent, this is true on the left, too, but it doesn't seem so dramatic. I gather that Michael Kinsley's audience isn't the same as Al Franken's or Michael Moore's. Or, even as I type that, I see a flaw. I think there is more overlap. I think people who read The New Republic probably did go see Fahrenheit 9-11.
August 25, 2005 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly, your post touches on one of the mystifying trends in American politics in my opinion--the GOP has innumerable wackos on its side--Rush, Ann Coulter, etc.--but let the Democrats get near Michael Moore and it's an outrage! George Will has a column today recycling this claptrap. One argument, I suppose, is that Democrats don't distance themselves sufficiently from people like Moore, but I disagree...certainly many Democratic electeds have been distancing themselves from Howard Dean. And the GOP has sometimes embraced its extremists...such as when Newt Gingrich made Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of the House freshman class of 1994. But as you say, respectable conservatives just consider them sort of the bad boys in the basement, adorable in their way, but not really relevant to what's going on...certainly not as relevant as MoveOn!
August 25, 2005 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
August 25, 2005 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. I didn't mean that the New Repub philosophy meshes with Moore's, though. More like, the people who go to Moore's movies are probably more likely to read The New Republic than, say, an O'Reilly viewer is likely to be a National Review reader.
But, your point is spot on. The Democrats are more critical of their own than the Republicans are, no doubt.
August 25, 2005 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
One has to think back a few years when Bill Buckley wrote a piece sort of agreeing that Pat Buchannan was an anti-Semite. It was hardly a ringing piece but it was greated as if it was a great act of courage.
From reading the posts here at the Cafe while virtually everyone wants Bush out and the Republicans run from Congress most people here are wedded to their view of the truth and other values. Republicans talk about values but they put winning ahead of most everything else. I think it is why McCain, Hagel and even Snow and Collins always get such applause. They and a few others seem to put something ahead of winning.
August 25, 2005 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
These guys are pretty bad themselves. For reasonableness, and evidence, I would take Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (which I have in DVD, and have studied reasonably closely) over any one of them. The problem is in the bias and dutiful justifying of the lying by the media circus, and in the case of Moore, that includes Gitlin's review of Moore. If I can locate it and my response, I'll post them here.
Just for a heads up -- never mind Krauthammer trying to peddle the Osama wants Kerry for Prez and other canards in 2004, and in general -- here's a recent piece by the 'reasonable' George Will on Cindy Sheehan. Note the use of the epithet 'Democrat Party' -- something mainstream Democrats, like their obedient long-term silence on the flipflop spin (yes there's a value in having secrets to cancel, but they fail at the macro level -- like scabbing), have yet to systematically even try to call the Repugs on. The Democrats are a sorry excuse for a supposedly representative partisan Party, I am sorry; I say that as someone who has long been a registered and voting Democrat.
Here's George Will on Cindy Sheehan (more reasonable than Robertson, perhaps, but less so than Michael Moore by a longshot -- progressives to picky and lying-justifying with progressive voices):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/24/A
R2005082401835.html
<h1>Tone-Deafness Among Democrats</h1><h2>By George F. Will
Thursday, August 25, 2005; Page A19
Thursday, August 25, 2005; Page A19
Sad yet riveting, like a wreck by the side of the road, Cindy Sheehan, a plaything of her own sincerities and other people's opportunisms, has already been largely erased from the national memory by new waves of media fickleness in the service of the public's summer ennui. But before she becomes fully relegated to the role of opening act for more durable luminaries at antiwar rallies, prudent Democrats -- those political snail darters, the emblematic endangered species of American politics -- should consider the possibility that, although she was a burr under the president's saddle for several weeks, she is symptomatic of something that in 2008 could cause the Democratic Party a sixth loss in eight presidential elections. That something is a shrillness unlike anything heard in living memory from a major tendency within a major party.
Many warmhearted and mildly attentive Americans say the president should have invited Sheehan to his kitchen table in Crawford for a cup of coffee and a serving of that low-calorie staple of democratic sentimentality -- "dialogue."
Well.
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Since her first meeting with the president, she has called him a "lying bastard," "filth spewer," "evil maniac," "fuehrer" and the world's "biggest terrorist" who is committing "blatant genocide" and "waging a nuclear war" in Iraq. Even leaving aside her not entirely persuasive contention that someone else concocted the obviously anti-Israel and inferentially anti-Semitic elements of one of her recent e-mails -- elements of a sort nowadays often found woven into ferocious left-wing rhetoric -- it is difficult to imagine how the dialogue would get going.
He: "Cream and sugar?"
She: "Yes, please, filth-spewer."
Do Democrats really want to embrace her variation of the Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11" school of political discourse? Evidently, yes, judging by the attendance of 12 Democratic senators at that movie's D.C. premiere in June 2004, and by the lionizing of Moore at the Democratic Convention -- the ovation, the seating of him with Jimmy Carter.
If liberals think that such flirtations with fanaticism had nothing to do with their 2004 defeat, they probably have nothing to learn from what conservatives did four decades earlier. But for the record:
In the 1960s, just as conservatism was beginning to grow from a fringe tendency into what it has become -- the nation's most potent persuasion -- it was threatened by a boarding party of people not much, if any, loonier than Sheehan. The John Birch Society, whose catechism included the novel tenet that Dwight Eisenhower was an agent of the Kremlin, was not numerous -- its membership probably never numbered more than 100,000 -- but its power to taint all of conservatism was huge, particularly given the media's eagerness to abet the tainting. Responsible conservatives, especially William F. Buckley Jr. and his National Review, repelled the boarders, driving them into the dark cave where today they ferociously guard the secret of their size from a nation no longer curious about it.
MoveOn.org, which claims 3.3 million members and is becoming a tone-setting tail that wags the Democratic Party dog -- a dog that is mostly such tails -- adopted Sheehan during her Crawford demonstration, organizing 1,627 vigils around the country to express solidarity with her. But the Democratic Party, whose democratically elected chairman is Howard ("I Hate the Republicans and Everything They Stand For") Dean, is not ripe for lessons in temperate rhetoric, which may be why the Republican Party has far fewer worries than it deserves.
It is showing signs of becoming an exhausted volcano. Regarding Iraq, it is mistaking truculent asperity and tiresome repetition for Churchillian wartime eloquence. Regarding domestic policy, intellectual anemia has given rise to behavioral patterns not easily distinguished from corruption, as with the energy and transportation bills. Yet the Democratic Party, which by now can hardly remember the far-distant past when it was a volcano not of molten rhetoric but of serious thought, seems preoccupied with the chafing around its neck. The chafing is caused by the leashes firmly gripped and impudently jerked by various groups such as MoveOn.org that insist the party adopt hysteria as a policy by treating the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. as a dire threat to liberty.
If Hillary Clinton has half the political sense her enthusiasts ascribe to her, she must be deeply anxious lest all her ongoing attempts to adopt moderation as her brand will be nullified by the increasing inclination of her party's base to succumb to siren songs sung by the likes of Sheehan. But, then, a rapidly growing portion of the base is not just succumbing to those songs, it is singing them.
georgewill@washpost.com
_____________________________________________________
Without getting too much on Gitlin's case, I would note how many of these themes, including the description of elections without such inconveniences as the 2004 media lockdown is characteristic of 'opposition' voices including Gitlin, not to single him out -- mainstream Democrats and liberals are the perfect foil promoting all the presumptions underlying Will.
And Will is as reasonable as any of the reasonable rightwingers on that list, which is one reason I selected him as an example.
August 25, 2005 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, I want to make clear that I will come forward with a complete discussion of Gitlin's column. I just wanted to supply some background re: Moore and George Will, and myself, before coming back with my longer piece. But first, I have a take-out dinner getting cold. Here's Gitlin's column followed by my response:
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GITLIN ON MICHAEL MOORE -- from the July 1 2004 OpenDemocracy.com column "Our Election Year"
MICHAEL MOORE, ALAS
America’s corroded politics, benighted democracy, scandalous history and pliant media, have created a monster. Todd Gitlin on ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and Michael Moore, “the master demagogue an age of demagoguery made”.
André Gide, when asked in 1905 whom he considered the greatest French poet of the 19th century, is said to have replied: “Victor Hugo, hélas!”
Who is the most compelling, useful filmmaker of the 21st century (so far)? Michael Moore, alas
But now a pause for a moment of conscience. Let intellect have its due. Moore cuts plenty of corners, so how good can that be? Compelling? Useful? Moore specializes in hodgepodge. He jokes his way past the rough edges. He’s neither journalist nor documentarian, for he doesn’t set out to discover what he doesn’t already know. To patronize Michael Moore by calling him useful is to give him a pass for shoddy work, sloppy insinuations, emotional blackmail and all–around demagoguery.
He’s an entertainer (when it suits him) whose brush is so broad, at times, as to coat all evidence and logic with bursts of sensational color. His chief method is the insinuating juxtaposition. Presto, proof by association. Fahrenheit 9/11, his election year release, is like a beer commercial. When you see the gorgeous women drinking the beer, the subterranean layer of your cortex is supposed to think: if I drink, I get. This deep layer is protected by the more deliberate thought: hey, it’s all in good fun. Bush–haters can say, I knew it! Moore can say, I don’t do proofs, I do provocations.
I could go on and on in this vein – some have – with examples. Here are four:
Moore implies that a reason why Bush invaded Afghanistan was to boost UNOCAL’s prospects for building a pipeline there, for Zalmay Khalilzad once consulted for UNOCAL, supporting the Taliban then, and so did Hamid Karzai, and anyway, the Taliban visited the U. S. in March 2001 and Bush made nice, while the Taliban representative made a sexist remark. Stipulated: UNOCAL wanted a pipeline. Say it still does. Does that make UNOCAL a cause of the war? Or the cause? Might there be any others? Moore doesn’t say. “You can see where this is leading,” he says, but he doesn’t have to say it out loud. It’s Conspiracy Lite. He doesn’t attempt to reconcile his sneer at that war with his disdain for the Taliban or with former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke’s sound–bite that the intervention was “slow and small.” He doesn’t have to. Argument isn’t his franchise.
Moore shows shoddy airport security in action and implies (mainly the cute way, with questions) that shaky airport security was intended to amp up American fear in order to sell the Iraq war. So do we want more intrusive security, or less; or is security all shuck–and–jive, a John Ashcroft ploy?
Moore shows Saddam’s pre–war Iraq as a land of cheer, kite–flying and Ferris wheels. Iraq is “a nation that has never attacked us.” (He can’t say the same of Afghanistan, so he doesn’t.) Saddam Hussein – sans WMD, sans al–Qaida collaboration, sans imminent threat, but very much avec torture and tyranny – might just as well have been some mustachio’d clown.
Moore shows Bush and his honchos being made up for television. Can you beat these phonies? But when Moore was boosting Ralph Nader in the 2000 campaign and assuring his public that Tweedlegore = Tweedlebush, was he not made up for the cameras? Was Nader not powdered? If Paul Wolfowitz uses saliva to caress his pompadour into shape, ugh, but what does gross conduct have to do with the neocon view of the world?And then again –
Sorry, but before this vein goes one more inch, conscience must interrupt. Isn’t all the indignation about Michael Moore unseemly, to say the least, from those who’ve been rather restrained about Bush’s long list of deceptions? Then again, Moore makes thunderous propaganda, all right, but it’s our propaganda, at last, and much of it is right. He’s got more in his arsenal than cheap shots. He’s a not–so–secret weapon against the bully propaganda machine called the White House, which sold a war – a war – on delusional grounds. With jokes, outtakes, hissable villains, the mother of a dead American soldier from Flint, Michigan – a woman who could make Donald Rumsfeld weep – and rhetorical questions, and insinuating music, and bomb damage footage, and whatever else it takes, Moore gets people who don’t follow antiwar websites to see Iraqi casualties, usually invisible and countless, not to mention a bereaved mother, at length. Don’t some means justify some ends – specifically, the end of impelling people to wonder about Bush, the Saudis, the facts of the Iraqi expedition, and the class structure of the armed forces?
Look at some of the evidence of Bush’s insularity, cluelessness, and illegitimacy that Moore puts on display:
Bush was catapulted into the White House thanks to the family gift of Florida and the intervention of his party’s favorites on the Supreme Court. You’ve probably heard this before. Still, given the momentousness of those events and the power of the memory hole, the point can’t be made too often.
Moore revels in slapstick shots of Bush, especially on vacation much of 2001, down through September 10, including August 6, when the CIA briefed him that bin Laden wanted to attack inside the United States. On another occasion, Bush intones against terror, then whips out his golf club and crows to the supine press (which would never let the rest of us in on the banter): “Now watch this drive.”
Bush in Florida on 11 September, after hearing about the second plane attack on the World Trade Towers, reads a kids’ story aloud (Moore says it’s a book called “My Pet Goat” but there’s some doubt whether it’s a whole book, if you care) and stares into space for seven minutes. To say the least, it shows Bush is “in over his head,” said the talk show idol–demon Howard Stern. Some things are right even if Howard Stern says so.
Moore brandishes Craig Unger’s argument in House of Bush, House of Saud about Bush I and II ties to the Saudi chiefs (more intimate by far than Saddam’s “ties” to al–Qaida & Co.) Why the special flights for the bin Ladens after 11 September when airspace was closed? Why is the Secret Service protecting the Saudi Embassy (from Michael Moore, yet)? Moore doesn’t have the answers but the questions are well worth asking now that the national journalists have moved on. Moore is not quite cogent on the significance of the Saudi–Bush buddy system – why didn’t Carlyle Group crony James Baker love the Taliban and argue against the Afghanistan war? – but he tells the hitherto clueless or clue–impaired that Bush lived in an oil–soaked bubble of (at best) gullibility most of his life. That’s worth knowing. (But better without Moore’s leading question, “Was [Bush] thinking he needed to think about business relations?”)
Moore shows Bush opposing an independent 9/11 investigating commission – and there’s a fact that’s been shoved down the memory hole.
And Colin Powell said in February 2001 that Saddam was unable to build WMD. There’s another clip worth recycling. (American news organizations haven’t gotten around to it.)
And Bush jokes to a fancy fundraiser: “Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.”
And Moore shows that state authorities in Oregon are short–handed when it comes to antiterrorist staff.
Moore ambushes Congressmen to make the point that their kids aren’t the ones fighting Bush’s war.
Mostly, Moore argues with splices – bang, bang, and another bang. But his best moments are something quite different. As several reviewers have noted, he breaks new ground by hanging around with Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a Flint soldier killed in Iraq, and with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital. You can say it’s war, any war, but when the war’s being antisepticised, exposing some raw flesh and hurt souls can’t be a bad thing. It’s necessary. So give Moore a cheer for this.
And because, in the thick of a rolling political emergency, he’s packing in blue–state crowds and blue–niche–of–red–state crowds and who–knows–what–color–in–purple&ndas h;state crowds. Fahrenheit 9/11 opened as the highest–grossing nonfiction (some would quarrel with the label, but never mind) film of all time. Its average box office take per theatre beat out – good God – Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. According to Fox Sports (!), the auto racer Dale Earnhardt., Jr. – son of the eponymous lionized father – told his pit crew to see Fahrenheit 9/11, saying, hey, it'll be a good bonding experience no matter what your political belief.
Benighted democracy needs the contention that Moore provokes because the newspapers don’t provoke it, television doesn’t, the Democrats didn’t, Congress didn’t, judicious folks didn’t. No one who didn’t get worked up about the administration’s distortions re WMD, al–Qaida, and mushroom clouds has the right to pure rage against Michael Moore. He’s not running for president, after all. (More good news.) It was Moore who put the issue of Bush’s evasion of military service back in play a few months ago, when he called Bush a deserter on a platform with General Wesley Clark. That was overkill – and it filled an enormous hole.
Moore is the master demagogue an age of demagoguery made. He’s an impresario of spectacle and he corrals people who don’t pay attention to news to pay attention to him and his facts, his footage, his badinage, his sarcasm, his factoid detonations, all of it, indiscriminately, smashing up the complacency that watched George Bush seize power in the most powerful nation in history. That’s how America goes now. Still, Moore could be a better version of Moore and still be Moore. He could show us that war kills and Bush is appalling, and yet be more scrupulous. But Moore is the only Moore we have – alas. Moore is the anti–Bush, and damn if we didn’t need one.
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MY RESPONSE (belated, only when the DVD came out):
First a few words by way of introduction. Because I suffer from a severe anxiety disorder -- one that has me on disability -- that I prefer to call hypersensitivity but for which the official name is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) -- going to a movie theater is extremely stressful ; so I waited until Fahrenheit 911 came out on DVD to see it. As a result, my comments are much later than the thick of discourse on the subject, and I'd read some of it before seeing the film with the ability to examine it closely by virtue of the technological wonders of DVD.
After reading Todd Gitlin and others' critiques, including critiques of these critiques that were more sympathetic to the film, I fully expected a kind of 'understandable demagogy', a work of less than complete honesty that one is at least tempted to view in a less hostile light than those distortions in service to imperialism -- much as one accepts Abbie Hoffman when he happily conned or lied as part of his revolutionary shtick. There is after all a difference between the worst of Abbie Hoffman and the best of Dick Morris.
Watching the film with a piece of paper and a pen at my side, I was surprised how little there was to jot down by way of my own criticisms of Moore. Critics had already pointed out the inaccurate or misleading impressions one might draw from this "documentary" -- IN quotes -- that it seemed had gotten some fancy awards in Europe mainly because hating America is so fashionable there. The dates of Saudi flights out of the US after 9/11, although clearly the issues were those illustrated by the Senator speaking on the subject. There was the more valid issue of the roughness of the economics of how large a slice of America the Saudis supposedly own. And there is the statement that Iraq "had never murdered a single American citizen", which I suppose excuses everything on Iraq's part in the previous Gulf War as legitimate in bellum.
But to my surprise this was not a film that required any kinds of tortuous distinctions between 'our demagogy and theirs'. It was necessary to look back at the highbrow critics to find where the demagogy, in the main, lay. Todd Gitlin's is an excellent example. Gitlin criticized the film as being 'like a beer commercial' relying on juxtaposition of images and ideas to convey a point. He might have but didn't add the use of rock music songs to underscore his themes in the context of a documentary. Basically, seeing the film, I could only conclude (as a nonexpert on film) that it was indeed well made and engaging, and crafted to address a mass audience.
The specific issue criticisms made in his "Alas Michael Moore" were, at least somewhat to my surprise, truly contrived. The film did not imply that the gas pipeline issue was a 'reason' or 'cause' of why the US went to war in Afghanistan. Indeed, the precise contrary to such a poorly reasoned conspiracy theory is stated in the film, so all this question of why Bush would be for the Taliban and then for overthrowing the Taliban for the same reason is besides the point. What is presented is a cogent case for the argument, which is indeed implied and not articulated, that the course and nature of how the war was conducted was decisively guided by interests of UNOCAL and the pipeline rather than the paramount concern with nailing Osama bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda. Now I've taken a course with Todd Gitlin and he's a sharp mind. Possibly the problem is in seeing a movie rather than having it in front of you available for review on DVD, or it might be studied obtuseness. But Gitlin, in this situation, like some other critics of the movie, distorts the implicit argument of the film before knocking it down as idiotic.
The same happens on the issue of airport security. The point is not that "shaky airport security was intended to amp up American fear", an accurate quotation of his review at OpenDemocracy. The point is that 9-11 is (I describe it as "Christmas for Tories", myself) a vehicle for the promotion of a wish-list agenda based on the fear of terror, while genuine and legitimate safety issues are not being tended to, in some cases to cater to corporate interests like big Tobacco. Only the alchemy of studied obtuseness could turn this into a supposed exercise of left demagogy.
And the portrayals of Iraq before the war would have to be viewed with similar obtuseness in a vacuum to draw from them an endorsement of Saddam's Iraq, like Communists portraying a happy Soviet Union under Stalin; the point is to underscore ordinary people living their lives in a country halfway around the world about to be attacked and occupied for reasons of the exploitation of 9-11 to engage in a wish-list war. Why interpret something stupid into a series of images that hasn't been necessarily implied in order to have something to knock down, as in the engaging use of the 'powdering' scenes to introduce a number of the main dramatis personae of the Bush Administration?
By way of my own critique, my own main concern was with omission rather than commission, but since someone making a film chooses their material, this is intrinsically a shakier argument. I would have liked to see some reference to chemical plants not being refitted so as not to ruffle the chemical industry, so as not to leave the lighter issue as the only pivot of his argument -- leaving a sense of trivialization. (Of course, the continuity of considering ways individuals might be inconvenienced determined the framing). But the civil liberties issues also seemed oddly trivial, if closer to home -- a scene from Guantanamo or something of that order might have supplemented the movie's depth. I would add that there is much more to be said about oppression within the US also, but more about that some other time. But these speculations certainly can't shut the film out of consideration by the highbrow while allowing for the demagogic dismissal of it as 'sloppy' -- a dismissal that liberal critics like Gitlin credential even as they distinguish themselves mightily from the conservatives who employ it.
I would add that before seeing the film, I could see hypocrisy in Gitlin critiquing Michael Moore from the highbrow perch of the credentialled intellectual -- while his reference to "poor, manic-depressive Abbie [Hoffman]" in Letters to a Young Leftist, using the later emergence of that disorder later in life to discredit views expressed in the 60s was as demagogic in its way as anything he described in Fahrenheit 911. But having myself done a detailed study of the media sources critiqued in The Whole World is Watching in a graduate seminar given by Gitlin, and found his factual descriptions of the material I reviewed to be accurate, although I naturally had critiques of his interpretations (the point of the paper) I had assumed that the movie wasn't being misrepresented by such a media expert. But it was. I could play back the sections in dispute -- sorry, they were portrayed with the same misleading distortion of which he accuses Michael Moore. And I don't claim to be an avid fan of Michael Moore either, never having seen any of his other films.
So what's the upshot? So highbrow critics pigeonhole Fahrenheit 911 unfairly as demagogic -- millions still see it.
But not so fast. The example of JFK, the much maligned docudrama by Oliver Stone systematically miscast as a work of paranoia, if sophisticated paranoia. In this process the very solid case for the fact of the conspiracy behind the assassination (altered from the record mainly by one short gratuitous scene with Donald Sutherland as a kind of 'deep throat' type figure, to lend a sense of larger perpective to the mass of details presented) was being typecast by a chorus of protestating justifiers of the lying. These characterizations as sloppy by the stupidentsia may not prevent mass viewership, but, as in the case of JFK, what I would term the "Oliver Stone syndrome" would influence how they would react to it. Indeed, when told by highbrow critics that this is really sloppy and demagogic, without other intellectuals to step forward and call these critics on their chorus of protestation people's reaction to the film is often if not usually paramatized; just as when told repeatedly that Kerry is a flipflopper without a similar counter -- when as the recent article by Jonathan Chait in the Oct 18 New Republic shows clearly it is indeed mere spin -- a decisive number of people can be thereby induced either not to vote or to vote for Bush. Instead of treating the movie as infotainment, from which one only comes away believing what they went in believing, and certainly not something to ACT on, informed opinion might lead a wider range of people to act upon and take seriously the themes of the film, and to dismiss those bashing it as demagogic as merely vituperating unjustly.
By lending as much support for the bashing of a film like this as possible compatible with the claim to by a progressive not merely engaged in justifying the lying, within the bounds at least of plausibility if not of validity those who protestate too much, holding films like Fahrenheit 911 or JFK up to a special standard of scrutiny, underlying presumptions about such works promoted by the powers that pee are universalized without basis. And it is that universalization that progressives must confront before they will EVER be able to collectively organize to really stand in the way of the (excuse the i-word) imperialism that the film depicts. Replacing Bush with Kerry, if the flipflop template mentioned here and addressed by me at length elsewhere doesn't succeed in its purpose of preventing it, after all isn't seen by anyone opposed to imperialism as a solution, merely a step forward -- merely to where we were before Bush came into office. To really do something requires a movement of people solidary with its own persecuted, not sniping at its own leaders and voices gratuitously, and generally a kind of moral courage at the astroturf roots that will support a successfully sustained struggle. And remember those children in Iraq every time you have a failure of will (if you are even able to recognize it as such) in going against that portion of the agenda assigned or permitted to its progressive opposition.
I would add that, in the case of the flipflop spin, highbrow circles can, at least at this late date, finally and belatedly indulge a recognition of its falsehood, in order to maintain that sense of knowingness, as these circles aren't enough to sway the national election to which spin is designed to manipulate. But when the justifying of the lying is aimed within the progressive community, with a longer time frame, revelation of the distortions come more grudgingly, all the moreso as the complicity of the (at least ostensibly) progressive is so much greater. And the latter it is my belief, is the one that must be addressed effectively before any systematic collective confrontation with the former (mass deception) will really be effective and timely.
August 25, 2005 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
A while back I read an op-ed piece, published in a large newspaper, by some hack who claimed to be a former liberal who was pushed out of the liberal camp (sytraight into the arms of the most repugnant conservatives, of course -- no move to the middle for this guy). What pushed him out, he claimed? The views of Susan Sontag. He went on and on, finding quotations from Sontag, some out of context, and held them up as examples of all left wing thought. Yet who in the hell was Susan Sontag? Politically, did she speak for anyone but herself, and a very few other people? Does she have any more true believers than, say, David Duke?
The right does this all the time -- find some marginal character from the left, and attack them as though they speak for the entire movement. Why doesn't this happen the other way? The left spends more time demonizing each other than they do the conservatives. The DLC are evil, corporatist traitors. Howard Dean is a fringe liberal. Joe Lieberman is a turncoat Republican; "Holy Joe." Why can't that same vitriol be pointed where it should be, where the targets, Robertson and Rush and Scalia and Coulter et al, are so much fatter, so much more rewarding?
August 25, 2005 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
George Will is just the gateway drug for some people. My stepfather started off reading Will, in his syndicated column in the local paper, and the works of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. Then he got a subscription to National Review. Then he started listening to Rush. Now he listens to Rush and G. Gordon Liddy, blares Fox News 24/7 (he wants to make sure my mother can hear it throughout the house) and reads O'Reilly, Coulter, and the work of every other wingnut who comes down the pike. He won't even go to see a movie with my mother anymore because they are all products of the evil left-wing Hollywood establishment. There should be a 12-step program for people like him. "Admit you are powerless over the Right-Wing Media Machine ..."
August 25, 2005 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
My dad told me a story about his Merchant Marine days - he and some others had befriended a gay Purser who worked on the cruise ships. They ran into him at the Union Hall just after he had been of a cruise that sported Noel Coward on the passenger, so they were anxious to question the Purser about the rumors flying around at the time about Coward's sexual preferences. The Purser's response was "Oh, my, he's so queer he made me feel like a longshoreman!"
Someone mentioned Bill Buckley - I agree, it's almost refreshing to read his viewpoints now. I even enjoy Jude Wanniski's rants against neoconservatives. I find myself yearning for more paleoconservatives (I may need psychiatric help). At least some of what they say seems reasonable.
August 25, 2005 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
weed is good stuff. It is an insult to a fine herb to compare it to George Will.
But overall, your critique of Will is on the mark. AMEN!
August 25, 2005 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly, your post touches on one of the mystifying trends in American politics in my opinion--the GOP has innumerable wackos on its side--Rush, Ann Coulter, etc.--but let the Democrats get near Michael Moore and it's an outrage!
It's because as a party we're less "disciplined" as they say, and that's because we are a truly more diverse party.
The vast majority of differences within the right are pretty insubstantial when you really get down to it. They’re mostly white, mostly Christian, mostly hawkish, mostly conservative economically and culturally, etc.
Take Robert’s comments for example. OK, he’s clearly pro-assassination, pro-imperialism. Where does that put him in his party? Well he sets the bar pretty low for assassination, but he was referring to a socialist with oil who the right despises. The right historically endorses assassination, having run programs for that purpose such as Operation CONDOR. So, he’s pretty safe with the right, and to be blunt even with a lot of the middle, who will accept assassination as a last resort for people we really dislike, and to many of them Chavez would qualify or come close. He’ll be chastised a bit for saying so, then completely let of the hook, and often praised behind closed doors.
By comparison, Michael Moore’s views really do alienate portions of the left, because we have a much broader and less disciplined party. Personally I like the issues he’s brought attention to, I’m just not convinced he always does so in a helpful way, in lieu of the numbers of people our party must appeal to.
btw, another example of this are calls for a muti-party, parliamentary style of government, which almost always come from the left, a good indication of our fractiousness.
August 25, 2005 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure it was in poor taste to many folks, but only those of us on the left are truly shocked.
It's no coincidence he makes comments on assassination now, after months of nightly news reports on the legitimized attempts to assassinate Saddam.
The line just gets blurrier and blurrier.
August 25, 2005 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The comparison of the late Susan Sontag to David Duke takes my breath away. David Duke is a racist pig, Susan Sontag was a serious public intellectual & fine writer. You seem to be confusing the caricature of her produced by right-wingers & abetted by lazy journalists with the actual body of her work. You might trouble yourself to understand Sontag's actual ideas before you use her as a marker in an invidious comparison.
August 25, 2005 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
As this discussion bears out, the right are far more tribal than the left and less taken to splitting hairs. The differentiation between Michael Moore liberals and TNR liberals and the other distinctions are baggage that the right seems to have managed to largely avoid. This is why I serially cancelled my subscriptions to TNR and The Nation. Both zines devoted altogether too much content to internecine battles between people who had minor disagreements over fringe issues.
That said, progressives tend to respect objective truth, and when it runs up against ideology, they will concede ground. Hard core conservatives tend not to be burdened with such lofty constraints and will stand ground regardlesss of the facts that are on it in support of ideological goals. When the right has its wagons in a circle, the left tends to be wandering in the tall grass.
August 25, 2005 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I remember that piece correctly, it was written in '92 when Buchanan was running against President Bush in the Republican primary. But the amazing thing about it was that Buckley acknowledged that Buchanan was an anti-semite but still said he would vote for Buchanan anyway.
August 25, 2005 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The point made by the author had nothing to do with the merits of Sontag as a writer or thinker. The point was that Sontag is a nothing in the scheme of Democrat politics, and, the Republicans still attempted to hang the Democrats for her "sins".
August 25, 2005 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
After you've caught your breath, perhaps you will read what I said again. I didn't compare Sontag to Duke, but the degree to which each is used as an example of the mainstream thought of each movement. Each is on the far end of their side's political spectrum (Sontag ended up vary close to Noam Chomsky on a variety of issues, I recall). One is, as you correctly noted, a racist and general nutbag; one is not. Yet I don't recall reading any articles from someone explaining how David Duke (or Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter) drove them away from conservatism.
August 25, 2005 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
From what I've read by him this past year, David Brooks has joined the ranks of the Pseudo Conservatives. He's not so much spewing the venom himself as a front-line apologist for their excesses.
August 25, 2005 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point was that Sontag is, in any realistic sense, not as far left as Duke is far right. As for her being almost like Chomsky, what the hell is wrong with Chomsky? Another brilliant intellectual demonized by the right & disowned by namby-pamby liberals who fear being thought of as actual leftists. Chomsky & Sontag have provided more acute analysis & sharp critique of American imperialism than all of the leaders of the Democratic party over the last thirty years put together. Oh, and let's add Edward Said to the list, another brave intellectual who refused to be silenced by timid conventional wisdom.
I teach Rhetoric. The formulation you made -- Sontag / Duke -- had the effect of leveling the differences between the two. At best, this was sloppy writing; at worst, sloppy thinking.
August 25, 2005 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Every Democrat is not a highbrow and every piece of our media work should not be directed at art house devotees. I enjoyed F9/11 precisely because it was designed, not for intellectuals, but for Joe 6 Pack.
I realize that a lot of Democrats like to parade fullsome and deep words around. I wonder if they realize how boring they are? Moore is amusing while being informative for those who don't read the Nation and TPM.
Moore's movie showed up at just the right time. The last thing we needed was another solomn, self-important progressive with a tin ear for humor. His movie put a view of important issues on the screen that many people hadn't encountered in the rest of the media. That he did it in language and images that people could understand, enjoy and relate to, is to his credit.
Republican critics of the work are merely upset because Moore has the mojo to get people to pay attention. The only response they deserve is a raised eyebrow and a two word reference to their hypocrasy; certainly not serious commentary.
August 25, 2005 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
The right does this all the time -- find some marginal character from the left, and attack them as though they speak for the entire movement.
The left often succumb to the cult of personality and that personality is punished unmercifully for standing out. Years ago, I worked with a right-wing co-worker who said, "The nail that sticks out always gets hammered."
The Republicans not only attack personalities they target Democrats who run tight races or who have enough courage to stand up to them. Daschle is a case in point. Many other Democrats merely attend a Repbulican neutering clinic and forevermore become sock-puppet Republicans within the Democratic party. Most recently, I heard a Democrat praising Reid by saying that, "He's so much better than Daschle."
Why doesn't this happen the other way?
What the Republicans have done is to create think tanks and private consultancy groups who have spent years consolidating and refining dirty tricks into an electoral methodology. It is effective and it works. Unfortunately, Democrats who in many cases pride themselves in being independent thinkers, refuse - in knee-jerk fashion - any attempt to formalize their ideas and political narratives into a compelling political methodology and framework that reinforces others. The imprint of the American loner works subversively against Democrats and independents in self-mutilating ways. Republicans pour gasoline on Democrats who shine too brightly.
For example, the New York Times recently published a magazine piece about 'Framing' arguments and made it sound like a dirty thing. Of course instead of writing it by analyzing the masters of the medium, the Republicans, the article smeared the Democrats as being shady or manipulative when in fact they are simply playing catch-up.
The left spends more time demonizing each other than they do the conservatives.
The left rarely demonize each other.
The DLC are evil, corporatist traitors. Howard Dean is a fringe liberal.
The Democrats who win in red states and in the midwest are often interchangable with their counterparts. It is they first, not liberals who attack their party constituency. Your Howard Dean comment is typical. There is nothing radical or far left about Dean. He represents voting Democrats with courage, accuracy, and energy. This is threatening to Democrats who win elections but have no political connection to the party. They belong to special interests exclusively.
Dean on the other hand reminds the public that Democrats matter and that upsets the special interest payolla scam artists.
Joe Lieberman is a turncoat Republican; "Holy Joe."
There is nothing holy about Joe and that is not why Democrats to a every person I know hate him. Lieberman is largely a free agent whose special interest group is so strong that no Democrat can dislodge him. He is wholly disconnected from CT politics except when there's a photo op with Simmons. Unfortunately Dodd is falling into the same category of smiling face, invisible Democrat.
Lieberman routinely appears on right-wing media trashing Democrats, Democratic values, and Democratic aspirations. "Har, har, har", he and talk radio goons Imus, Fox commentators, Russert, Matthews and others shit on Democrats and Lieberman like a dog finding an irresistable scent rolls his back into the discussion with glee.
Not my idea of a Democrat.
Why can't that same vitriol be pointed where it should be, where the targets, Robertson and Rush and Scalia and Coulter et al, are so much fatter, so much more rewarding?
It is not rewarding, it is reinforcing. It gves Coulter, Carlson, and other richly rewarded -cough- pundits a credibility that doesn't exist in their ideas.
A Rove rule is that a Republican must never mention or credit a Democrat as anything more than a problem, not human, and demented. Republicans are always to be credited, felt sorry for, and sympathized with.
The right must be ignored and boycotted at every instance. When asked about George Will or Coulter one must honestly say, "I never listen to that. Who are they and why are they important. However, I am familiar with Michael Moore, Harry Reid, and so on.
August 25, 2005 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the same week, I heard Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity call President Clinton a "rapist." That sort of talk must be okay with President Bush and Vice President Cheney since they've both been on Limbaugh's show.
I've lapsed into the habit of thinking how the right wing would have eviscerated Clinton or Gore for doing exactly what Bush has done. "Mission Accomplished" springs to mind immediately.
But it's not the p.r. stunts that worry me. From my provincial spot in the world, corruption in Washington is rampant and unchecked. I read that the number of lobbyists has tripled, only Republicans need apply and the starting salary is $300,000. Those lobbyists aren't getting paid to schmooze a few congressmen over lunch.
I guess what's shocking is that the corruption is so routine and hardly remarked about. Everyone seems to know that the drug companies wrote the provision in the Medicare bill prohibiting the government from seeking discounts on the price of drugs and that the Bush administration lied about the bill's true cost. Hundreds of billions out of the taxpayers' pockets and no one blinks.
No one batted an eye when the Justice Dept. unasked, suddenly lowered its claim in the tobacco lawsuit from something like $110 billion to $10 billion. Even the attorneys on both sides were taken by surprise. So who made that call? I'll never know because neither congress or the press will is interested.
Bush's own inspector general in Iraq found that the $9 billion in
cash transferred by the CPA to Iraqis was probably embezzled. $9 billion is an enourmous amount of money and I simply do not believe that the Bush administration lost control of $9 billion.
Remember before 9/11 when the first big tax cuts were enacted? A majority of Americans didn't want them. I think instinctively they knew that running up debt was not a good idea and yet here we are, after 9/11, waging a war on the national credit card.
Here in New York, Governor Pataki was hailed for cutting taxes but since he took office, the state debt has gone from $14 billion in 1990 to $50 billion now. The state is so fiscally unsound that prison operating expenses are being financed with debt. Lord help us if the financial sector takes a downturn because the state budget is dependent on it. Pataki, the "friend of business " governor hasn't developed any new business in 10 years.
It's not just fiscal matterss that concern me. I keep waiting to hear from Republicans who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties and from the ones who believe that church and state should be separate but they all seem to march in lockstep now.
Even though the outlook is gloomy, I am cheered up when I remember the other 48 million commie pinkos who didn't vote for Bush.
August 25, 2005 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
You were so eager to attack a fellow democrat you twisted the comments on Sontag. I do expect as Iraq and the ecomomy falls apat fractions of Republicans will do the same.
August 25, 2005 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I teach Rhetoric. The formulation you made -- Sontag / Duke -- had the effect of leveling the differences between the two. At best, this was sloppy writing; at worst, sloppy thinking.
"I teach rhetoric?" Of all the things I could say here, I'll simply point out the absurd appeal to authority fallacy -- absurd because you yourself are the authority, doubly absurd because it's the internet, and anyone can say they teach what they like.
As for her being almost like Chomsky, what the hell is wrong with Chomsky?
Who said anything was wrong with Chomsky? He's a socialist on the far left of the political spectrum; but there's certainly nothing "wrong" with that, and neither did I say so. That's you second logical fallacy, straw man. I'm going to assume this is kind of a pop quiz in rhetoric you're giving me on the sly -- how many logical fallacies will I catch? Well, I'm quitting here. Hope I passed.
August 25, 2005 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly, your post touches on one of the mystifying trends in American politics in my opinion--the GOP has innumerable wackos on its side--Rush, Ann Coulter, etc.--but let the Democrats get near Michael Moore and it's an outrage! George Will has a column today recycling this claptrap.
George Will is shameless. This column is merely an edited transcript of this same anti-Sheehan screed he delivered on ABC's This Week. Actually I'm trying to get an MP3 version of Will reciting Ginsberg-like, Sheehan's spot-on analysis of Bush. Absolute poetry.
One argument, I suppose, is that Democrats don't distance themselves sufficiently from people like Moore, but I disagree...certainly many Democratic electeds have been distancing themselves from Howard Dean.
If this is true they will lose Democratic votes.
And the GOP has sometimes embraced its extremists...such as when Newt Gingrich made Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of the House freshman class of 1994. But as you say, respectable conservatives just consider them sort of the bad boys in the basement, adorable in their way, but not really relevant to what's going on...certainly not as relevant as MoveOn!
They are not bad boys in the basement. This is the nervous system of the Republican movement that allows ethically challenged creeps like George Will, Tucker Carlsn, and others to pretend to be gentlemen scholars when their intellectual veracity is that of back alley pimp.
Oh, they piss and moan about the loss of civility that they never practiced in clawing, lying, stealing, and cheating their way to the top. The media has become incestuous bedfellows with the Republicans and that is the real story - insiders protecting insiders.
Today the LA Tiimes exposes Time magazine's failure to report pre-election irregularities by Republicans so as not to upset the Republicans. How quaint.
August 25, 2005 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw Farenheit 9-11 in a theater in Palm Springs - most of the audience looked to me like golf-course grannies and grandpas. I thought "this is going to be interesting" as I expected boos, hisses and moans. Was I surprised. The viewers reacted positively to the film, plenting of laughing in the right places, and positive chatter as the theater emptied. So much for my stereotyping.
August 25, 2005 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not an appeal to authority, but a shorthand explanation of why I found the implied comparison particularlly galling. As for straw men, I'll just say there is a fine line between characterizing someone's argument in order to respond to it, which is the essence of argument, and creating a straw man.
August 26, 2005 4:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gets at the heart of something that bothers me about blogistan, especially young blogistan, both left and right. As much as I partake of it, I do often get the sense of being sealed off into unreality, and think many could do with some watching of Jay Leno and the like. If you reject popular culture, refuse to look at it, then you shouldn't be surprised if you fail at democratic politics.
I truly believe most people in America look at Anne Coulter and Katrina van der Heuvel and the guy screaming on the talk radio et. al. as amusing infotainment, the equivalent of professional wrestling for politics--one might as well go all the way back and invoke Commedia dell'Arte and Punch and Judy puppet shows in the town square.
I think mostly what you saw there in that audience is the most commonly held belief of the majority of the American public (not "the bases"): all politicians are crooks and liars. Michael Moore very much plays to that, so they like it. He's the ourt jester character. Doesn't mean they buy his whole story. Some of your audience, when they went into the voting booth, simply ended up voting for the guy that seemed more like a real person. They don't want the Punch and Judy character for president.
This is where I see all the talk about Democrats "getting on message" gets waylaid, mho. I cringe at some of the passionate sloganeering suggestions I read here in the vein of "workers of the world unite" or "just stress BushCo crooks" or "we just have to show how repug the repugs are" and "they" will all see.
I like to think of my bleeding heart liberal greatest generation Mom, who also is very much into infotainment (and suprisingly well-informed from it, mho) voted Dem all her life, and whether she would buy some of these suggestions I read. And I think: hell no, she would see some of it as the equivalent of Bill O'Reilly of the left. She likes Al Franken, not Katrina van der Heuvel. I know she didn't see "451," but I can pretty well guess what she would think of it: one side of the story.
August 26, 2005 4:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I truly believe most people in America look at Anne Coulter and Katrina van der Heuvel and the guy screaming on the talk radio et. al. as amusing infotainment, the equivalent of professional wrestling for politics
My experience has been very different. I've known way too many conservatives who take this stuff all too seriously.
It's not wrestling for these people -- it's Truth.
August 26, 2005 6:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
The other thing that I've heard from the respectable conservatives' lips lately is a variation on this theme:
Roberston made a mistake in calling for Chavez to be "taken out." (Avoiding the "A" word) Notice, no one will say that what he was calling for was immoral, singful, or un-christian.
but then, amazingly:
Monica Crowley and others then say, "Adolph Hitler was also democratically elected...just imagine if someone had 'taken him out' ..." In other words, we agree with Robertson, but we can't say so, and Chavez, who sits on 6,000,000 barrels of oil is equivalent to Hitler, who killed 6,000,000 jews.
The reason that Robertson is still in power, and I do mean in power, is that his groupies totally agree with him! They'll keep sending him $$ (and take a tax deduction for it), and when he gets it -- no taxes to pay since he is a "man of the cloth." What a rip off!
August 26, 2005 6:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
You have to take McCain off your list; he has some kind of deal with Bush & Co, or he would NEVER have endorsed him so thoroughly in the last elections. A war hero who bent over after he and his wife were personally disgustingly insulted by the Bush Mafia...and now getting on the intelligent design train. He has lost all moral authority because he wants to win.
August 26, 2005 7:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Too much drivel to respond to everything, but guess what? Afghanistan did not attack us. Osama BinLadin's henchmen did. They hung out in Afghanistan, we went in after them, and then when we had the brain behind 911 holed up and cornered...WE LET HIM GO TO ATTACK IRAQ.
I guess Bush is proud that he only missed the right country by one letter, since it was Iran that had aided and abetted BinLadin.
Never mind that UN inspectors were on the ground, finding NO WMD's. Never mind that it was Bush who kicked them out. I some day we fight a million WMD's under the sand it doesn't matter, because if Saddam had meant to use them against us, why not during his last stand?
Bush is corrupt, and a terrorist himself.
August 26, 2005 7:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
But cscs, there will always be conservatives, and there will be few conversions of conservative to liberal, they will stay conservative to the grave. Democrats will rarely get their vote. Maximum right now, all conservatives: 1/3 of the country. In my lifetime, I still see less danger now in the types of conservatives we have compared to the Ku Klux Klan sympthathizers of the 1960's, and the later George Wallace fans.
If you are on the left of center, it is important to let them go, not focus on them. Work on the middle, and/or those types of conservatives you can form coalitions with on certain issues.
The polarization into 50/50 us v. them is no good for the country, and it's false, it's not real, in every red state there are plenty of blue people and vice-versa.
The blogosphere's emphasis on the extremes feeds this false reality, and it is a recent one. Only a few years ago, Clinton got a 2/3 job approval rating all through his impeahment.
When one focuses on extremists as an "enemy" one also become a caricature of ridicule to the middle, someone who has also lost all sense of perspective.
For example, all the recent threads here on Pat Robertson. Nobody takes Pat Robertson seriously except his own followers. So why expend so much on fighting him? To a person in the middle, it looks like one's priorities are just as extreme if one takes him so seriously, when that's done one characterizes oneself as an extremist as well.
Another example: I think one of the biggest mistakes the lefty blogosphere did prior to the last election was not to see the moderate side of Bush that many in the general public saw. That's because they were so busy telling one another how he was a warmongering ultra-conservative fundamentalist bastard. They closed their eyes to things like his support of "No hild Left Behind," (federal intervention in education, anathema to most conservatives,) or more personal stuff like his partying daughters running around in New York City, his wife who talks about women's rights in Afghanistan and a wife who tells dirty jokes. He is not seen as a mean Cheney type by the public (and even Cheney was not seen as a mean Cheney type after Edwards did the big boo-boo on his daughter). Bush is seen as a good man of good intent by many, and losing that sense of what most people see by focusing on the extremes really gives one a faulty perspective in a political fight. Even now polls show that they question his competence, not his intent, all the screaming about Dobson and Robertson types as if part and parcel of the Bush administration simply makes one look equally wack.
I really do feel that too much serious attention is paid extreme conservatives by the left. Much more ridicule is warranted, and much less confusion with moderate conservatives is important.
August 26, 2005 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think McCain has been infected with the presidential virus. He has deluded himself that by playing ball with Bush he has some chance of getting the Republican nomination.
August 26, 2005 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Forget Michael Moore, he seems perfectly capable of defending himself. When Max Cleland was attacked why didn't every Democrat go to his defense? When Daschle was blugeoned with being an obstructionist how many Democrats came to his defense? Republicans not only target Democrats, liberals, socialist and anyone else with one brush but they generally defend each other no matter how extreme. Democrats seem much more content to allow each other to swing themselves.
August 26, 2005 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Artappraiser while I think to a large extent you are correct. Americans are so dubious about government and politicians, which alone works to the Republicans benefit, that a lot of these people are like watching a train wreck.
However, without falling for the Cable propaganda, more people by a lot get their news from the three networks, there is no Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley. The NY Times isn't quiet what it is. I have a friend who gets a lot of his news from Fox, he also is about to have is Ph-D, his view of the factually situation in Iraq, in America is just differentt that mine.
That is the great dilemma. The Right insists that we Democrats believe in relativism. But they are creating an alternative set of facts for many Americans.
August 26, 2005 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Daniel on this.
And on this point:
Nobody takes Pat Robertson seriously except his own followers. So why expend so much on fighting him?
The reason why is that President Bush takes him and his followers seriously. They make up a large base of Bush's support.
I don't care as much what Robertson says as the fact that the White House did not come out and renounce it.
And I don't see the moderate side of Bush, but I'll keep looking. I see someone who's ripped apart environmental legislation in favor of corporations. Someone who's foresaken our standing in the world to unilaterally invade another country with facts that were "fixed around the policy."
I think moderates who only look at the "good" side of the Bush Administration have their heads in the sand, and are more in love with an ideology than reality.
August 26, 2005 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans not only target Democrats, liberals, socialist and anyone else with one brush but they generally defend each other no matter how extreme.
Daniel, you are correct but one has to understand that the MSM is largely Republican in outlook and has been imprinted over forty years to diminish Democrats, their policies, and ideas.
Secondly, the Republican dirty tricks included cross-dressing as Democrats. Chris Matthews struts around crowing that he was IN Jimmy Carter's administration! and hoo, boy was that a shitty experience - furthermore the last Democrat worth voting for died 150 years ago.
Or Cokie Roberts who pretends to be a liberal yet seems slurringly drunk with Republican platitudes when it comes to delivering news and opinion. Examine the media - Fox is the tip of an iceburg. (see the TIME INC Plame cover-up here)
Republicans and their ilk defend in passive and aggressive ways. They defend each other in primetime and loudly on talk radio. This is direct and indirect by the setting of their agendas. Often, the Democrat who is invited to participate implicitly corroborates the charges and further smears their own party members.
Like Pavlov's dogs, they fall for it everytime. This has got to stop. Howard Dean never falls for this and he more often than not turns the tables on the SOBs. The Democrats should never let this guy be silenced. We need an army of Dean's kicking elephant butt out there.
The Democrats have lost the media completely, IMO.
I repeat the following suggestions loud and often;
At the grassroots level, democrats need to subscribe their libraries, health clubs and doctor's offices with Democratic, liberal, and third party literature.
Demand liberal cable channels in video, media, and movie form.
COMPLAIN loudly when ANY NEWS station presents a Democratic, progressive, or liberal viewpoint from the lips of someone who is not a liberal, progressive or Democrat. DO not let the Republicans tell Americans what we think. REFUSE TO LOSE.
Finally, (and Frank Rich mentions this much more articulately) FOX is popular because it offers blue collar entertainment that leads into hard-core, absolute, neo-con brainwashing in news and opinion.
Democrats have got to lose the holier than thou, PC horseshit. Entertain the masses with message ala Michael Moore.
August 26, 2005 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad you mentioned popular culture, since it raises the question of how pop culture influences political choices, and to what degree. My bias is that it is a very profound influence.
Thinking back, Adlai Stevenson was the only presidential candidate that pubically attacked the idea of using Madison Avenue advertising firms to design and conduct a political campaign. His reasoning was pretty straight forward - it was unethical and deceptive, and the public deserved to know how a candidate thought as a person. In other words, running for office should be an transparent process.
But Ike didn't agree, and defeated Stevenson, thus setting the stage for advertising's entry into politics as the primary tool of persuasion, replacing arguement. And advertising's WMD is what we call today "Branding." Measured in megatons of social explosiveness, the older technique of touting the virtues of the product was a 10 megaton weapon, and branding a 100 megaton weapon.
Branding operates via redundancy. Historically, the transition in advertising from product virtue to branding wasn't abitrary, and it wasn't a matter of bright advertising executives getting better at what they do. It was a broad cultural shift that reflects changes both in the producers and consumers of advertising.
For the life of me I can't remember the name of the critic who wrote "The theory of Modern Art is a theory of consumption disguised as a theory of production." Was it Steinberg - Kuspit? I can't remember. I like the quote because it challenges the idea that processes like advertising or political campaigns involve one party doing something to another party. Instead it paints the picture of co-participation between speaker and listener. Modern artist, then, were circulating ideas that already existed in culture, rather than inventing stuff out of thin air.
At any rate, through the long redundancy of the product virtue message, we "understand" that message automatically, without even thinking about it. What I'm driving at here, is the automatism itself is what makes popular culture popular. My idea is that "knowing" creates a sense of pleasure in us humans, and that sense of pleasure is stronger when we just have a sense of knowing without really understanding how and why we know something. Thus Lucas could recast mythology in outer space and we loved it because we already knew the story without being aware of how and why we knew it.
Michael Moore is good at this, perhaps expert. My sense is that he comes to this from his guts, rather than from some sort of theoretical framework. But most master's of agitprop are good at manipulating the "already known" and evoking the sense of pleasure in the audience. Now we're talking about "framing issues" since the concept was introduced to us by mass media. I haven't really looked at framing analytically, but my hunch is that it another term that leans towards advertising rather than thinking. I guess I'm a little distressed about it. Is that all there is now? Is thinking completely out of fashion in the broad political arena? What about the question of ethics that Stevenson raised 50 or so years ago?
August 26, 2005 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I generally agree. Having see Farenheit 911 for the life of me I do not know what is so awful about it. Yes, the suggestion that we are in Afghanistan because of Unocal was over the top but hardly the worst thing. Coulter is not saying we New Yorkers would surrender if attacked. lol
We should definately acknowledge that since Spiro Agnew the Republicans have been playing the refs, the MSM. However, if Democrats don't defend Democrats we can't complain that others don't.
August 26, 2005 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I generally agree. Having see Farenheit 911 for the life of me I do not know what is so awful about it.
It is a brilliant film and will stand the test of time. Moore is everyman asking obvious questions and coming to disquieting conclusions.
Republicans attack Moore and Howard Dean so viciously and regularly because they are so effective. Moore is everything George Will, Imus, Tucker Carlson, Krauthammer and the rest can never be - honest intellectuals.
Yes, the suggestion that we are in Afghanistan because of Unocal was over the top but hardly the worst thing.
You can never be too over the top with these creeps. For example, here in the TPMCafe someone speculates with brilliant insight how the Republicans might subvert Social Security through Congressional sleight of hand. Who ever said strict Constitutionalists ever actually believed it applied to themselves?
Coulter is not (sic; I think you meant to say 'now') saying we New Yorkers would surrender if attacked. lol We should definately acknowledge that since Spiro Agnew the Republicans have been playing the refs, the MSM. However, if Democrats don't defend Democrats we can't complain that others don't.
Agreed. But let's not confuse housekeeping with criticism.
Another suggestion I repeat often is that CSPAN televised Democrats should talk about other Democrats and Democratic initiatives and so on. Having to do so will familiarize the public with who we all are and what we're trying to accomplish - important stuff - positive reinforcement of each other. The DLC will have to give to get - hug a liberal.
August 26, 2005 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink