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Believe It

This whole argument about pop culture reminds me of a conversation I had in 1977. I was sitting around with my friends and somebody put “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols on the stereo. Afterwards, I said I thought it wasn’t really music — to which a friend of mine replied that I sounded just like his parents when he first played the Beatles. I was only 21 at the time, so this hit me pretty hard. I never forgot it.

This “kids today” stuff has been going on for a long, long time. Anybody who was a kid in the 60’s like I was, remembers endless sermons and lectures and handwringing about how the world was coming to an end because the boys were growing their hair long and the girls weren’t shaving their armpits and marijuana was going to fry your brain like an egg. Before that, in 1956, there was the fear of “juvenile delinquents”:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks!

Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;
We never had the love that ev’ry child oughta get.
We ain’t no delinquents,
We’re misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!

Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won’t give me a puff.
They didn’t wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin’ lizards! That’s why I’m so bad!

Officer Krupke, you’re really a square;
This boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care!
It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He’s psychologic’ly disturbed!

My father is a bastard,
My ma’s an S.O.B.
My grandpa’s always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!

Officer Krupke, you’re really a slob.
This boy don’t need a doctor, just a good honest job.
Society’s played him a terrible trick,
And sociologic’ly he’s sick!

Gee, Officer Krupke,
We’re down on our knees,
‘Cause no one wants a fellow with a social disease.
Gee, Officer Krupke,
What are we to do?
Gee, Officer Krupke,
Krup you!

And that was in the golden age of “Leave It To Beaver” and “I Love Lucy.”

All these people who are so afraid of what their kids are doing and thinking are just like my parents were. Afraid of the new world they’d built and were leaving behind for their kids. And so it goes.

Ed Kilgore writes today on the subject:

If there’s a problem, and at least some sorts of tangible public-policy solutions, then the argument that this is “all about politics” loses some of its sting. But of course, you “can’t take the politics out of politics,” so yeah, Democrats should look at this politically as well. And Amy is absolutely right that Democrats tend to view “cultural issues” as limited to abortion and gay marriage and other Republican-dictated agenda items, and Gerstein is absolutely right that such issues are often just the ways voters use to figure out whether politicians actually believe (a) there are principles more important than politics, and (b) there is such a thing as right and wrong.

The whole hep Democratic world right now, from Howard Dean to George Lackoff to Bill Bradley right over to the DLC, says it’s important that Democrats clearly identify “what they believe” and “where they stand” and “what values they cherish.” If all the evidence–some scientific, some anecdotal or intuitive–suggesting that parents believe they are fighting an unequal battle with powerful cultural forces over the upbringing of their children is at all correct, then we have to take a stand there, too. It may matter a whole lot, if you look at the Democratic vote among marrieds-with-children–steadily dropping from a Clinton win in 1996 to an eighteen-point loss in 2004, a disproportionately large swing

Yes, the public does wonder what we stand for. And in this debate it seems we can either stand for better V chips and Terri Schiavo’s mother-in-law, or we can stand for this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like it actually means something. Even has a bit of a ring to it.

Look, I don’t care if we legislate for “better” V-chips. (From what I have read people aren’t using the one we have available, not because it’s too hard, but because they just don’t want to be bothered. But whatever.) We can express our empathy for how difficult it is to parent in this environment. We can bemoan the coarsening of the culture and try shame people to stop selling useless consumer items to children. None of those things are particularly dangerous in themselves. But neither are they going to be politically advantageous.

Everytime we try to move in this “moderate” cultural direction that we think people will choose over the GOP vision, the more we appear to be a large puddle of lukewarm water. Because, let’s face it. If you really think that the government should do something about popular culture because it’s harmful then you really should step up to the plate and admit that you think censorship in some form or another would be a good thing. Because that’s the only thing that government can really do to make a difference — compel people to stop saying and selling and watching and buying.

And that’s what the conservatives have to offer. Clear, simple, straightforward. They believe that this swill is harming society and they want it taken care of. They don’t play around with studies and “oh I understand what you are going through.” They offer a real solution. Censor the garbage. Impeach the judges. Fix the damn problem. The bully in their pulpit sounds a hell of a lot more competent than ours.

And, conversely, they have won the gun issue by being rigid absolutists about the second amendment and giving no quarter. In fact, I think that their rhetoric has been so widespread and so successful that we would benefit from making our argument explicitly about the first amendment in much the same way. Some people may just wonder why, if the second is sacred, the first shouldn’t be also.

Now, I don’t think that any Democrats really want censorship. They want magic. They want people to stop wanting what they want. And if that doesn’t work, they want the manufacturers and producers to feel bad about what they are doing and stop providing what the people want. This is an unrealistic political goal. (It seems much more suited to religion than government and it makes me wonder, if religion is sweeping the nation in a new Great Awakening, why it is having so little effect?)

And there is the truly serious problem that these culture war issues are exploited by the right for the very reason that they are willing to offer these simple solutions to issues that we necessarily find complicated. They tie us in knots with this stuff. That’s why we shouldn’t walk into their trap time after time after time by trying to split the difference. It isn’t working.

Kilgore says:

Gerstein is absolutely right that such issues are often just the ways voters use to figure out whether politicians actually believe (a) there are principles more important than politics, and (b) there is such a thing as right and wrong.

Why do we have to play the game on their “culture war” turf? Why can’t we say that the principle of free speech is more important than politics (which I actually believe has the virtue of being true.) Why can’t we say that it is wrong for people to impose their religious views on others? Are these not principles worth fighting for? Do they not have the ring of clear common sense? These seem like first principles to me.

Why people continue to believe that we can convince people that we “believe in something” by validating the GOP’s calumnious rhetoric about deviant liberal culture I will never understand. I think we convince people that we believe in something by well … believing in something. How about the constitution, for a starter?

Update: Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes a number of exceptional insights into this issue (read the whole post) but I think this one is particularly apt:

There’s an additional problem evident in the way Sullivan frames the debate. One might ask why so many people are obsessed with culture, when the evidence for the influences attributed to it are so weak. Could it be that politicians and pundits like Sullivan continually tell parents that they should be obsessed with culture? This isn’t just harmless misdirection, either. The national political agenda can only be focused on a fraction of the policy solutions being advocated. The more people are convinced that TV is causing certain social pathologies, the less likely they are to agitate for solutions that might actually be relevant to the problem (which, of course, is why the cultural conservative agenda is so effective for Republicans.) I would like liberals to point out that other liberal democracies have lower rates of violence and teen pregnancy despite their children being exposed to similar cultural influences, which suggests that other factors may be more relevant that pop culture. But according to Sullivan, you’re not even allowed to point this out, because if parents believe what politicians tell them you’re not allowed to say anything different.

It’s the old Cokie Roberts line “It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’s out there.”

And frankly, I’m not ever sure it is. Is there any hard data, other than the fact that married women are voting more Republican, that this culture clash is a voting issue? And even if it is, I think Lemiuex’s observation is likely correct. Republicans are laughing themselves silly everytime we validate their winning misdirection strategy.

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Comment of the week

On the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy:

An open Letter to David Horowitz:

April 13, 2005
Dear Mr. Horowitz:

I see that your list is a tad short of 1000 so I would like to nominate myself for inclusion. You probably have never heard of me (unless you followed the Boston Symphony where I played for 27 years). I feel my political mojo has faded with my aging and I fear encroaching irrelevance (remember the good old days!) so I’m hoping you will help me out, since I can claim many points of contact, some of them admittedly rather casual, with people on your list, to wit:

I went to a summer music camp with Carol Gilligan (she was Carol Friedman then) and have remained in contact with her ever since. Another fairly regular presence at this camp was Pete Seeger, which should tell you all you need to know. Some years later, I taught at the place and in varying years had in my choruses both Arlo Guthrie (who really belongs in your list) and Frank Rich, although he was only thirteen at the time.

I lived in New York City in 1968 and became acquainted with Harold Ickes Jr. when he was a boy genius and I was a foot-soldier in the Eugene McCarthy campaign. Dennis Kucunich is my mother’s Congressman, and my brother who lives in Seattle is a supporter of Patty Murray. I even had an uncle named Joe Miller, although he is not the same as your guy. Still….

I once hoisted beers with Norman Mailer, although I’m sure he doesn’t remember me (or anything else from that evening in the Lion’s Head Tavern). I met Abbie Hoffman (also not on your list, strangely…he is as dead as Paul Robeson and a lot hipper) at a party while he was under indictment and encountered Alexander Cockburn —also in the Lion’s Head –but I must admit that I didn’t like him very much. I shook hands with Muhammed Ali and was really excited. For a year in Cambridge I lived down the street from Bonny Raitt, and even performed on the same stage with her when she was a guest with the Boston Pops.

Although I agree with very little of what I says, I did teach for a while at Boston University at the same time that Howard Zinn was there. My son was once an intern in John Kerry’s Washington office and went to George Soros’ Central European University in Budapest for two years (although since he is now a corporate lawyer maybe this doesn’t count) and his wonderful wife worked for the Ford Foundation.

Lest you think I have slacked off, presently Michael Capuano is my Congressman and I actually live in Somerville, his birthplace. I admit it’s a bit of a stretch but it should count for something, and my poetry professor of last year married her same-sex partner. I’d guess that she would be thrilled to be included too.

Now since I don’t have a blog or an op-ed column, you may me dismiss me as a wannabe. But I hope you’ll consider that carefully, since I’m capable of the following sort of thing (and I’m really proud of it…four technically sound limericks on the same subject — you — is not at all easy to bring off)

David Horowitz

This Horowitz is a phenom
Who once railed against Vietnam
He fought his good fight
On the left not the right
O’er the Ramparts red glare with aplomb.

But things on the left were not jake
He skedaddled, a Long March did make
As Far Left as he’d been
He repented his sin
Went Far Right, made the same old mistake.

Though he moved to the opposite wing
And neocon hymns he may sing,
As he once lauded Mao
He’s right radical now
Not position, but style is the thing.

For the style of his dogmatic way
(I don’t doubt that it really does pay)
Is with passion extreme
To declaim, rant and scream
His great Absolute Truth (of today).

I would be happy to supply you with a bio if you would honor me with inclusion in your little list. I am yours truly

Jerome P. Rosen

PS I think John Bolton is an asshole, that Cheney and Richard Perle are evil, and that you are a nut-job. Does this help?

Smear Boats Are A Comin’

If anyone is wondering about this Hillary swift boat style smear book that Drudge is flacking on his site, be advised that the alleged liberal who wrote it is actually the right wing fuck who writes Walter Scott’s Personality Parade — a piece of Sunday morning trash I stopped reading when he wrote that Chelsea Clinton was an “apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree” drunken party girl.

Apparently, Pengiun has joined the Regnery ranks. Nice.

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Light Of Reason

Arthur Silber wades into the now legendary Horowitz Bérubé smackdown (which if you haven’t read it is one of the most satisfying series of blog posts in blogdom) with characteristically interesting insights:

Given the statement in his own “Academic Bill of Rights,” on what grounds can Horowitz possibly maintain these blatantly irreconcilable positions? Whenever he accuses anyone of “shar[ing] negative views of the Bush Administration” with known terrorists (or more briefly, of “hating America”), one can simply reply: “But, Mr. Horowitz, you yourself believe that ‘there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge.’ So how do you know that anyone hates America, or that the invasion of Iraq was legitimate, or that occupying Iraq was a wise move in the war against terrorism? In fact, given your own statements, how do you know anything at all?”

Given Horowitz’s approach (which inevitably and necessarily combines relativism, skepticism and subjectivism in one particularly nasty mix), he would have no answer—and in fact, he doesn’t know anything, not with certainty, by his own admission.

I’ve been meaning to write a little post directing my lovely readers to Arthur Silber’s Light of Reason. His site is consistently interesting, well written and original. He’s a libertarian, but not one of those annoying fake libertarians who pretend that they are libertarians because they are too embarrassed to be called Republicans (which I understand, but disdain.)

Anyway, Arthur’s blog is one of the ways that we can keep some intellectual integrity in this fight with the crazed right wing. He makes arguments, he doesn’t hurl epithets. You might learn something even when you disagree with him, which you will, if your politics are like mine.

He’s a real humanoid who incidentally could use some financial help due to ill health. If you have it to spare, it would be a good place to do your good deed for the day.

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Exploding Bandwagon

Noam Scheiber, who I often endorse wholeheartedly on other issues, explicitly lays out the divide in the Democratic party as I did, as being between “social libertarians” and “communitarians” which is, in my opinion, a weasel word for “kinda socially conservative” in this context.

He says that Democrats began losing because they were perceived as being immoral and licentious, going all the way back to 1972’s “abortion, amnesty and acid.” It was, in his opinion, only when Bill Clinton said that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” that we began to lose that perception. But we’ve been backsliding ever since. Indeed, according to him, every election we have lost or won in the last 30 years has been because we are either perceived as moral or immoral to the moderates who swing elections.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze the election statistics to prove whether or not that last is true, but I will say that while we are concerning ourselves with how we are perceived, let us not forget that we have also been perceived as weak on defense. Also the party of racial and gender preferences. And perhaps most importantly, we have been portrayed for decades as the party of big government, the “nanny state” who want to regulate and tax everyone out of existence and force you to hang around with people you hate, eat foods you don’t like and quit smoking and drinking even though you hurt nobody but yourself. That’s as much of a critique of “do-gooder” Democrats as it ever has been of “law and order” Republicans, who traditionally made their argument on the basis of rampant crime, not telling people what they should do for themselves.

It’s always something, isn’t it? Those republican scamps have a handy critique for everything we believe. So, I would imagine just as we become the “communitarian” party of love for the weak and defenseless, you’ll be seeing a spirited defense of individual liberty coming from the other side. It’s kind of the way these things work. Karl knows this.

The thing is that rarely have I seen in my lifetime a situation in which the Republicans have been so soundly criticized by even their own constituency for being too intrusive and imposing their own values on others as we saw in the Schiavo case. It would seem a natural that Democrats would, out of pragmatism if not principle, see this as a way to drive a wedge into the Republican coalition by capitalizing on public opinion and characterizing the Republicans as being in the grip of a mad faction that wants to impose its religious values on everyone.

Apparently not. Instead we are going to drive a wedge into our own, against the will of the majority of both Democrats and Republicans. It’s an unusual strategy to say the least. Now is our chance to expose their extremism and it looks like we may just punt. How depressing:

When the Schiavo case began garnering national attention, Democrats’ first reaction was to press their social libertarian line. “Congressional leaders have no business substituting their judgment for that of multiple state courts that have extensively considered the issues in this intensely personal family matter,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi complained. Liberals became increasingly confident as polls showed the public overwhelmingly concerned about federal intrusion into a private family matter. Once again, Democrats risked reinforcing the perception they lacked core values.

Something interesting, however, was beginning to happen: Voices within the Democratic Party were genuinely agonizing over whether congressional intervention in the Schiavo case was truly so egregious. Almost 50 House Democrats voted in favor of the legislation authorizing the additional judicial review–many of them Southern moderates, but several of them liberal members of the Congressional Black Caucus. It was dawning on the party that there was an affirmative statement of values to be made, not simply a libertarian attack on government intervention.

The case of Terri Schiavo is incredibly complex. But the question of a government obligation to the weak, the sick, and the disabled is not–at least for Democrats. So it was reassuring to learn this week that congressional Democrats like Tom Harkin and Barney Frank are closing ranks behind legislation that would allow federal courts to review cases in which end-of-life choices are murky and the family is divided. Considered alongside Hillary Clinton’s efforts to reframe the pro-choice position as a communitarian belief that every child should be born into a loving, caring family, it looks as though we’re seeing the beginning of a new Democratic Party. It’s a party that appeals to core values, not one that allows itself to be caricatured by their absence. Let’s hope that party is here to stay.

Yes, by all means, let’s adopt the biggest political cock-up the Republicans have made in the last twenty years as our own. (And anybody who thinks that we can stop the Republicans from caricaturing us is fooling themselves. The key is for us to caricature them — and they are making it easy for us to do it if we have the guts.)

I sincerely hope that we are not dumb enough to portray ourselves as the party of the do-gooder church lady just when they are in the process of proving to the entire country that they are the party of nosy mother-in-law. I do not believe that we will get one more vote for it in the south, and we will lose any hope of gaining back some of the western red states that might be persuaded that all this holy roller nonsense has gone too far.

This is terrible, terrible politics. I don’t mind Hillary emphasizing birth control and sex education as a way to expose the religious right’s real agenda. I think that makes sense. But that is far different than joining the most far right of the far right in allowing the federal courts to dabble in individual end of life issues. If we do this I hope we are also prepared to give the right its cover as they continue their assult on the allegedly runaway “activist” judiciary — because that’s the basis for this ridiculous federal power grab. There was no reason for the federal courts to get involved with Sciavo because the state courts did NOTHING wrong. My God. Are we really willing to go down this road?

I sincerely hope Scheiber is wrong on this because if he isn’t it means that we are thinking of jumping on the right’s exploding bandwagon just as it’s careening off the edge of a cliff. I can’t think of a more self-destructive act.

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Heartsease

Go read this beautiful meditation and eulogy from the fine writer Meteor Blades at The Next Hurrah.

And by the way, Hugh Hewitt can once again kiss my ass.

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This, I’m Worried About

Honestly, people are killing their children with diets of disguting food. I recognize their freedom to do this if they want to, but it is a real problem nonetheless. I’d be a lot more sympathetic to their complaints about how difficult it is to raise kids in popular culture if they cared as much about this very serious physical health issue. I’m not a purist in this way. I like a Big Mac and fries now and again myself. And I’m not suggesting that everyone serve tofu and green tea to their toddlers. But from what I see at the grocery store — and the statistics on childhood obestity and diabetes bear this out — childrens’ health is becoming demonstrably compromised by the way they are eating and the sedentary lifestyle they are leading.

And the government could certainly help with this by forcing schools to limit the crap they serve kids at school, requiring physical exercize in the curriculum and instituting a major education initiative to get parents to feed their children correctly. This is a scientifically proveable problem, not some sort of vague unease about teen age sexuality (which, by the way, has had the older generation freaking out for my entire lifetime — it’s just that we are now the older generation.) The costs to society and to individuals of this health crisis, on the other hand, are going to be huge if something isn’t done to reverse this trend.

So, here we a have real, tangible problem for parents and children in desperate need of a solution. But neither party can even go near it because it will be greeted with fury by corporate America and will be perceived my most Americans as an elitist attack on their lifestyle. Instead we’re going to regulate cable TV shows because parents can’t be bothered to figure out how to program their V Chip. How fucked up is that?

Picture Via Tom Moody

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She Can Boast (lyingly)

Via DC Media Girl, I see that Ann Coulter has been named as one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people:

In her books, Coulter can be erudite and persuasive, as when she exposes the left’s chronic softness on communism. But her signature is her gleeful willingness to taunt liberals and Democrats, to say out loud what some other conservatives dare only think–that Bill Clinton is a “horny hick,” for example, and his wife “pond scum.” It’s what makes Coulter irresistible and influential, whether you like it or not.

Here’s the opening passage of Coulter’s “erudite and persuasive” exposure of the left’s chronic softness on communism in her influential book “Treason”:

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love American, too. No they don’t. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence. The Left’s obsession with the crimes of the West and their Rousseauian respect for Third World savages all flow from this subversive goal. If anyone has the gaucherie to point out the left’s nearly unblemished record of rooting against American, liberals turn around and scream “McCarthyism!”

Liberals invented the myth of McCarthyism to delegitimize impertinent questions about their own patriotism. They boast (lyingly) about their superior stance on civil rights. But somehow their loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for discussion? Why can’t we ask: Who is more patriotic — Democrats or Republicans? You could win that case in court.

Fifty years ago, Senator Joe McCarthy said, “The loyal Democrats of this nation no longer have a Party.” Since then the evidence had continued to pour in. Liberals mock Americans who love their country, calling them cowboys, warmongers, religious zealots and jingoists. By contrast, America’s enemies are called “Uncle Joe,” “Fidel,” “agrarian reformers,” and practitioners of a “religion of peace.” Indeed, Communists and terrorists alike are said to be advocates of “peace.”

That first sentence isn’t a typo although when I first read it I thought for sure it was. It would make so much more sense if it said “Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of reason.” But, no. She means it.

I suppose one could agree that it is erudite (and unbelievably awkward) to use the word “lyingly” the way she used it, along with the word “gaucherie.”
But that’s nit picking. Her erudition on the subject of McCarthy is well — non-existent. She basically just made shit up. But, nonetheless it was apparently “irrestistable” to the great historical minds at Time magazine. They are evidently wingnut crackwhores over there.

Aside from her astonishing lack of historical knowledge, however, is it even remotely possible that anyone who isn’t already a true believer can make any sense of that mess? For instance, what could possibly be persuasive in this paragraph?:

Liberals invented the myth of McCarthyism to delegitimize impertinent questions about their own patriotism. They boast (lyingly) about their superior stance on civil rights. But somehow their loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for discussion? Why can’t we ask: Who is more patriotic — Democrats or Republicans? You could win that case in court.

Liberals invented the myth of McCarthyism to keep the other side from questioning their patriotism. Which is, of course, what McCarthy actually did and was eventually disgraced for doing. But whatever. Liberals also boast about their superior stance on civil rights — lyingly. How this related to the fact that we invented McCarthyism, I don’t know. And yet we “somehow” (by boasting “lyingly” about civil rights?) have made made it impossible to question our loyalty to the United States.

But lest we forget, Coulter isn’t actually talking about patriotism. She says that Democrats have a “preturnatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason,” which is actually many degrees worse than calling somebody a “cowboy” or referring to castro as “Fidel.” Indeed, it is a capital offense.

I guess this kind of intellectual incoherence is what makes Coulter so “irresistible” to TIME magazine which has decided to go back to its old 60’s ways when it was widely known to be a tool for the political establishment. Between naming Powerline blog of the year, Joe Klein calling the Democrats “undemocratic” and this, I think it’s fair to say that the Noise Machine has a proud new member — or maybe it’s actually a founding member that’s just recently decided to wear its stripes more proudly. Good to know.

I’m reminded of this passage from Allen Ginsberg’s great poem “America”

I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

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Prove It

Matt Yglesias and Atrios both got to this post by Amy Sullivan before I could, but since it’s one of my hobby horses, I can’t help but weigh in. Sullivan makes the case again that the Democrats could gain from bashing Hollywood because a lot of parents are uncomfortable with the sexual innuendo on “Friends”. Or something like that.

After the election we all argued quite a bit about this sort of thing because the religious right jumped on an initial bit of analysis that said that “moral values” were the primary reason people voted for Republicans. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than that, but it set off a division in the party, I think, between those who believe that we can achieve a majority by competing for social conservative type votes through religious rhetoric, those who believe that we will win a majority by competing for libertarian type votes through appeals to individual liberty, and those who believe we will win through a muscular foreign policy message.

In order to gain a political majority in this country we need 51%. We have 49%. This question of where we are going to get that majority could be answered in any number of ways or any combination of ways. But, you have to settle on some sort of strategy and mine comes down on the second option. It reflects my personal values and I think it presents a stark, clear choice between the two parties now that the Republicans are being shackled by their image as the party of the religious right extremists. I think it’s good policy and good politics both to embrace a “mind your own business” message in light of how far out the Republicans have become. Now is not the time, in my opinion, to blur the lines. It’s time to draw them clearly. All those people who watched FOXnews in disgust during the Schiavo matter are open to the argument that the Republicans are trying to impose radical religious values on the country.

But, others disagree and think that social conservatism is where the votes are and that’s where we should concentrate our efforts. I have serious doubts that attacking popular culture will be seen as anything more than pandering but there are ways to test this issue.

The fact is that if all these religious people stop watching these television shows they will be cancelled. The entertainment business is the most sensitive market in the world. They measure their product sales every single day and they will stop producing it if it isn’t selling. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it, and if there are as many religious people in this country as we are told, Hollywood will respond. Immediately.

A bunch of pulpits and righteous religious people, who are said to be legion in this country, can get something like this done without doing anything more than just saying no. Because right now a lot of these religious people do watch all this crap. The numbers do not lie. They are buying Britney CD’s and Grand Theft Auto for their kids. What they seem to want is for somebody else to make it easier for them to say no to their kids. I suggest that they say no first and popular culture will follow. If religion is as politically and culturally powerful as people keep saying it is, it should be able to persuade people to do this one simple thing.

Of course, there is the little problem that people lie about this stuff. They lie about going to church, and they tell pollsters they are unhappy with things on television — the very things they continue to watch. I imagine that many people think they need to say these things even as they spend Sunday watching the football game and Sunday night glued to “Desperate Housewives”. They refuse to use the V-chip that could keep their little kids from watching any channel they choose and they give their kids money to buy the junk that that they profess not to like. But I can’t say as I blame them. Hypocrisy is a requirement of American citizenship these days. Pity the person who admits out loud to being secular or unconcerned with current sexual morality. Better to pay lip service to the morals police than bring down their provincial ire on your head.

And it should be remembered that even if Democratic politicans could benefit from bashing Susan Sarandon and Janeane Garofolo, all of this pressure would likely go awry and we’d be seeing halter tops on the Venus de Milo. Neither politicans nor bureaucrats are capable of telling the difference between art and pornography and they will always err on the side of tight assed stupidity. Like this. And voluntary censorship is worse than government censorship. At least you can vote the censors out of office. If you leave it up to the corporations somebody’s mentally challenged nephew will be deciding that the word “but” is dirty.

And as Yglesias points out in his piece, this is all being done in an environment in which pregnancy rates are going down, youth violence is going down and a whole host of other youth pathologies are showing every sign of dissipating. Yet, the one thing that parents could really do to help their children — get them off the fucking couch in the first place and feed them some real, nutritious food — they evidently aren’t eager to do. Instead, I suspect that many of those who aren’t just saying what they think people expect, simply want politicians to make them feel that they are good parents by expressing their faux outrage for them — while they munch on their super-sized big macs and eagerly watch women metaphorically scratch each others eyes out competing for some zero in a hot tub on “The Bachelor.”

But like I said, all that needs to change things here is that these vast numbers of priests, pastors and preachers tell their tens of millions of obedient flocks to stop watching the bad stuff. The bad stuff will disappear if they do it, guaranteed. Take this message to the churches, not the politicians. If we are to believe that this country is awash in religiosity and that religious people make up the constituency that can make or break any political party, then I say prove it. Here’s your issue. Get your followers to stop watching all the shows on television that are allegedly polluting our culture and you will have shown once and for all that social conservatism is a majority position in America.

Update: For the record, I do not disagree that we should be addressing the needs of parents. The government can do many things to help people with this, from providing good schools to subsidising decent health care to dealing with as Yglesias calls it “the interesection of feminism and capitalism.” As a liberal I think the government has a vital role to play in economic issues, particularly those that help the middle class. That’s what we do.

But, by feeding into the myth that the biggest problem facing America is a decline in “values” — a decline which is promulgated by liberal elites (who, yes work for corporate masters) — we play into the the right wing’s game plan. They have created a myth that liberal values are the prime cause of people’s discontent instead of the very real pressures that people feel in the squeeze between work, family, consumerism, freedom and responsibility. Some of these things the government can help with, some of them they can’t. But the problem with the current formulation is that the Right has convinced everyone that the government should interfere in the ways in which it is most clumsy and ill equipped and abdicate it’s responsibility to do the things it can actually do pretty well.

Here’s the thing. Everytime we expolicitly play into this “oh the country’s values are going to hell in a handbasket” game, we are playing on GOP turf. I think Amy Sullivan is correct to say that we can use this issue as a way into the hearts and minds of overworked and worried parents. But not by joining with Joementum and condemning Hollywood or, as Amy Sullivan said, pulling a Sistah Soljah on Susan Sarandon. (And, why her? She won the Oscar playing a nun who fights against the death penalty. See what happens when you meddle in art and culture? The good gets all mixed in with the bad.)

The way you worm your way into this topic is by responding to people’s concerns about popular culture with an empathetic, “well we live in a free country and apparently a lot of people like that stuff or it wouldn’t be on. However, I think we should definitely try to find some ways for you to be able to spend more time with your kids so you can have at least as much influence as the television does.”

What you don’t do is allow their framing of the argument to stick. It only reinforces their message that liberalism is the cause of all evil. We just have to stop doing that. Whenever we find ourselves speaking in terms that could come out of a Republican’s mouth we should ask ourselves if it’s really common ground or just internalizing their criticisms of us. 90% of the time it’s the latter.

Update II: Julia discusses the strange hippie, liberal phenomenon called … parental responsibility.

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Now It’s A Democracy Not A Republic?

From Joe Klein to Ed Koch to every wingnut in the land, the meme of the week is that Democrats are undemocratic because we believe in an independent judiciary and will use the illegitimate minority cudgel of the filibuster to thwart the will of the people. Shame, shame on us.

Yes, we do desire that judicial nominees not be ideologically so removed from our way of thinking as to turn the country in a completely different direction — like proclaim for the first time, for instance, that the government derives its authority from God rather than the governed. And yes, since the Republicans repealed all the tools they used to accomplished the same tempering of ideology when a Democrat was president, we have threatened to use the only tool at our disposal, the filibuster. This means we have no respect for the majority and are attempting to thwart the will of the electorate, who evidently voted en masse for a radical reform of the judiciary in the last election. Who knew?

Undemocratic. I wonder what one would call impeaching a twice elected president for a personal indiscretion would be? How about redrawing the electoral maps whenever it suits in order to establish a larger majority? Or how about staging a recall less than two years after a scheduled election just because the governor had hit a rough spot in public opinion? (The way Bush is going right now, I wish we had such a thing at the federal level. We could kick his unpopular ass out. But, surely that would be considered “undemocratic” wouldn’t it — if Democrats did it?)

The word “democracy” is sadly being bastardized to such a degree that it’s losing its meaning. It’s become like Jesus — a code word for Republicans to bash Democrats. But with all this talk of the filibuster being undemocratic, and it is, it certainly is no more undemocratic than the Senate itself. The Republican party currently represents a majority of states in the Sernate, but the Democrats represent a majority of people. What’s democratic about that?

Or how about that relic called the electoral college — you know the little anachronism that got Junior his first term? Talk about undemocratic. If we are going to start going down the road to a pure democracy then I would suggest that we should probably eliminate both of those institutions.

But it’s a funny thing. Whenever I’ve had conversations bemoaning the undemocratic streak in the GOP these last few years, what with its unprecedented blow job impeachments and recalls and district redrawings and the like, I’m always met with the standard wingnut line “the United States is a republic, not a democracy.” Suddenly, we’re hearing all this stuff about thwarting the majority. How convenient.

I get tired of pointing out the intellectual inconsistencies on the right. But it is so vast and fertile a subject that I come up against it again and again and again. This is way beyond something as prosaic as hypocrisy. They feel no shame in completely doing an intellectual 180 overnight when circumstances require it. They don’t even betray a rueful shrug of the shoulders with a “well you know, it’s politics.” They argue with the same supercilious, ferocious rudeness on whatever side of the argument serves them at any moment, without ever acknowledging (even, I suspect, to themselves) that just yesterday they were on the other side. Very, very weird.

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