A Blog About Making Culture
changing the channel
January 4, 2003
It seems that the conventional wisdom right now is that liberals need an answer to the rising success of conservative media pundits, in order to get their message out. I thought about it a bit, and all false modesty aside, I'd be perfect for the job. I'm quick with a comeback, an unabashed liberal, and I'm neither white nor christian in one of the few situations where not having those traits might actually help.
But I'd never do it, and it's not one of those "anybody who's qualified wouldn't want the gig" situations. The reality is that liberals don't need an on-air media pundit. Because that sort of punditry is a dying idea, but more importantly, because we're winning.
I suppose you'll need examples. Well, I hate to go to the well one more time, but let's look at Trent Lott's case. Liberals have altered the expectations for politicians to the point where an association with racist ideas is just plain unacceptable for people in public office. This is an achievement that's been accomplished in just the last 30 or 40 years. A common and pervasive evil has been dramatically eviscerated despite having been practiced by many people who were both powerful and wealthy. Liberals won.
The history of the change serves as good background for the many other accomplishments of the past few decades. Liberals were the first group in white America to wake up and see the evils of segregation and racism. At that point, the liberals in charge of the Democratic party had the good sense and moral integrity (in politicians!) to tell members of their party to either behave in a moral way or to leave the party. That schism was the event that pushed pro-racism politicians into a Republican party that did not require them to publicly repudiate their racism.
Sure, there are counterexamples on both sides, but the reality is that it was liberals who took the lead in civil rights for blacks. Just as they did in the issue of equal rights for women. Just as they did in fighting the forces of anti-semitism that went all the way up to the White House. Just as they took the heat for defending civil liberties that conservatives are only beginning to appreciate. Just as they do now in the issue of civil rights for gay people. When it comes to the basic moral issues of how we treat our fellow Americans, liberals have been the ones on the side of right.
Notice I don't say Democrats. Because it's not an intrinsically Democratic thing, it's just something intrinsic to people who aren't conservative. Conservatives think that solutions to today's problems lie in clinging to the status quo, or even in trying to regress to a mythical past. Listen carefully for words like "tradition" and "legacy". They're used in an attempt to evoke continuity with the positive parts of our history, but they're referring to specific period of time in the past. Those time periods they're talking about? Well, those are from before my family came to this country and began contributing all that it has. So hoping to go to a time in the past would preclude me being part of this country. And I'm a good American. So aspiring to live in an Anil-free past is just plain unamerican, ain't it?
But more to the point, look at the flailing that comes from the triumph of liberal ideals, once more. Conservatives can't assail the inarguable moral certainty of racism's evil, so they attack the methods or intentions of those who seek to root out racism. It's a plot! As if good results that come from machiavellian political machinations would somehow cease to be good results. Or better, the Republican leader isn't a Republican, he's a Democrat! It'd be funny if it weren't pathetic.
Our ideas are winning, you see. When Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya in 1986, he didn't make sure to urge Americans to have tolerance for people of Libyan descent living among us. But a scant 15 years later, President Bush made repeated calls for tolerance towards muslims in this country, not just out of what I see as his genuine motivation to do what was right, but also because the tenor of public discourse has changed that rapidly due to the tolerant influence of liberal philosophy. Gay marriage is still a big point of debate, but the presence of openly gay characters in mass media has changed in the same decade and a half from being scandalous to being clichéd. It will be the burden of the next generation to hold the today's conservatives to their record of homophobia, but it's only a matter of time until that happens.
George W. Bush put out a message from the White House in honor of Kwanzaa. We're winning.
It's probably that sense of a slow, inexorable loss that makes conservatives terrified, causing them to respond with a desperate clinging to the past that only serves to further doom their cause. The best solutions, of course, lie in the future.
The future is what America's about. This is not a country about Traditions. Slavery was a tradition. Servitude to patrilineal monarchs was a tradition. The closest thing America has to a tradition is the phrase, the philosophy, "Fuck You". And who do we say it to? To our parents. To the cops. To our teachers. To all the voices of conservativism. And don't misunderstand, conservativism isn't just Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, who want to make money pushing their agenda. It's John Ashcroft and Jack Valenti, who truly want to take away your freedoms. Valenti's a Democrat, by the way. Conservative evil pops up everywhere.
The only loss of freedom that conservative people complain about while looking backwards is that they pretend their speech is limited by "political correctness". I'd say we're all a lot freer if it's considered rude or impolite to call a person by an ethnic slur, or to use a demeaning term to refer to a handicapped person. Those who feel restricted by societal demands to be considerate are poor arbiters of what exactly constitutes liberty.
So let the conservatives look to the past. It'll be their undoing. Right now the status quo is to pontificate on basic cable about various issues in sound-bite sized assertions, unburdened by the responsibility of accuracy, with rewards for combatativeness. And they are truly good at it. But I'm not hoping for increased participation in the realm of politics driven by television. I don't see that political talk shows have improved the tenor or content of discourse about policy in this country, nor have they resulted in an improvement in legislation or the execution and enforcement of laws already on the books.
The conservatives, then, will be ceded the media of the past; It's appropriate for their messages, and they own those venues anyway. Bleating in a shrill, strident tone about the same few points every day certainly isn't going to increase their influence. Making pronouncements in an echo chamber tends to have fairly negative effects, and we'll certainly see the audience for these conservative commentators peak soon, and begin their inevitable declines shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we can move to a more nuanced, intelligent form of discussion. Let's assume that we don't know the best answers yet, but that we'll figure them out. Let's use a medium that's not limited by soundbites, and counter the volume of the voices of the past with the resonance and depth of the voices of tomorrow.
Trying to promote a political ideology on television requires making the assumption of a "mass audience". But there's no such thing. There are only individual people. And if you want to remind them of what they already know, what they've already begun to accept, that an open mind and a willingness to move on from the mistakes and ignorance of the past is the only possible path to a solution for the problems we face, then they need to be addressed as the individuals they are.
So those blowhards on TV can try to preach to a million people who are already converted to the cause of moving backwards. I'm gonna just try to talk to a few dozen about what things will be like in the future. I'm betting a few thousand other people will do the same thing as me. And to those who know the beauty and inevitability of a message of tolerance and open-mindedness, who have a focus on the possibilities of the future, I'd ask you not to worry about the ratings on a TV show. Just change the channel.
Update: Michael Sippey has linked to a very similar discussion by Greg Beato, with more of a focus on the economics of it, and with the (incorrect, imo) idea that it be organized by/for the Democratic party.
Previously: bogus blabbing about AOL blogging
Next: lack of ambition
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… yet another sly ploy to avoid being the “Liberal Ramesh Ponnuru”. For those too “smart” to be on teevee, I have two words: Adlai Stevenson. (The man trusted voting-Americans to be smart and vote for him. Instead they voted for the gun toting Eisenhower. Twice.)
Steven Kaye
Overall, I agree with your argument except for the notion of giving up on “old media.” The population’s aging - old media matters.
I’m also a bit leery of equating “conservative” with “everything evil” - it leaves a bad taste, like Postrel’s “dynamists” and “statists,” or “neophobes.” Or “idiotarians,” for that matter. Some things are worth conserving, after all, and I’d rather see a discussion of what those things are than politics as usual. Michael Moorcock considers himself a conservative, for crying out loud.
PLC
By your apparent definition, the biggest conservatives in the country are the members of the Earth Liberation Front and other environmentalists and, apparently, I’m a huge raging liberal even though I’ve never voted for anyone but Republicans and Libertarians.
How odd.
zach
Great entry. I think the whole political system in the US needs redefining in way where there is hard core integrity and dedication. What happen to that? I want the people in office improving the country’s stability, economic climate, etc. Not their reputations and political gain.
The conservatives do have the tendency of looking in the past and sticking to our country’s so called “traditions.” Like watching TV and movies on Saturdays night right? I would hope both conservatives and liberals have enough common sense to use the past as a learning tool and not as an excuse of tradition.
In terms of seeing the future I generally think the more liberal minded thinkers will be the movers and the shakers. Conservatives will lay back and be the judges relying on, yes, the books and the past. So what. If both sides create a balance and are able to move forward, so be it. We just need integrity man! But this starts with us people having integrity. After all, we the people, are ultimately responsible for selecting the people in office. Oh, and kill your TV definitely. Except for the food channel.
Dan Hartung
Virginia Postrel’s book is about the differences between dynamists and stasists, that is, those in favor of change and innovation vs. those in favor of the status quo. It’s actually orthogonal to the libertarian epithet “statist”, which is those in favor of using the power of the state, and I don’t see how it could leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone … unless they’re a dyed-in-the-wool stasist. I find that “dynamist” ideas can come from both sides of the aisle. Remember, libertarians are not just a special kind of conservative! Much conservatism looks like stasism — or at worst, statism — to libertarians.
And I’m not sure that traditional liberalism is, in fact, winning, except tactically. Liberalism has been associated with progress and development for much of its history, but it doesn’t have an exclusive lock on those concepts, and “liberal” ideas like communism have proven to be expensive, murderous failures, just as much as “conservative” ideas like fascism. I don’t disagree that, as in your example, we’ve made great progress on the question of racism, but I actually see traditional liberalism as posing a problem, in its own way, in moving beyond this issue. It’s not as bad as the charges of Republicans that Democrats engage in class or racial division, but liberals really ought to acknowledge that the rhetoric of a generation ago may no longer be apropos.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that liberals have lost their populism. They no longer know how to relate to the people they claim to represent, and the vast middle has reacted with scorn — and often given its votes to the other side. To take my simple broad example, Democrats forgot that people don’t like paying taxes. The more that Democrats propose tax-and-spend policies, the less popular they are going to be. Even someone who likes a program in principle may not like the money coming out of his paycheck. Fortunately we went through a restructuring of the party and we had a president and congress who worked toward a surplus. But it’s still a major problem for the party. They have to realize that we’re better off with social programs we can afford, and that not every problem requires a big-gov solution. Until they fix this problem, the message is going to be returned undeliverable, no matter who delivers it.
adampsyche
If you don’t want the job, can we draft you?
Steven Kaye
Doh! Teach me to post before previewing. My problem with “dynamists vs. stasists” as I’ve seen it is that it’s expressed as you seem to be doing:
“Dynamists” - radical innovators that are the source of everything good, if they’re not hindered by pesky bureaucracy
“Stasists” - stick-in-the-muds who reflexively fear change and want control, complete control
Now Postrel doesn’t advocate no rules whatsoever, but the bare minimum necessary. That nuance gets lost in online discussions of dynamism versus statism, though. Just like discussion of “neophilia” versus “neophobia.” And that headlong rush from one absolutist dichotomy to another just as stifling is what leaves the bad taste in my mouth.
Steven Kaye
And I did it again. Stasism stasism stasism.
Anonymous
I fear I live in the wrong place. While this may seem to be a non-sequitur, I have a point. My home is populated by idiots who call themselves conservatives when they really mean (although they don’t understand the difference) ‘freaked-out religious zealots’. If you were to listen to the sheep who graze in this second-most populous state in the union (Texas, my home), you would quail in fear of liberty. I regularly hear people say ridiculous things like how liberties should be curtailed and that martial law is good. They listen to the pundits and they believe them.
So when you say that the liberals are winning, well, we’re not. In liberal strongholds, it wasn’t ever really in question. You know what they say about how the wider the spaces, the narrower the minds? It’s true. Where people must live in closer quarters they are more apt to accept others. But look at the map. We’re not that crowded. We have enough space to keep our distance and propagate fear. Propagating fear advances the agenda of the ‘conservative’ pundits. It’s happening everywhere. You’re all fortunate enough not to live in a place, like at least half the country, where wackos are in power.
button
Left and right, liberal and conservative are anachronistic relics of the Cold War and should be discarded because they are no longer relevant. Your discourse is soooo pre-9/11.
James
I hear this a lot from “liberals”, “Conservatives are trying to take away our freedoms!” What examples that directly affect you, or a US CITIZEN that you know, can you provide me of conservatives taking freedoms away from liberals? (I’m not asking for examples like, “well the terrorists being held in Cuba, or those visa workers that aren’t allowed to be a part of our airport security”. I’d like to see some cold hard examples of conservatives taking away our freedoms. Please note that I say freedoms because we live in a country that has a government and thus inherently are not completely free. If we lived on a deserted island with no government then essentially, we’d be free. We don’t and thus must mesh our “freedoms” with the “rights” of others and create a standard of “limited freedom” in order to live peacefully with each other.
Anonymous
Right on, James. All of the whining about how civil liberties are being shredded by Ashcroft, and how our rights are being trampled…somebody show us examples. My rights and civil liberties are as intact as they have been since birth.
Anil
I’ve lost part of my right to free speech, in that I can’t discuss ways to reverse-engineer the CSS encryption on a DVD.
Maciej Ceglowski
In reply to James - There are American citizens being held indefinitely, without trial, in administrative detention (Jose Padilla is one, I don’t know the names of the others). They have been labeled ‘enemy combatants’ and as such, have no right to see a lawyer, get a trial, demand habeas corpus etc.
Your rights and civil liberties are intact until the government decides to call you a terrorist. At that point, you can apparently lose those rights.
We have a right to expect equal protection under law, as enshrined in the Constitution. The arbitrary exercise of power diminishes that right for all of us, even if we listen to Ari Fleischer’s advice to “watch what we say”.
Maciej Ceglowski
Oh yeah, and it REALLY pisses me off to have to say it, but I am an American citizen like yourself, despite my foreign name.
Choire
Let’s all hearken back to October 12th, 2001, when Ashcroft circulated a memo urging federal agencies to resist Freedom of Information Act requests. [source]
Richard Bennett
I’ve lost part of my right to free speech, in that I can’t discuss ways to reverse-engineer the CSS encryption on a DVD.
It’s always been illegal to engage in a criminal conspiracy to break the law in the United States. Nothing new here.
Anil
It’s never been illegal to discuss ways of copying information, has it? Hook up two vCRs with RCA cables, in to out, and press play on the source and record. Now I can tell you that, but I can’t give you the same information for DVDs. And that makes sense to you?
Laura
“Sure, there are counterexamples on both sides, but the reality is that it was liberals who took the lead in civil rights for blacks. “
No, not just for Blacks. For Latinos, Native Americans and Asians of all stripes, particularly immigrants. Cf Civil Rights acts of 1964 and 65.
Blake
The closest thing America has to a tradition is the phrase, the philosophy, “Fuck You”.
Loved that! Very good point.
i_cola
I think that its telling that in nearly many other countries ‘liberal’ generally refers to the centre [center] of the political spectrum yet in the US its come to mean ‘left’.
Gina
Well, I for one can’t legally marry my partner of almost six years in New York City, where I’ve lived my entire life.
We are “domestic partners”, and we can have a “civil union” in some other state (VT, Hawaii) and NYC will recognize that union, and the New York Times would even list it in their “Celebrations” section - and this is all recent progress that has occurred thanks to liberals.
We are winning, lucky for me, and everyone else, imo.
beanz
Some points of clarification:
1)It’s almost absurd to mention this, but in light of some earlier postings, maybe necessary: the Founding Fathers are part of the American past, so is the Constitution they drafted and the institutions they and their heirs created that so many love to rail against but EVERYBODY benefits from. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
2) The terms “liberal” and “conservative” have become so hackneyed, polerized and misunderstood as to render them almost useless in a discussion aimed to clarify the differences between the two. However, I believe it’s fair to say that most of those who consider themselves conservatives would not automatically preserve EVERYTHING from the past. They are well aware of the sins of their fathers. Conversely, I’m convinced that most of the self-professed liberals would acknowledge great achievements of historical figures and would fight to preserve those.
3) I’m willing to bet that the real catalysts of what has come to be called the Civil Rights Movement were simply intrepid and freedom-loving people who had better things to do than dwell on which side of the liberal/conservative see-saw they rode on. I believe many of us have been hoodwinked into believing that this was some great liberal, progressive idealogical movement. It BECAME that after it became apparent to some that there’s money and fame in it for them, so they got on the bandwagon and steered it in their direction.
xian
well, both ends of the spectrum have coopted each other’s ideas or been forced to adopt those that have overwhelming support. Liberals may be winning the culture war (time tends to do that), but think of all the people who like to call themselves “socially liberal, fiscally conservative,” which can mean different things to different people (it can mean libertarian, for example, or it can mean tolerant but unwilling to pay the cost involved in extending fairness to the disadvantaged, and so on).
and per hartung, of course nobody likes to be taxes, but everyone wants the roads maintained, contracts enforced, rule of law supported, protection when they personally are screwed over by malefactors of great wealth, and so on. for years “borrow and spend” republicans have promised huge tax rebates alongside either increased spending or targeted cuts aimed at the least fortunate and least well represented.
fiscal responsibility was great when it limited the spending ability of liberal politicians but it goes out the window when it might force difficult choices onto conservative/reactionaries.
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