There seems to be a whole spate of new criticism of the left, coming from the left. Some of these leftists attacks the left for not being left enough, for having sold out and gone “bourgeois,” or worse; others criticize the left’s reckless and needless abandonment of mainstream American values. All of it calls for a more sensible left.
A good place to see, and evaluate, some of these themes is a review essay about several of these new criticisms by old new lefttist Todd Gitlin of Columbia in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Gitlin believes that “the life of the mind” in American is in peril and “ignorance” rules because “reason” has been “defeated,” and he blames the left in large part for this sorry state of affairs.
In this perverse climate, dissenting intellectuals might gain some traction by standing for reason. They might begin by asking how it came to pass, over recent decades, that reason in America was defeated. They might explore the subject of public ignorance, its origins, tactics, and prospects. They might also study contrary tendencies, including scientists’ resistance to ignorance. They might investigate how it happened that the academic left retreated from off-campus politics. They might consider the possibility that they painted themselves into a corner apart from their countrymen and women. Among the topics they might explore: the academic left’s ignorance of main currents of American life, their positive tropism for foreign saviors, their reliance on intricate jargon, their commitment to keeping up with post-everything hotshots of “theory” from more advanced continents. Instead, in a time-honored ritual of the left, a number of academic polemicists choose this moment to pump up rites of purification. At a time when liberals hold next to no sway in any leading institution of national government, when the prime liberal institution of the last centuryorganized labor wobbles helplessly, when most national media tilt so far to the right as to parody themselves, the guardians of purity rise to a high pitch of sanctimoniousness aimed at … heretics. Liberals, that is.
Liberals, they argue, are a powerful force of accommodation — baby-boomer liberals particularly, baby-boomer liberals in the humanities even more particularly. These heretics are not a generation preparing to shuffle into retirement counting their 401(k)’s but a cunningly if undeservedly potent clique standing astride the culture, betraying the masses and fending off bright alternatives to ideological darkness. Only their treason could possibly explain the triumph of the barbarians’ reign of error.
Resist, at least for a while, the tendency any, er, reasonable person would have to reject out of hand any analysis of anything from someone who belileves “most national media tilt so far to the right as to parody themselves.” (I warned you in advance that I was going to be discussing criticism of the left from within the left; Gitlin’s passage above is a good example.)
Gitlin concentrates on two recent studies.
Timothy Brennan, a professor of comparative literature, cultural studies, and English at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, pulls the theoretical shotgun off the shelf and writes in Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right that during the last quarter-century, “cultural scholars in universities were instrumental in shaping public sentiment,” “their influence was for the most part mixed, at times even disastrous,” and that “the humanities played a large and influential part in the descending spiral of political options since 1980.” Eric Lott, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, narrows the target, declaring in The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual that “a liberal cadre of writers and academics … helped blaze the way for the rightward turn that has given us Most Hated Nation status abroad and a paranoid, bloated, and revanchist state apparatus at home. … For at least a decade and a half, boomer liberalism has helped obstruct useful thinking about U.S. cultural and political complexities, let alone the relation of these to the larger world.”
Gitlin has no trouble laying waste to the revolutionary arguments of both Brennan and Lott, Brennan with his calls for “agential” activity and Lott with his desire “to take out bourgois thinkers” (and “he doesn’t mean on dates,” Gitlin points out). Why is it, I wonder, that so much radical tripe comes out of English and “cultural studies” departments? Oh well….
Gitlin complains, persuasively, about these futile, almost pathetic “gestures of virulence” in both books, but as I read his review Gitlin doesn’t sound as far removed from these two as he obviously thinks he is. His comment about the right-wing media, for example, was not unique. “No Child Left Behind” is a “nostrum”; the “United States blithely jettisons scientific judgments”; supporters of Bush are “rapturous,” despite the fact that “his interest in and capacity for reason are impaired.” Etc. In short, Gitlin’s view of the “ignorant” people who support conservative politicians and policies doesn’t reflect any more “reason” than the zanies from whom he would like to distance himself.
In a very similar vein, consider this essay in Time Magazine by Caitlin Flanagan, author of a recent collection of essays called To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife. Her essay begins in an engaging and promising manner:
I am a 44-year-old woman who grew up in Berkeley who has never once voted for a Republican, or crossed a picket line, or failed to send in a small check when the Doctors Without Borders envelope showed up. I believe that we should not have invaded Iraq, that we should have signed the Kyoto treaty, that the Starr Report was, in part, the result of a vast right-wing conspiracy. I believe that poverty is our most pressing issue and that we should be pouring money and energy into its eradication. I believe that allowing migrant women and children to die of thirst in American deserts is a moral transgression that will stain us forever.
But despite all that, there is apparently no room for me in the Democratic Party. In fact, I have spent much of the past week on a forced march to the G.O.P. And the bayonet at my back isn’t in the hands of the Republicans; the Democrats are the bullyboys. Such lions of the left as Barbara Ehrenreich, the writers at Salon and much of the Upper West Side of Manhattan have made it abundantly clear to me that I ought to start packing my bags. I’m not leaving, but sometimes I wonder: When did I sign up to be the beaten wife of the Democratic Party?
And for what was she branded with the scarlet “H” for heresy?
Here’s why they’re after me: I have made a lifestyle choice that they can’t stand, and I’m not cowering in the closet because of it. I’m out, and I’m proud. I am a happy member of an exceedingly “traditional” family. I’m in charge of the house and the kids, my husband is in charge of the finances and the car maintenance, and we all go to church every Sunday.
Ms. Flanagan is also sensible when she writes:
Most of the 60 million people who voted against George W. Bush have lifestyles more like mine than the Democratic Party would like to admit. Most of us aren’t the Hollywood elite or the nontraditional family. Many of us do what I do, which is go to church on Sunday, work hard and value my marriage…. It’s a small but very vocal minority, the Democratic pundits, who abhor what I represent because it doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of the modern woman who has escaped from domestic prison. Fifty years ago, a stay-at-home mom who loved her husband would not automatically be assumed to be a Republican. The image of the Democratic Party that used to come to mind was of a workingman and his wife sitting at the kitchen table worrying about how they were going to pay the bills and voting for Adlai Stevenson because he was going to help them squeak by every month and maybe even afford to send their kids to college.
The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the great work of the ’60s–civil rights, women’s liberation, gay inclusion–we decided to stigmatize the white male. The union dues–paying, churchgoing, beer-drinking family man got nothing but ridicule and venom from us. So he dumped us. And he took the wife and kids with him.
The Democrats, of course, as often pointed out here, dumped more than the traditional housewife and lunch-bucket working man. They also dumped the principle of colorblind equal opportunity on which the civil rights movement was founded and on which it success rested, and they set aside their former devotion to the First Amendment whenever confronted with what they regard as “hate speech” or the funding of political speech (at least by Republicans).
But never mind. Before she’s done Ms. Flanagan doesn’t sound very different from the Democrats she deplores. “God help us all,” she writes, “if Bush’s brutality to the poor continues much longer.”
And now here we are, living in a country with a political and economic agenda we deplore, losing election after election and wondering why.
It’s the contempt, stupid.
But mustn’t she feel something pretty close to “contempt” for all us poor souls (“ignorant” and without “reason” in Gitlin’s formulation; bourgeois murderers to those ostensibly to his left) who support what she regards as “Bush’s brutality” and his “political and economic agenda”?
George Will’s recent essay, “Condescentional Wisdom,” noticed the same phenomenon, tracing liberalism’s decline to the contempt it developed, and ceaselessly displays, for ordinary Americans. Writing of John Kenneth Galbraith’s recent death, Will writes:
His book “The Affluent Society,” published in 1958, was a milestone in liberalism’s transformation into a doctrine of condescension. And into a minority persuasion.
In the 1950s liberals were disconsolate. Voters twice rejected the intelligentsia’s pinup, Stevenson, in favor of Dwight Eisenhower, who elicited a new strain in liberalism — disdain for average Americans. Liberals dismissed the Eisenhower administration as “the bland leading the bland.” They said New Dealers had been supplanted by car dealers. How to explain the electorate’s dereliction of taste? Easy. The masses, in their bovine simplicity, had been manipulated, mostly by advertising, particularly on television, which by 1958 had become the masses’ entertainment.
Intellectuals, that herd of independent minds, were, as usual, in lock step as they deplored “conformity.”
….
… In the 1960s that liberalism became a stance of disdain, describing Americans not only as Galbraith had, as vulgar, but also as sick, racist, sexist, imperialist, etc. Again, and not amazingly, voters were not amused when told that their desires — for big cars, neighborhood schools and other things — did not deserve respect.
I’ve written here several times about the self-defeating contempt liberals have for conservatives these days (see here and here, for example).
For the sake of my party (insofar as I have a party, which is not very far), I hope they keep it up. For the sake of the country I’d like to see them wise up and, as they used to say, move on.
UPDATE [9 May]
Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado who writes a column for the Rocky Mountain News,has some interesting comments about Caitlin Flanagan’s essay.
Rarely have I read anything as absurd as Caitlin Flanagan’s essay in the May 8 issue of Time, in which she claims she’s being driven out of the Democratic Party because she’s a housewife.
….
As a political critique Flanagan’s essay is something worse than worthless, but as a glimpse into the fantastic forms of self-delusion lurking at the top of America’s class structure it’s a fascinating document.
….
What people can’t stand about Flanagan is that she’s an extraordinarily privileged narcissist, who strikes a preposterous Everywoman pose while delivering lectures on motherhood whose sanctimoniousness is exceeded only by their hypocrisy. She has about as much in common with the average American homemaker as Paris Hilton. And I’m pretty sure Democrats can get along without the Paris Hilton vote.
I don’t think he liked it.
Caitlin’s opinions in themselves show what is wrong with democrats. What is bush’s brutality to the poor? Welfare reform, if that is what she means, was instituted by Clinton. In any case, it has not led to people starving in the street. It’s the kind of meaningless statement that turns people off democrats. The condition of the poor is the same or better as when Clinton was in. As a good democrat, why didn’t he take some of caitlin’s money and give it to the poor. What is the point of these silly statements
Campos’ comments on Flanagan some up my perspective on your excerpts from George Will, Flanagan, and Gitlin:
“As a political critique Flanagan’s essay is something worse than worthless.”
The excerpts from Will, Flanagan, and Gitlin show that a bunch of people think there is something wrong with Liberals; so what else is new?
Will argues that liberalism is in decline because of its contempt for Americans. Hmm, a Conservative claiming that liberals hate America? Shocking! Never heard that one before.
Flanagan “argues” that the left has animosity for her because she is a church-going housewife. Her evidence for this is that after publishing her book of essays a reporter asked if she were a Republican. So, according to Flanagan, a question from a reporter signifies the Left’s hatred for “traditional values”??? Please.
This is a basically a collection of stereotypes and subjective judgments about “the Left.” An analogous article on “the Right” would be eviscerated for its lack of substance and one-sided opinions passed off as facts.
My opinion is worth as much (or as little) as any of the ones presented by Will, Flanagan, and Gitlin. I think criticsm of “the left” (from within and on the right) is a reflection of our collective lemming-like nature following the tone set by the Executive and Legislative branches. When Bush came into office and Republicans won the Legislature it became “cool” to be a Republican. Since the 2000 election “liberal” has basically become a dirty word and conservative dogma has become “truth”. Trickle-down economics is now accepted as fact, not weak theory. The notion that racial preference is some form of invidious discrimination is widely accepted as fact. Preemptive warfare has only been seriously challenged by the “lunatic fringe.” Moderates accept the invasion of Iraq.
The only reason it’s not “cool” to be a Republican anymore is because they’ve driven the country into a ditch since 9/11 (see: Iraq, Katrina, NSA spying, and detention without due process among others). And even with abundant evidence of what happens when you allow Republicans to run wild, liberals are still regarded with disdain.
So, that’s my theory on why liberals are critical of liberals: lemming syndrome, not backlash against liberal “america hatred” (or white male hatred or whatever other hatred you wish to ascribe to the left). Can I publish my opinion in the Washington Post or Time now?
When Bush came into office and Republicans won the Legislature it became “cool” to be a Republican.
Yeah, riiiiiight. Why, just look at all the new “cool” Republicans who dominate Hollywood; both the newsroom and board rooms of CBS, the NY Times, Wash. Post, and all the major media; Madison Avenue and all the culture-defining magazines; all the rich suburbs and posh retreats and resorts; all the elite and even not elitie universities; and in fact all the other trend-setting sites in our society. Yep, as soon as Bush was elected, and then re-elected with their strong support, the in-crowd has been teeming with out of the closet new “cool” Republicans….
Touché. Replace the term “cool” in my previous post with “mainstream”.
The point is, liberals (and others) are not critical of liberals because of an inevitable backlash against those who allegedly hate America/white males/freedom/Christians as Will, Flanagan, and Gitlin suggest.
People are critical of liberals because that is the dogma espoused by Rove, the current Executive, and the Legislature (see: “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”) Over the last several years if you dared to disagree with the Administration’s dogma you were quick to be labled anti-American; Anti-white male; Anti-Christian, etc.
Of course, that’s just my opinion and should be given no more credence than the opinions of Will, Flanagan, and Gitlin (at least not without some facts to back up the opinion).
Hull,
Actually, Flanagan says that every reporter she talked to assumed she was a conservative Republican based on the title of her book, and the reporter’s question wasn’t whether she was a Republican but, on the contrary, whether it was really true that she was a Democrat.
Now, I do find that interesting. Why should anyone jump from the subject of the book to an assumption about party affiliation? The country’s full of Democratic housewives and Republican career women. It’s certainly true, as Campos says, that Flanagan’s lifestyle isn’t exactly what people are apt to think of when they think “housewife.” I do my own laundry and make my own beds, thanks; I’d check myself into a mental institution if I couldn’t function without a (human) “personal organizer.” All the same, liberal contempt for women who merely (merely!) raise children isn’t entirely mythical, and the widespread assumption that a married woman whose job is overseeing her home and family is probably an arch-conservative nutcase isn’t mythical either. Throw in homeschooling and the assumption is more like a near-certainty. Education may be “the most important job in the world” and all that, but try to do it yourself and all sorts of people will just assume that you’re in David Koresh territory. (Disclaimer: I was not homeschooled, and I have no children, so I’m not personally invested in this.)
John, I think you underrate the snark content of Hull’s post, but I have to agree that Republican “coolness” was nowhere to be seen around here when Hull says it was at its height. Of course, Republicans in the Bay Area do tend to keep quiet about it.
Flannigan writes:
>>>”The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the great work of the ’60s–civil rights, women’s liberation, gay inclusion–we decided to stigmatize the white male. The union dues–paying, churchgoing, beer-drinking family man got nothing but ridicule and venom from us. So he dumped us. And he took the wife and kids with him.”
Basically, her assertion is one of population demographics. With current trends, white males will represent a far smaller proportion of the American population in a few decades. This is where I see the underpinnings of the great backlash against most anti-discrimination/sexism policies. The hardcore right winged factions in the think tanks know about the browning of America, which is why they talk out of both sides of their mouths regarding immigration.
Flannigan fails to realize here that the conservative movement to MAINTAIN a white male hiearchy was the genesis for this “stigmatization.” The attack on “union-dues payers” is a RIGHT WINGED attack from the same corporate power structure most conservatives want to perpetuate. That way they can deflect from the REAL cause of white labor loss–downsizing, outsourcing, insourcing of illegals, etc. and blame it all on the convenient boogiemen–
“da wimmen and da coloreds.”
–Cobra
Michelle, I was not aware that any Democrats or liberals were running campaigns that expressed contempt for housewives. If you could point to some concrete examples of this, that would be great.
The “snark” of my previous post was aimed at those who pass off their opinions as facts without much evidence to back up their assertions. Similarly, I can say “Group X hates America.” But without some kind of support for that comment, it’s not worth much. I saw little support in Flanagan’s and Gitlin’s pieces and George Will’s piece was his (completely)subjective interpretation of past events. Saying “liberals hate America (housewives/Christians/white males/etc.)” is about as effective standing on its own as saying, “white people are racist”. Without more support it’s a worthless comment.
Hull,
Michelle, I was not aware that any Democrats or liberals were running campaigns that expressed contempt for housewives. If you could point to some concrete examples of this, that would be great.
Well, I didn’t quite say that, you know. It’s not a matter of talking points, but of attitudes that become visible occasionally. Hillary Clinton’s comment about living her own life rather than staying home and baking cookies got attention only because she was HRC. I’ve heard the same sort of comment many, many times from people who thought themselves admirably broad-minded and tolerant. There really are people who think a life not spent working for someone for a wage is basically wasted. If you’ve not encountered such, count your blessings.
Believe me, I admired the “snark,” just didn’t think John had caught it. You’re wrong about Will, though. I think if you asked him for supporting documents, he’d hand them to you, in reams. It’s not as though the folks who thought this way hesitated to commit their views to paper.
Cobra, you aren’t making sense. I really don’t think Our Evil Racist Corporate Overlords would try simultaneously to blame working women for taking away men’s jobs and also to stigmatize women who don’t work. But possibly I read old books of logic.
Michelle,
No offense but I think the reason that you think liberals have contempt for housewives is because Republicans have stereotyped liberals as having that perspective (along the same lines Republicans have stereotyped liberals as “America haters” while Democrats have stereotyped Republicans as bible-thumping racists).
Yes, a minority of feminists have expressed contempt for housewives, but I don’t think that is a current or prevalent perspective and certainly not representative of liberal/democratic thought on the whole. Again, if you have some support to the contrary please share it.