|
|
During the 2004 primary election, the Conservative Club for Growth wrote about then-front runner Howard Dean, "Howard Dean should take his latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs." While this quote is quite funny (it's given me some good laughs), it is evidence of a sharp divide in the left-wing community between people who are "of the left" and people who are "to the left."
The Club for Growth is describing the "of the left" people, and it is understandable that they associate liberalism with these characteristics. After all, "of the left" people have become the face of progressives. They hail from big cities and spend their time in SoHo in New York or Valencia Street in San Francisco. Some are Hollywood actors, but more frequently they are upper middle class to wealthy people, who identify more with left-wing lifestyles than left-wing ideas. These are the people who think politics consists of cracking jokes about when John Ashcroft covered the breast of the statue at the Justice Department. These are the people that laugh hysterically to any "Bush/Dick" double entendres. The "of the left" crowd knows very little about what actually goes on in the political world, except for on sexy issues like abortion, gay rights and global warming (not to diminish the importance of these issues). They generally spend their time in capoiera classes, slam poetry events or trendy bars. The "of the left" crowd never really concerns itself with issues such as war, the military industrial complex, economic inequality, or anything else that has marginal importance in most American's lives.
It's not that these people are bad (although they can be really annoying and self-righteous). In fact, they do a lot of good. Hollywood actors and moveon.org (big "of the left" institutions) have raised awareness on a lot of issues and have won important victories for progressive causes. And let me be perfectly clear, they are still FAR better than any right-wingers, bar none. But ultimately, they do damage to people like me , who are "to the left." (Disclaimer: I have many "of the left" qualities, I admit. I'm from a city and have spent time in coffee shops and enjoy Chai Tea). The elitist attitude of a lot of these people is that their lifestyles of looseness and faux rebellion are far superior than "middle Americans." Because the "of the left" crowd has such a megaphone through its Hollywood prominence and big city prowess, many Americans associate liberalism with these folks. The perception begins to take hold that "liberalism" is about coffee houses and alternative lifestyles and not about freedom, justice, diversity, equality and caring for the least among us.
The "to the left" crowd, which is much more of a silent constituency, is actually the majority of progressives (as hard as it is for some conservatives to believe). These are the people that helped the Democrats win Senate seats in Montana, Missouri and Virginia. They are concerned about soliders dying for a disaster of a war. They are appalled that our economy is so inequitable. These are also politicians like Ann Richards, Jim Webb, Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown. (If you don't know who these people are, you are "of the left") These politicians may not listen to Indie music and they may not think gay marriage is the most important issue of our lifetime, but they champion things that are really important for the everyday lives of Americans, like Universal Health Care, ending the War in Iraq and expanding the equality of opportunity.
The real harm of the "of the left" crowd is that they turn off people who otherwise would have progressive views from voting for left-wing candidates. Middle Americans are angered that the "of the left" people look down upon them and scoff at their values of sacrifice, community and family. Ultimately, aren't these good values? Sure, some of these values have been hijacked by Right-Wingers to mean things that they are not. But, they are values that I respect more than "getting to know myself in a foreign country." (an ultimate "of the left" obsession). Even though some Americans may hold progressive views, they become MORE angry at the perceived attitude of the "left-wing elite," that they end up voting Conservative. That is why self-identified "liberals" have declined in numbers in the past 25 years.
All of us in the left-wing community (myself included) should start paying attention to the way we are perceived. There is nothing wrong with being "of the left," but we should also rethink what our core values are. In my view, being liberal has nothing to do with vague lifestyle and cultural qualities, it is a philosophy of ideas that make people's lives better.
Andy Slater Contributed to this Report
!
Second, any time someone comes up with a paradigm that puts MoveOn and "the Hollywood Left" into the same group, I cringe. MoveOn was started as a centrist call to censure Bill Clinton, and their central office is not rabidly liberal, nor does their mailing list exclude those you'd consider "to the left." That seems to indicate that there's plenty of room for finding common ground between these two groups you've discussed, meaning any attempts by one to antagonize the other might well do more harm to progressivism than good.
Third, the reason "Hollywood Liberals" became a smear is because prominent actors since the turn of the last century have sometimes entered into discussions of the most pressing issues facing the country, usually on the left, especially concerning issues like the poor and wars. The right wing would relentlessly attack them for this (see also: blacklisting--accusations of communist sympathies might have had SOMETHING to do with war and economic inequality). Your critique in this regard is glaringly shallow.
Whether you're meaning to or not, you're promoting a conceptualization of the progressive movement that grants creedence to the smears the right wing used over the decades in order to turn "liberal" into a dirty word. Howard Dean, as Governor, was one of the NRA's favorites, consistently earning an "A" rating, and governed as a pretty strong moderate, not unlike Ann Richards. Club for Growth opposed Dean for a variety of reasons, and wasn't going to support a progressive agenda regardless of who won the nomination, so why take their political messaging to heart and internalize them?
Both the Left and the Right have elements that risk turning off potential supporters, and it's hopelessly optimistic to think that will change anytime soon. Better to do what the conservatives did: learn to make common cause whenever possible, and marginalize only when absolutely necessary.
Thanks for commenting on the post. I think you hit on some really important points, and bring up some good items of debate. I do know that we have spent enormous amounts of time and money on branding ourselves, and unfortunately, this effort is part of the problem. People like George Lakoff who sit in their Berkeley offices and write an elitist book about "framing" contribute to the notion that we are a coastal elitist party lacking substance. Your point about moveon.org seems right on, I guess I didn't really know the history of it too well, although the way it is perceived now, it is grouped with the Hollywood left and they are a big part of their donor base.
In terms of Hollywood, most of the activism, as I noted, has been a welcome, important development. I'm more talking about events like the one in the Summer of 2004 for Kerry when a bunch of actors stood up and made ad hominem attacks at Bush (granted, they were well deserved). Kerry got a bunch of flak for calling these people the "heart and soul" of America. While some of them undoubtedly care about important issues, very few of them give credence to a careful analysis of policy and politics.
To be clear, I don't look down upon "of the left" people and I don't wish to antagonize them. I share many of their qualities. The post was more about expressing my personal annoyance that people who don't know much about how politics works, the causation of different events, and information on the major issues are seen by the mainstream media and conservative talk radio as "the left." This is as much the media and the conservatives fault as it is the "of the left" crowd, but I think it is important to note the difference between people who are culturally left wing and politically left wing.
You are right though that we share common goals, and we should focus on uniting.
I'm glad we can get a conversation going about this.
Look at how you phrased your passage about MoveOn: "I guess I didn't really know the history of it too well, although the way it is perceived now, it is grouped with the Hollywood left and they are a big part of their donor base."
Okay, do you see what happened there? A criticism that has been leveled against a left-wing group was internalized and then repeated WITHOUT BEING EXAMINED IN-DEPTH. Their name comes from the first e-mail they ever sent out, which was actually just one guy forwarding one sentence about how Congress should censure Clinton and "move on" with the People's business. From that grew a massive email list through which thousands of progressives can make an immediate impact on specific races. It was actually a quite simple and brilliant idea.
Incidentally, I have done more than my share of campaign finance work, and I don't know where you get the idea that the "Hollywood left" is a "big part of their donor base." According to CRP, MoveOn received only around 15% of its 2006 receipts from contributions over $200--the VAST majority of their funds come from small-dollar contributors, and their large contributions tend to come from people like George Soros (who are also frequently and thoughtlessly denigrated in the public discourse despite having done things like, say, working for decades to bring about the fall of Soviet Communism, but who certainly aren't 'Hollywood left') Link
Earlier this week, a guy that right-wingers like to use as representative of the left, Ward Churchill, got fired from his gig teaching in Colorado. I spend upwards of six hours a day online, much of it on the liberal blogs, and I have yet to find ANYONE on the left lamenting this firing. Nobody on the left listened to Ward Churchill, and if it weren't for Fox News giving him years and years of free exposure and prominence, I doubt any of us would have ever heard of him. Now, because the right wing likes to try and smear us all by association with him, despite the fact that none of us listen to him or think he has any place in serious discourse, are we all supposed to drop everything and rush to, once again, condemn him for remarks he made that no reasonable person would agree with?
And you've missed my point about Hollywood activism. We were raised in a relatively peaceful era, largely free of the sort of red-baiting and fear-mongering that ran rampant during the Cold War (recent years excluded--I'm assuming, for the sake of discussion, that we here mostly became politically aware during the Clinton years, or at least remember them well enough for them to be formative). People in entertainment have always championed social concerns--there's no "development" to be welcomed in that regard. But for a long time, any entertainer who publically espoused any affinity for leftism was doing so at the risk of his or her career. The studios even encouraged this sort of witch hunt--20th Century Fox sold its players down the river like they were getting paid for it. Check out what happened to Zero Mostel in the 50s, for example. In order for someone in Hollywood to be taken seriously, they had to show their loyalty, which usually took the form of veering right and naming names (see also: Ronald Reagan). Hell, Charlie Chaplin was essentially locked out of America for perceived communistic tendencies, all because he made movies about downtrodden workers and nationalistic tyrants. This is the first generation of American superstars in quite some time to not have to truly fear for their careers should they self-identify as liberals. And the ones who do...well, you can see what happens to them. Sean Penn, Rosie O'Donnell, Janeane Garofalo, Alec Baldwin...am I missing anyone from "Team America" (other than 'Maaaaa....Damon!')? There is still big business in trashing Hollywood, and for some reason it's not usually Drew Carey or Kelsey Grammar or Fred Dalton Thompson (yet another counter-example to the "Hollywood left" meme) taking the hits.
And the only thing I want to say further about Lakoff is that I think your argument about the Berkeley theoritist image might be dependent on the fact that we, unlike the vast, vast majority of Americans, know who the hell George Lakoff is. I don't expect the average right-wing voter knows the career details of Frank Luntz, either. But as your statements about MoveOn show, this isn't a battle being lost because of a groups ideology or activities, but because of PERCEPTION of their ideologies and activities. As the wise man once said, "don't believe the hype."
Also, the people I'm more talking about are not Hollywood activists (and I appreciate your analysis about the communist witchhunt) or even moveon.org. I think I probably sidetracked my point by mentioning them.
I'm more referring to the people I grew up with in San Francisco who call themselves "left wing" because they are part of the "left wing cutlure" but they have no base of political knowledge. They are more interested in soundbytes and do not understand the real vehicles of making change.