But hey, no one could have predicted that Fox would use these appearances for PR purposes, right?
So there you have it. For everyone who was so sure this was brilliant, because the candidates were "reaching out," apparently we forgot that the traditional media would still have an opportunity to define for America to whom they were reaching out. Fans of the candidates assured us that it was (pick one): 1) swing voters; 2) open-minded conservatives (ha!), or; 3) people who had lost their TV remotes. But gosh darn it if the Fox PR machine hasn't schooled us all. It was populists! Which means both Clinton and Obama -- and all Democrats, by extension -- are elitists.
While the notion of Fox News as "populist" is a ludicrous rightwing perversion in one sense, it is quite accurate in another sense we dare not ignore--and that is, quite simply, that it reflects the truest test of elite power--the ability to define the essential contours of populist thought, and to cast someone else as the dreaded "elite".
This is a very old game, and it's way past time we got a better handle on it. Before getting into any sort of messy details, it's important to note--ala my diary two weeks ago, "The Ontology of Snark: A Prelude"--that there's a common ego defense mechanism in play here:
Displacement: Defence mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening. For example, a mother may yell at her child because she is angry with her husband.
Real, actual conservative elites have been using displacement as a stock in trade for millenia, creating ghost elites for unwitting populists to misdirect their anger at. It was virtually inevitable that Obama's "new politics" of "change" would be targetted with this ancient charge. It was not inevitable that it would have such a weak response. But, then, the consultant class that crafted it really is part and parcel of the Versailles elite. So what could we expect?
I wish there as a way of getting a message like this out:
The son of a navy admiral who was also the son of a navy admiral, who has been in the senate since the time that Poison was taken seriously, and has been running for President since 1999 is calling me elitist?
by: Valatan @ Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 21:01
Of course Obama is an elitist. He's a friggin US Senator for God's sake! They're all elitists! The only question is, what kinds of elitists are they? They're either elitists who want to raise other people up. Or elitists who want to keep other people down. It's really just that simple.
In Malice In George CostanzaLand, I focused on how two elite twits (Chris Matthews and sidekick) criticized Obama for acting like a regular person and asking for what he wanted in a diner, rather than performing an act of being a "regular guy". The folks who ru[i]n our political system are so totally immersed in Versailles that all they know is how to pretend to be "regular guys." Actually being a regular guy is, quite literally, inconceivable to them.
But, of course, the diner story went nowhere. Another attempt to present Obama as a clueless elitist has been much more successful--spinning his remarks about the causes and consequences of rural and small-town bitterness.
And, unfortunately, this second attempt has even been furthered here on Open Left, in the frontpage diary, More Obama & Elitism.
But it should be absolutely clear that the context for both episodes is exactly the same. Both took place in George CostanzaLand, where "appearance and reality, trivia and subtance, lies and truth, myth and reality have all changed places."
Obama told the truth
and the media treat it as a gaffe. Classic case. He's exactly on point about working-class frustration with Washington politicians.
A couple of hot-shot commentators hit the target on Chris Matthews, but neither hits the bullseye. To do that, we need to take a trip back to a classic Seinfeld episode....
Yesterday, both Dday at Hullabaloo and MissLaura at DKos commented on a particularly bizaare piece of cable tv political threatre on Hardball, which was pointed out by Media Matters.
Here's the Media Matters summary:
On Hardball, while remarking on Sen. Barack Obama's reported request for orange juice after being offered coffee at an Indiana diner, David Shuster asserted: "[I]t's just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, 'Here, have some coffee,' you say, 'Yes, thank you,' and, 'Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?' You don't just say, 'No, I'll take orange juice,' and then turn away and start shaking hands." Host Chris Matthews agreed, "You don't ask for a substitute on the menu."
DDay made a fairly solid point:
Now, this isn't limited to Democrats, actually, here's a recent report about how McCain couldn't fold his pizza in half like a real New Yorker. The difference is that those quick hits on Republicans don't usually make that metaphorical leap to turn some random event about bowling or orange juice into a symbolic manifestation of the candidate and Democrats in general. I mean, if this did hit Hardball, someone would say that everyone knows McCain's a real man and he just isn't used to New York's way of chowing down on pizza but he made a game attempt and isn't it great that he tried? What a guy!
And MissLaura got down into the wonky details of Dinerland:
Third, "substitute" doesn't mean what Matthews thinks it means. So I'm going to school him on that one. (But first, to establish my regular-guy authority to speak of diners, I will note that in each of the last two towns I've lived in, there's been a diner waitress who knew my regular order.)
A substitution is when you're ordering a meal and ask to have one of the components of said meal replaced with another. Perhaps you ask for fresh fruit to replace the bacon in your lumberjack breakfast, to choose a hearty-regular-guy-eating-a-big-meal example that I predict will send a thrill up Tweety's leg. Asking for orange juice as a stand-alone order? Not substituting.
And if your waitress likes you -- an experience Tweety may never have had -- you damn well can substitute.
No, those idiots are the ones who don't know how you work a damn diner. Shoot, they apparently don't know how you order in one.
But both, I fear, missed something quite essential here. For what Tweety & Co were talking about was not how one behaves in a diner, but how one performs there-specifically, how a candidate performs the act of being a "regular Jo(e)" in a diner. And, as it turns out-Surprise! Surprise!-performing authenticity is quite another thing than actually being authentic.
Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer, began blogging in October 2005, shortly before the New York Times revealed the program of illegal NSA wiretaps begun shortly after 9/11. He wrote about the program and the lawless philosophy behind it in his first book, the Times bestseller, How Would A Patriot Act. Shocked as he was at the Bush lawlessness, he became increasingly shocked at the media's indifference, and seeming inability to even grasp either significant details or the profound moral and political issues at stake. His ongoing analysis of Republican misrule and the complicity of the media in either ignoring or misreporting it has grown deeper, and drawn increasingly more attention, particularly since his blog moved to Salon in February 2007.
His focus in Great American Hypocrites is the national scene, where an adoring press lionizes one would-be conservative moral giant after another, following the template created by John Wayne--a thrice-married, alcoholic, drug-addicted draft-dodger, considered a heroic figure because of the roles he played, particularly during WWII when bigger stars than he were fighting overseas. In California, we have our own John Wayne knock-off as governor, and equally ga-ga press that never seems to notice the enormous plot-holes in his script, such as his continued alliances with polluting industries against the health and environmental welfare of harbor area communities. By illuminating the larger, national pattern, Greenwald's new book illuminates a great deal about state and local politics as well.
"Just as drag queens must use wildly exaggerated female costumes, makeup, and gestures to mask their masculinity, rightwing leaders must use increasingly flamboyant warrior disguises--and an increasingly war-hungry agenda--to obscure what really lurks behind those disguises."
--Glenn Greenald, Great American Hypocrites, p. 110
Note: This is a blogosphere review, written for folks with considerable online experience and refernece points. I also did a print review in Random Lengths News that's available for other alternative newspapers to run, here.)
Don't let the title fool you. Hypocrisy is not the point of this book, it's merely the hook. The point is the role of the hypocrisy, and the larger politics of dissembling and distraction that it is a part of. To understand it is to destroy it... or at least to start the process.
Greenwald begins by noting a striking disconnect--on the one hand, voters broadly favor Democratic Party positions over Republican ones across a wide range of issue, but on the other hand, Republicans have won more elections. The reason?
The most important factor, by far, is that the Republican Party has used the same set of personality smears and mythical psychological and cultural imagery to win elections. These myths and smears are amplified by the rightwing noise machine and mindlessly adopted by the establishment media. Right-wing leaders are inflated into heroic cultural icons, while Democrats are demonized as weak and hapless losers. These personality-based myths overwhelm substantive discussions and consideration of the issues.
For most of us deeply immersed in the blogosphere, who see examples of this pointed out and discussed virtually every day, this may not seem like such a striking revelation. But even seeing it on a daily basis doesn't mean that we fully appreciate its significance. To the contrary, we're so immersed in it that it's difficult to put into perspective. This is, to my knowledge, the first book to argue that character attacks on Democrats and contrasting idealization of Republicans constitute a core explanation for Republican electoral success over the past three decades. It's this central thesis that gives Greenwald's book a larger significance that deserves attention from everyone concerned about politics, including dedicated policy wonks.
I'm always amazed by the clarity of his writing and his ability to indict the conservative mindset with well-articulated factual patterns, but this book is written with such vicious joy that it is just really fun to read.
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