Random Blogging – Page 393

What’s the Opposite of Pandering?

As readers of my posts and columns know, I’m no fan of political pandering.

On the other hand, Mayor Ballard’s speech to the Lambda dinner last night wasn’t even the opposite of pandering. The opposite would be some sort of “Sister Soulja” moment–a stern rebuke to someone who is generally a supporter when that person or organization steps out of line.

Ballard managed to avoid both kissing up to the crowd and telling them something they needed to hear. Instead, he delivered a speech that would have been far more appropriate at a Chamber of Commerce event. While he did say “Lambda Legal”–once–he didn’t use the words “gay” or “lesbian” at all. He didn’t talk about equality, didn’t refer to anything his administration had done or planned to do about issues the gay community finds important (or even arguably relevant). He droned on about taxes and public safety to a crowd that skews liberal on taxes and has reason to be skeptical about the use of police power.

He did include one throwaway line about understanding the importance of the arts, even though he cut arts funding drastically, so perhaps he was dimly aware that an audience of gay and gay-friendly people would have more than its share of arts supporters. Otherwise, he gave a speech that was so far from pandering, it was entirely unconnected to the concerns of his audience. Not only was it irrelevant, it wasn’t even a good speech.

The word that comes to mind is clueless.

Evidence of Conservative Revival–Or Death Rattle

I’ve been in a number of conversations lately debating the meaning of the furious hordes of not-very-well-informed (okay, massively clueless) folks we’ve seen on our television screens, demanding that someone give them their country back. My own take–and I admittedly have deep Pollyanna tendencies–has been that what we are seeing is the death rattle of people who have truly been “left behind”–not by God or Jesus, but by a social paradigm shift that they can neither change nor understand.

Charles Lemos posts an interview between Bill Moyers and the author of a recent book who seems to agree with my analysis. Here is a transcript of a part of that interview, but you should really read the whole post.

BILL MOYERS: So, if you’re right about the decline and death of conservatism, who are all those people we see on television?

SAM TANENHAUS: I’m afraid they’re radicals. Conservatism has been divided for a long time — this is what my book describes narratively — between two strains. What I call realism and revanchism. We’re seeing the revanchist side.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean revanchism?

SAM TANENHAUS: I mean a politics that’s based on the idea that America has been taken away from its true owners, and they have to restore and reclaim it. They have to conquer the territory that’s been taken from them. Revanchism really comes from the French word for ‘revenge.’ It’s a politics of vengeance.

And this is a strong strain in modern conservatism. Like the 19th Century nationalists who wanted to recover parts of their country that foreign nations had invaded and occupied, these radical people on the right, and they include intellectuals and the kinds of personalities we’re seeing on television and radio, and also to some extent people marching in the streets, think America has gotten away from them. Theirs is a politics of reclamation and restoration. Give it back to us. What we sometimes forget is that the last five presidential elections Democrats won pluralities in four of them. The only time the Republicans have won, in recent memory, was when George Bush was re-elected by the narrowest margin in modern history, for a sitting president. So, what this means is that, yes, conservatism, what I think of, as a radical form of conservatism, is highly organized. We’re seeing it now– they are ideologically in lockstep. They agree about almost everything, and they have an orthodoxy that governs their worldview and their view of politics. So, they are able to make incursions. And at times when liberals, Democrats, and moderate Republicans are uncertain where to go, yes, this group will be out in front, very organized, and dominate our conversation.”

But as the rest of the post makes clear, their numbers–already a minority– will continue decline. Just as every move forward has been followed by a backlash (think about the end of segregation and Jim Crow, equal rights for women, states endorsing same-sex marriage, etc.), these outbursts come from people who–however dimly–recognize that they are on the losing side of history.

Comments

I think Jonathan Chait has it just about right.

If health care passes, will it be a grand historical achievement, or a crushing disappointment? The answer, I predict, will be both. The American health care system is an indefensible morass of waste and cruelty. The distance between the status quo and the ideal is therefore so vast that we could—and probably will—end up with a reform that massively improves the system, while coming nowhere close to the ideal.

If You Are Wondering….

why America can’t seem to make sane public policy, Steve Benen has a clue.

Kate Sheppard reported today on some recent Barton comments about climate change and wind power.

“Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.”

Something to think about, indeed.

Barton is, of course, the same lawmaker who recently suggested that humans will “adapt” to climate change because we can “get shade.”

And as Matthew DeLong reminds us, Barton was, up until a couple of years ago, the lawmaker House Republicans made the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.”

Our Morphing Media

I have been writing (and worrying) a lot about the transition of the media, and the effect of the current landscape on public discourse and policy.

As I told a friend, it’s one thing to disagree about something that we both see. We can both look at a photo, or a piece of art, or a draft of a pending bill, and disagree about its meaning, or–in the case of proposed legislation–whether it is a good idea. But the current fragmented media environment and the disproportionate attention garnered by “pundits” of varying philosophies and degrees of sanity has created a situation where we are far too often not looking at the same reality. It reminds me of the time (b.c.–before cellphones) when a friend and I agreed to meet for lunch at “the tearoom.” Back then, both Ayres and Blocks had tearooms, and I went to Ayres while she went to Blocks. This made conversation difficult, in much the same way that our current media environment does.

Clay Shirkey recently wrote an essay that is one of the more thoughtful analyses of the morphing of media. In it, he echoes the observation of Paul Starr that “journalism isn’t just about uncovering facts and framing stories; it is about assembling a public to read and react to those stories.”

In other words, there is a difference between an audience and a public. As Shirkey says, journalism is about more than dissemination of news; its about the creation of shared awareness. It’s about occupying the same reality, or eating at the same tearoom. It’s about enabling meaningful communication.

As the information environment continues to fragment into smaller and more widely dispersed niches, what will the consequences be for public communication and discourse?