Popular Culture or Not: Your Choice

by Tatchai Ruangrattanatavorn

It is now the 21st century, and we’re living in the Age of Technology. Progress has been very rapid, and within a few decades, many advanced machines and tools have been created, followed by new forms of entertainment that meet society’s needs. There’s no doubt that almost everyone, regardless of race, gender, or age, knows what television, movies, videogames, and the Internet are. These things, along with many other forces, make up modern American popular culture. Then come the consequences. Many people say that popular culture has been deteriorating our intellectual abilities and that it also has negative influences on our society as well. How do we know that this is true? Are videogames, television shows, movies, and the Internet actually making us stupid?

    Steven Johnson wrote Everything Bad is Good for You in response to public antagonism against modern popular culture, arguing that these forces are, in fact, nutritious after all. Given the generational aspect of these suspicions, however, we’ve only been hearing a one-sided perspective and negative criticisms of the video-based culture. In order to make wise decisions about whether to embrace or combat the consequences of rapid technological change, we should at least hear what the other side has to say first.

    Johnson definitely demonstrates the credibility and authority to argue his position effectively. According to Leigh Bureau, Johnson as both social critic and technologist, is no futurist, but rather is able to see emerging trends that are relevant to our lives and explain them before anyone else. He lectures widely on technological, scientific, and cultural issues, has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and co-founded FEED, Plastic.com, and outside.in. His earlier books reveal a diversity of interest and expertise. The Ghost Map explains the emergence of modern public health. The Invention of Air explains how innovative ideas emerge and spread, shaping our modern world. The Interface Culture explains how technology transforms society, predicting the rise of the blogosphere correctly. Mind Wide Open explains how brain science is yielding new understandings of the human personality. No wonder that Everything Bad is Good for You follows the same style and trend, as the first major book to argue in favor of modern popular culture.

    As the world continues to berate popular culture as the good-for-nothing, principal contributor to the decline in our intelligence, Johnson counters that “popular culture has, on average, grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past thirty years” in order to clarify public misconceptions and to present the subject in a different light (xv). Throughout the book, the tone is that of a friend, a proponent, speaking to us in casual occasions, trying to share his ideas and thoughts on certain issues, unlike the didactic tone of an authority figure or lecturer demonstrating his knowledge to the uninformed. The core position is that video games are becoming more complex and thus making us smarter because they force us to exercise our intellectual labor as we make decisions in the virtual world.

    In order to illustrate his point, Johnson uses famous and common games such as SimCity as examples. As complex videogames force us to think in new ways, we become smarter: “It’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re playing a game, it’s the way you’re thinking that matters” (40). Therefore, the content of the game does not matter as long as it challenges you to think. The beliefs attack the simplistic assumption that only reading is good, and in order to qualify his argument and gain credibility, he acknowledges the counterargument that reading is of absolute importance and adds that “nonliterary popular culture is honing different mental skills that are just as important as the ones exercised by reading books” (23).

    As for television, Johnson claims that it is also getting more intricate than ever but still not as much as videogames because of the degree of passivity associated with TV watching (63). The components of complexity that have risen in television programs in the past few decades are multiple threading, flashing arrows, and social networks (65). Johnson uses a graphic visual to compare between television programs of different times, demonstrating a clear contrast between the complexities of plotlines. As usual, he centers the examples on common programs, such as The Sopranos, The Simpsons, South Park, Scrubs, and Lost to engage contemporary readers. Such programs require the audience to “fill in” the missing pieces (83), and as audiences get used to doing that, “flashing arrows” are no longer needed to explain what is going on (73), whereas previous generations of television programming included more internal plot cues. Reality shows, Johnson claims, require audiences to probe the environment and solve problems as puzzles do (94) and develop “split second intelligence,” as viewers recognize the facial expressions of characters, a facility which can be measured as AQ or autism quotient (98), a concept related to emotional intelligence borrowed from the field of psychology (98).

    The Internet, according to Johnson, challenges our mind “by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces, and by creating new channels for social interaction” (117–18). Johnson illustrates the concepts of participation and social interaction by using examples such as email, IM, and blogging, citing the statistic that approximately 270,000 blog entries are published each day (119), and concluding with the claim that the Internet allows us to connect in different ways, instead of more antisocial technologies such as television (124).

    Everything usually comes in pairs, good and bad, agreement and opposition, and there is no exception in the debate on the effects of videogames on our society. David E. Newton’s Violence and the Media cites many studies on the effects of televised violence and aggressive behavior. In one longitudinal study in Columbia County, New York, from the 1960s to the 1990s, researchers studied whether or not children who watched more violent television would grow up and engage in aggressive behavior as adults, with a sample size of 875 third-graders (29). The conclusion was startling. The accumulated research clearly demonstrates a correlation between viewing violence and aggressive behavior—that is, heavy viewers behave more aggressively than light viewers. Children and adults who watch a large number of aggressive programs also tend to hold attitudes and values that favor the use of aggression to resolve conflicts. Their correlations are solid. They remain even when many other potential influences on viewing and aggression are controlled, including education level, social class, aggressive attitudes, parental behavior, and sex-role identity (30).

    On the other hand, three of the four television network studies found that there was no evidence that violence on television causes aggressive behavior by viewers. Two of these studies were later reexamined because of methodological flaws (36).

    Two more studies confirm the conclusion that violent media make people numb to the pain and sufferings of others. In the first study, when asked to fill a questionnaire while hearing a fight that involved an injured person, participants who played violent a video game for 20 minutes took longer to help the victim, rated the fight as less serious, and were less likely to hear the fight. In the second study, when witnessing an injured person, participants who just watched a violent movie also took longer to help, corroborating conclusion mentioned above. A political cartoon drawn by J.D. Crowe implies the same theory, but somewhat differently. The cartoon argues that violence in television, movies, and videogames contribute to violence in reality, but not as the source of violence itself since there are also other more significant contributing factors that initiate the violence. These factors that lead to violence in real life, as suggested in the cartoon by the order of chain events, are the availability of guns, lax gun laws, permissive parenting, anger, and then violence in television, movies, and videogames. Without these crucial, tangible factors, violence in real life would not occur in equal magnitude, but arguably, the same claim can be made if there were no violence in the media.

    From another point of view, videogames could be viewed as an art form. As Judith Galas put it, “Computer games are art—a popular art, an emerging art, a largely unrecognized art, but art nevertheless.” This perspective is still controversial, of course, but videogames have demanded vivid graphics, rapid processing, greater memory, and better sound. In The Seven Lively Arts, Gilbert Seldes, a leading literary and arts critic, argues that popular forms such as jazz, the Broadway musical, Hollywood cinema, and the comic strip have gained cultural respectability over the past 75 years, implying that videogames should have the same privilege before they can be judged objectively.

    On the other hand, videogames, together with computers and the Internet, could have other social consequences. As people immerse themselves into cyberspace, indicators find them increasingly difficult to separate real life from virtual existence. As Processor Timothy Ferris of Berkeley puts it, “[They] will be able to watch grandmothers be shot by snipers in Sarajevo from six camera angles without leaving [their] couches . . .” Another problem that the Internet might cause is social isolation, and in short, as Norman Nie, a political scientist at Stanford University, says, “The more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real human beings.” Some critics have disputed these claims as biased.

    So does popular culture really make us smarter? In a way, it does. Even though videogames, television shows, computers, and the Internet are just virtual reality, they still offer us a different prospective to our physical reality. For example, the world in Grand Theft Auto might just be a simulation, but it gives us an experience from a different angle. On the other hand, it is nothing like real life for most people. Playing basketball on Xbox won’t make you become an NBA star one day. But there are so many experiences in the world that shape who we are and what we will become, and these new experiences are what making us smarter and adept at adjusting to our complex society. And because there are different kinds of intelligences, there are other significant aspects for us to consider. Certainly, being smart is a great thing, but we must realize that conventional intelligence is not everything needed for a successful, fulfilling life. The most important thing, it could be argued, is to be aware that we’re human beings. We’ve transcended the limitations of other living creatures not only because of our brains, but also because of our moral conscience. We can choose to play and watch as many violent videogames and movies as we want, but we must be conscious of our morals and constantly avoid doing harm to others. Only in this way will we not degrade our own species and hope to prosper.

The Paradox of Self-Actualization

by Joshua H. Liberatore

As Edna Pontellier swims offshore and enters the cold, numbing waters that swallow her at the end of Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, she recalls a critical conversation she had with her friend Adèle Ratignolle about the nature and extent of maternal self-sacrifice. Edna had claimed – to her friend’s consternation – that she would only be willing to sacrifice “the unessential” (money, physical life, etc.) for her children’s sake, not “the essential” (presumably, her soul’s freedom of will). This troubling conversation, familiar to readers from the early chapters of the book, seems to contain the breadth of contradictions and mysteries contained in Edna’s path to suicide, and in the first instance, the reader shares Mme. Ratignolle’s dismay and confusion as to just what Edna means. But by the novel’s closing paragraphs, we understand that Edna and her friend are talking about two very different types of responsibility. Ultimately, Edna’s tumultuous “awakening” pitches her into a struggle between responsibility to her family and her society on the one hand and the deeper responsibility to preserve her own free spirit on the other, with her suicide marking a deadly, but final, victory of the latter over the former.

    Chopin explores the very real dangers faced by anyone – especially a woman in the late 19th century Creole aristocracy – who would dare to defy convention and live a thoroughly interior life, beholden to no one’s will but her own. Edna Pontellier, far from the prototypical fallen woman we observe in Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, does not pin her hopes on successful adultery or a mere break with her filial duties as mother and wife. From Edna’s last – and critically interrupted – conversation with her thwarted love Robert Lebrun, we see that she entertains no notions of divorcing her husband to elope with the younger, more attentive Robert. She even quips that if her husband Léonce were to “offer” her freely to his rival Robert, she “should laugh at [them] both.”

    We see that Edna’s goals do not rest on the faint hope of consummating her flirtation and deep feelings for Robert, nor were they a simple rejection of her boring family life – a husband who treats her like “a valuable piece of property,” and children who find better care at their grandmother’s farm. She is trapped by either a failure or triumph of more complex proportions, and her suicide leaves either interpretation plenty of room for validation. As failure her death march into the sea’s overwhelming embrace represents her inability to live up to Mlle. Reisz’s strict example of the liberated courageous artist with “strong wings” to carry her to new heights of independence and self-actualization. In this case, her dalliance with Alcée Arobin (Robert’s mediocre foil) and her unrealized but serious love affair with Robert (who lacks Arobin’s open disdain for propriety and convention) are both signs that Edna’s wings are not as strong as they could be. Shackled by the weakness of spirit (or imagination, and certainly Mlle. Reisz’s fiery talent) and the burden of the domestic norms that she cannot eschew completely, her suicide confirms an enterprise gone awry, stymied by circumstance.

    More uncomfortable, perhaps, the suicide as triumph finds support in Edna’s belief that she is only sacrificing the “unessential” (physical life), and not succumbing to the enslavement of her soul. As she stands naked on the shore contemplating her course, she imagines her two sons as “tiny antagonists,” living reminders of the barrier to her total freedom, which keeps her from pursuing her painting and her pretensions to simple living to their fullest measure. Mme. Ratignolle had stated naively (in Edna’s opinion) that to give one’s life for one’s children was the ultimate sacrifice that any mother could be expected to make. “You could do no more,” she offers, to which Edna replies, almost arrogantly, “Oh, yes you could.” With no possible social or sexual outcome, Edna’s awakening must be pursued “on the spiritual” plane of existence.

    As she swims to her death, although the mixed imagery of chained dogs and pungent pink flowers leaves us quite unsettled, Edna must believe that she has pursued her “awakening” to its only logical culmination, necessitating a physical death. Does she think she is protecting her children in this act of sacrifice, as the original context of the conversation indicated? Is she looking after her husband’s reputation by staging a plausible “accident” (Edna was well-known as a weak swimmer)? This line of questioning is left beautifully ambiguous and unresolved, but what is clear are the haunting stakes of self-actualization, the terrifying price one pays for total independence, and perhaps, (chillingly) the inherent self-cancellation of pure acts of will.

Two Perspectives on “The Great Gatsby”

by Joshua H. Liberatore

A Dream Not So Much Deferred as Rescinded

Parties and social gatherings are useful devices for illustrating the character and mores of a given social and cultural milieu, which is essential for any novelist who wants to convey thematic depth within a convincing setting. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway’s keen observations of (if passive participation in) the many social gatherings that color the novel’s landscape provide clever insights into the novel’s larger purpose: to chart the fate of honest, passionate dreams in a setting populated by vacuous, careless people. An initiate into what he feels will become a glamorous and gratifying East Coast prosperity, Nick is at first amazed, then ironically bemused, and finally horrified by what he finds at the core of this world. It is the parties – ranging from private, listless dinner gatherings in exclusive East Egg, to chaotic, melodramatic apartment soirées in New York, to the outrageous, debaucherous revelries at Gatsby’s comical mansion – that steer Nick, and the reader, through this continuum between awe and disenchantment.

    The novel opens as Nick accepts an invitation to his cousin Daisy Buchanan’s palatial East Egg home, where he recalls his long-held distaste for her husband Tom, a former Yale classmate and confirmed bigot, and meets the lithe and “hard-bodied” Jordan Baker, a golf champion with a dubious reputation for dishonesty and foul play. Although initially impressed by the grandeur and complacent comfort he witnesses under the Buchanan aegis, he quickly sniffs the rot and corruption beneath the smooth, polished veneer of wealth and privilege. Daisy speaks hollow nonsense, moves from self-congratulation to bitter jokes at her husband’s expense (although in this context, Nick learns, it is sociable and accepted to laugh at his host, if Jordan’s example can serve as a guide; she is a regular guest), and generally exudes an air of inauthentic, shallow self-absorption, which is in turn only humanized by the broad knowledge of Tom’s infidelity and her pathetic hope that her daughter, Pammy, will grow up to be a “beautiful little fool,” the only plausible goal, her tone suggests, for a woman of her set. To the reader, Nick confesses his private distaste at the scene, not knowing sometimes whether to laugh along or “phone immediately for the police.” There is a shabby, depressive squalor to the evening, and although Nick’s preliminary wariness and nervousness betray an innocence that he later sheds, the reader is prepared for any calamity, which Nick’s subtle perceptions seem to intimate from the novel’s first pages.

    When Tom drags Nick along to an apartment gathering in New York, where he funds a working-class mistress and hosts a more motley cast of associates, we are exposed to another fascinating (yet ultimately disconcerting) facet of 1920s social life (but by no means exclusive to the period): the anonymity of the big city (as opposed to the cloying stuffiness of suburban intimacy), the expanded sexual possibilities of casual encounters, and the addictive sense of freedom and spontaneity available at an adult playground of sorts. And yet, Myrtle Wilson’s gay social life breaks down in bloodshed, drunken oblivion, and destructive chaos. Nick witnesses Tom’s capacity for physical violence (we are already privy to his verbal savagery), a disappointing lack of concern for propriety and decorum, and (perhaps) his own confused seduction by the photographer Mr. McKee, in whose room Nick appears to end the night, his memory failing him thereafter, his powers of description rendered mute by drink and disorientation. Nick tries – his hopes for general success depend on it – to a be a good sport, but once again, we sense his inner discomfort, something deeply offended in his private self, his Midwestern innocence again wounded.

    By the time Nick becomes a regular guest at Gatsby’s over-the-top festivities, he seems jaded and alienated, even as he pursues the faint traces of his original dream, now in the form of a love affair with Jordan Baker. His fascination with her cool, dispassionate, even plainly disdainful stance toward the world seems pure contradiction with his stated values. Nick prides himself on his honesty and uprightness; Jordan proves to be a liar and a cynic who is moved to laughter only at the sight of others’ discomfort, even pain. She is the consummate athlete: all body, no emotional warmth. And in his almost too vulnerable tenderness, Nick seems overcome by attraction to his opposite (just as the lowly James Gatz became Jay Gatsby in pursuit of his negation: through wealth and status he achieves Daisy Buchanan and, he thinks, a kind of respectability). In other words, as Nick moves from passive observation to active participation in the lively, spirited leisure which Gatsby’s parties embody – both through his association with Jordan Baker and his belated affection for Gatsby himself – he also moves closer to the impetus of his own disillusionment and a wounded retreat back to the “warm heart” of his native Middle West.

    What begins as youthful voyeurism toward a world he wonders about but only experiences at the margins, now delivers only profound hollowness, shame, and genteel destructiveness: a world he cannot permit himself to penetrate without the sacrificing the very qualities he deems sacred to his core person.

The Sham of Wealth and Privilege

In his great novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald employs Nick Carraway, the narrator and philosophical mouthpiece of the book, as a subtle commentator on the crude contradictions of wealth and privilege exposed in its pages. Nick is an affable, well-adjusted young bond salesman – we learn from the opening pages – who comes to the East from his “warm” Middle West to learn about the world, whose lively thrills and anxieties find their base in the fashionable suburbs of New York City. By the end of the novel, Nick is disillusioned (but not broken) and chastened (but not ruined) by what he has seen and experienced of that world, by the “careless” “rotten crowd” – exemplified by Tom, Daisy, and Jordan Baker, his East Egg milieu – who “break things” and leave it other people to pick up the pieces.

    Although Nick conforms outwardly to the routines and fashions of this social and economic elite (he tolerates their parties, he indulges in their largesse, he accompanies them, however reluctantly, on all their escapades), hints at his discomfort throughout the novel and his eventual alliance with Jay Gatsby – the mysterious “nobody” who earns Nick’s admiration, if not his envy – show that he inwardly questions their behavior and the values of their society. Nick thus serves as a sort of double agent in the novel. His infiltration of Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s crowd provides insight into a society to which he appears to aspire, but at the same time provides a critical commentary on the destructive potential and tendencies of upper class frivolity.

    Nick works hard to make his readers believe he is a straightforward and honest narrator. The opening sentences of the novel recall some crucial advice his father had given him: to remember always to withhold judgment of others out of compassion for the possibility that “not everyone has the advantages” that Nick enjoys. We are told, just as quickly, that Nick has made an exception to this rule in favor of Gatsby – whose romantic ambition to “repeat the past” captures Nick’s fascination and wins his loyalty, even though he reminds us throughout the narrative that he “scorns” Gatsby, remains deeply suspicious of his business dealings and dubious of his affected personality and speech, and refuses to join in on Gatsby’s shady bond business, which Nick perceives correctly to be shady and illegal. Nick does, however, side with Gatsby when Tom and Daisy show their true viciousness and low opinion of Gatsby in the end. Tom views Gatsby as expendable, and after finding out all about Gatsby’s illegal business activities and exposing Gatsby’s designs on recapturing Daisy’s love, feels no compunction in directing the crazed and armed George Wilson to kill Gatsby, even though Tom knows it was Daisy who ran down Myrtle in the “death car.”

    Nick proclaims his alliance with Gatsby only once in direct terms, when he tells Gatsby that he’s “worth the whole damn bunch of them” once Nick’s disapproval of Tom and Daisy’s retreat behind their wealth and social status is complete and it is clear that Gatsby will have to be sacrificed in order to cover that retreat. Nick is horrified, a feeling of disgust which extends itself also to exclude Jordan Baker, his sometime girlfriend, whom he suddenly rejects after the debacle of Daisy and Gatsby’s affair is laid bare, she too becoming a symbol of the careless amorality and fundamental dishonesty, which the whole East Egg world begins to represent for Nick. Perhaps Jordan reminds Nick of his own complicity in Gatsby’s demise: she has after all employed him at Gatsby’s request to facilitate the reunion with Daisy. She has brought him to Gatsby in the first place, and exposed him to the façade of prosperity and well-being that Gatsby’s house and outrageous parties come to represent. Gatsby, in turn, becomes emblematic for failed ambition and misplaced zeal, and Nick’s disaffection from all that his New York experience once promised to deliver begins with his recognition that the cruel world of fast drivers (the reigning metaphor for his relationship with Jordan was a “collision” between equally careless drivers) and debaucherous parties will always destroy both ambition and honesty in anyone who is excluded from or deemed distasteful to the East Egg elite (an exclusion which he seems to share with Gatsby by the novel’s end). Nick’s decision to reject that world in favor of his native Middle West is a definitive statement of his heretofore inward questioning of a world to which he has conformed only in motion, never in spirit.

The Prospects of Renewable Energy in Michigan

by Slawomir Gyrga

Michigan lags behind state leadership in deployment of wind energy. The state currently has nearly 130 megawatts (MW) of installed wind energy, but is ranked 22nd in existing capacity. Michigan has the potential to install 7,460 MW, which would place it 14th in this category. Governor Jennifer Granholm has been publically supportive of renewable energy in general, but the state missed an opportunity to stimulate growth in this sector by passing a weak renewable energy mandate in 2008.The Michigan legislature conceded to utility concerns rather than thinking creatively about how to jumpstart a failing auto industry and the infrastructure that supports it. (Michigan, believe it or not, actually has a decent manufacturing base for the solar energy industry.) Michigan can still have an impact, but a lot of the wind energy industry’s manufacturing plants have already been sited in other states, a missed opportunity for a state that is facing factory closures and a rapidly shrinking economy.

    Until we have stricter term limits for elected officials I don’t think we’ll see the change we need. Career politicians have been reluctant, historically, to support tough new laws, especially when it requires their constituents to foot the bill. National efforts to mandate or encourage renewable energy investment have fallen victim to this practice, most notably in the southeast and in states with abundant stocks of fossil fuels. Despite this trend, and an even more troublesome “protectionism” in the oil and gas industries, 28 states have pioneered mandates that require utilities to include renewable energy sources in their generation portfolio. The fossil fuel industry has been getting away with ecological murder for decades by not having to pay for externalities, costs that, if added to the price of basic utilities, would reveal the true cost of present consumption habits. This omission, which amounts to a price distortion, combined with government support in the form of Federal subsidies and tax incentives, creates an unfair competitive advantage for the fossil fuel industry. It is amazing that a mature industry – harmful to human health to boot – continues to receive subsidies from the U.S. government, tantamount, in fact, to providing coupons for the purchase of cigarettes or fast food. Anyone who has a few minutes to look at the research budget for different energy sources supplied by the U.S. government will immediately discover a fundamental imbalance in its energy priorities.

    Yes, currently, the deployment of renewable energy is expensive. It also requires cost-intensive upgrades to our nation’s transmission and grid systems. However, strip the fossil fuel industry of government tax breaks and force energy providers to pay for externalities and all of a sudden a level playing field obtains. The price of energy is going to increase regardless of whether the energy generation is coming from renewable or fossil fuel sources. Everyone needs to understand that. The general public may look at fossil fuels and think they are inexpensive, but the true costs are being paid for with our tax dollars, via subsidies, personal health insurance, environmental remediation, and other vehicles. Similar to shopping at Wal-Mart, clinging to traditional fossil fuels allows you to see savings on your receipts, but who is really paying for the lower prices?

    Moving to a “green” economy is going to hurt only in the sense that it will force uncomfortable behavioral changes. People will have to reevaluate their lifestyles, which eventually will put pressure on manufacturers. We saw this briefly in 2008 when gasoline prices spiked. Statistics revealed that consumers avoided SUVs and car manufacturers scrambled for more efficient models and began to advertise economy cars heavily. Examples such as these will trickle through our economy and change our lifestyles. Is it a bad thing? I really don’t think so. On the contrary, this pressure will spur greater investment in public transportation, a renewed interest in urban living, and more energy efficient appliances and technology, for example. Will hundreds of truck drivers lose their jobs? Probably. Instead, maybe they’ll work on trains or install solar panels for a living. Truck drivers aren’t entitled to drive trucks, in my opinion. We shouldn’t avoid necessary policy changes because of a fear of job losses. Find a new job, partner.

    To return to the case of Michigan, yes, Michigan can participate in the green energy economy. It is feasible, for example, to locate offshore wind turbines in the Great Lakes, which would be a logical manufacturing niche for the state. Offshore wind energy has tremendous potential precisely because it harvests strong and unimpeded wind resources and at the same time can potentially avoid complicated permitting processes and NIMBY resistance. Right now such installment isn’t very economic, though; especially, since the onshore market is fairly unsaturated. Not until after the good onshore sites have been developed and our country levies a carbon tax should anyone expect to see a significant investment in the Great Lakes offshore market. Right now, the renewable energy industry expects offshore wind to be two to three years away, with the first projects coming on line off the northeast coastline. Since it takes years to develop a project and a long lead time to successfully ramp up manufacturing lines, however, it does make sense for the Great Lakes states to continue to study the potential for it.

    It was reported in this week’s news that the United States installed and generated over 8300 MW of wind energy in 2008. This is no doubt a terrific accomplishment, but I’m nearly certain that my excitement will be attenuated at best after seeing this growth graphed next to overall demand. New global energy demand continues to outpace renewable energy deployment, and that is a problem. The renewable energy industry needs strong policy signals from Federal and state authorities in order to invest the necessary capital and reverse our dependence on fossil fuels. It won’t be easy, it won’t be comfortable, but it is necessary.

Generation O: Obama, Hope, and a New Normal

by Tricia Guest

The last thing I wrote on my chalkboard as I left my classroom on Election Day was “Congratulations Senator.” As much as I wanted to think that Barack Obama had the election wrapped up, there had been too many articles about the Bradley Effect and one too many McCain-Palin signs in my solidly middle class neighborhood for me to be more confident. I figured I would be a good sport no matter what the turnout was and show my second and third graders support for the new president.

    When I was able to fill in “Obama!” and display Wednesday’s morning Detroit Free Press, I was thrilled. I had every intention of being a good sport and congratulating McCain if he had won, but I was certainly glad I did not have to fake a smile.

    There has been much in the paper in the post-election media blitz about the amazing, almost unbelievable, accomplishment of Senator Obama. The first African American president, son of a single, working-class mom, who worked his way up the political food chain before the age of fifty. Photographs of African Americans dancing in the streets of downtown Detroit until the wee hours of the morning after the official results were in dominated the paper. Much was made of Obama’s inspirational candidacy and victory, especially in terms of how he will inspire black children and serve as the ultimate role model.

    As I was writing my congratulations on the board, I thought of my first group of students – about seventy five black children in the poverty-stricken Mississippi Delta. When President George W. Bush won his first term, sixth grader Charles came in crying, worried that the new President “was going to take away [his] check.” The next eight years did not supply much hope for Charles or his classmates in the way of opportunity or reassurance that someone would give them a chance. My students did not have much hope for themselves, no matter how many times I told them that hard work would benefit them in the long run. Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges they faced, especially in the era of Bush the Second, a handful of them are now enrolled at Mississippi State University; I would love to be able to celebrate this victory with them. Obama will likely give their peers and younger kids still enrolled at Threadgill Elementary more tangible hope, hope that is much more meaningful and realistic.

    Eight years later, I am teaching in a classroom that is the polar opposite of my first one: predominantly white, save a few Asian students. Fully-loaded SUVs line the parking lot every morning and kids report on weekend trips to apple orchards and skiing vacations. I spend so much time reading children’s literature and working out math problems in preparation for lessons that it is hard for me to leave my teacher mode; I still almost automatically think of situations through the eyes of one of my second graders. When they saw the newspaper hanging from the chalkboard, I do not think they necessarily thought of President-elect Obama as being black, but rather as the future President of the United States. I think that is the most important feature of this election – that Barack is not only a black man who will be President; he is a hard-working, charismatic, well-spoken man with ideals and values in line with the American philosophy. It will be normal for my little guys to see him represent them.

    Not seeing color is ridiculous, as Stephen Colbert, the fake news anchor extraordinaire, jokes about frequently. The comments are as ridiculous as he means them to be. It is not that I don’t want my kids to acknowledge that Barack Obama is black, but rather to acknowledge him first as their President, and realize secondly that he happens to be black. I want them to see the First Daughters playing with their puppy on the South Lawn and recognize that the girls are not too much different from them. They will obviously see his color, but I don’t believe it will play a major role in the opinion they later form of him and his politics. Eight-year-olds, white or black, will probably concern themselves more with the dog’s breed than the girls’ skin color.

    The historical significance of Obama’s achievement will be learned in high school history classes, when students are forced to memorize the date Obama was elected and possibly have a vacation day on his birthday. Maybe that is when they will think back to second grade and realize that the newspaper hanging on the board was not just a note of congratulations but instead my best effort to help them see how remarkable it was way back then to witness an African American first turn a dozen or so states purple, and finally swing them toward true blue on election day.

    The very red suburban community in which I teach has never held diversity as one of its greatest values. Republican campaign signs were almost as common as jack-o-lanterns a week ago. I first assumed this was due more to fiscal conservatism, and some religious conservatism, but I think there was some racism involved, too. A colleague’s playing The Jeffersons’ theme song in the teacher’s workroom and calling it the new National Anthem lost all comedic value when it was followed by the comment, “Well, I hope they are happy now and stop complaining about racism.” I understand that some of the adults I work with have much further to go in changing their worldview than do my students. Their ignorance is rooted not only in racism, but also fear: fear that the ease with which my coworkers and I have been able to capitalize on the opportunities handed to us might not be so easy for their kids to come by, as if an Obama presidency threatens their sense of entitlement to the tools and outcomes of success. Obama will not take away this opportunity from the middle and upper classes, but he will make sure that children from all races and walks of life will have the best shot at those resources. But in the grip of this irrational fear, they might conclude that the world is not designed for their children’s eminent success. That would be scary for any parent until they realize that more opportunity does not have to come at the expense of the privileged, but that the privileged might have to work harder, too.

    The refreshing discovery is that my students do not and will not feel this imaginary fear. They will be diligent in their studies, maximize their talents, and accomplish great things alongside kids who were inspired by Obama to overcome poverty or racism or a poor educational foundation. A typical black family will be the one at the White House, doing ordinary family things. My students are the future leaders of our country, with the potential of growing up with a more sensible view of race than that of their parents’ generation. In one election cycle, Americans may have helped deter the spread of racism.

    This political victory is historically – and emotionally – significant for the African American community. I cannot fathom what it must be like, after decades of elementary school teachers telling kids only half-heartedly that they can dream big, to actually see the sky light up with hope. Obama has not walked an easy road; teachers like me can now point in complete sincerity to the photo of the forty-fourth president and honestly tell my students that no matter what road they take, as the Obama campaign mantra suggests, they all can.

    The newspaper still hangs from the chalkboard right between the map of the United States and the daily rotation schedule. I will probably replace it with a photo from the Inauguration, and possibly hang up a picture of the newly elected President next to the flag. Every time they stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, they will see their President and be reminded that everyone can, and with determination, we will.

Politics and the Art of Distraction

by Joshua H. Liberatore

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen Wag the Dog (1997), or if you’ve never seen it, now is the ideal moment to give it a fresh viewing. Two days before Americans go to the polls in what are expected to be record-high numbers, I can’t think of a better two-hour syllabus for gaining an appreciation of just to what lengths our political system will go to make sure its vested interests remain entrenched and secure. And if you are finding yourself a bit weary of the campaign talking points – the numbing idealism of the Obama catwalk, the sinister depravity of McCain’s stumping – a good political satire might be just enough to energize your trip to the voting booth. But satire done right is never soothing, nor is it meant to be. While there are laughs to be had in Wag the Dog, the dark realities that our laughter is meant to cast in new light are as troubling as they are true.

    First, a quick synopsis. In order to quell the breaking story of alleged sexual impropriety involving the president and a Firefly Girl, a crack public relations team gathers in the bowels of the White House to devise a plan that will deflect the attention of the ravenous media and the swayable American public. It is less than two weeks before election day, and the popular incumbent must be allowed simply to coast his way into a second term. Any scandal, no matter how dubious or absurd, could destroy him at the polls and bring to power an opportunistic senator lacking scruples. Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) is the specialist tactician called in to lead the effort, and in his beard, wool hat, and cozy sweaters, he is calm, decisive, and ruthless – an unusual but attractive picture of the backroom Washington operative. Within hours, he concocts the basic plan: with the help of a Hollywood production squad led by Stanley Motts (Dustin Hoffman), the White House will fabricate a war against Albania – chosen because Americans are expected to know nothing of the place – and finesse the news cycle away from pedophilic sex toward the firm ground of national security, a guaranteed bestseller.

    The media campaign necessitates the full suite of propaganda tools: memorable but meaningless catchphrases, calculated symbolism, staged photo opportunities, even a few theme songs. In the single best scene of the movie, songwriter Johnny Dean (Willie Nelson) directs a mixed-race gospel choir in a rousing rendition of “Guarding the American Dream” with what looks like a glockenspiel mallet as Stanley watches gleefully from behind the glass of the recording booth. By all calculations (poll data cited throughout), Americans seem to be buying the ruse. When the rival candidate, with the help of the CIA and FBI, tries to counter the media blitz by announcing not that the war is a sham but only that it has abruptly ended, a new twist shifts the focus onto the frenzied rescue of an American sergeant, William Schumann (Woody Harrelson), said to be caught behind enemy lines (in actuality, he’s incarcerated in a U.S. military prison). To keep the public entranced and emotionally attached to this narrative, Conrad and Stanley initiate a hilarious national trend that involves jettisoning pairs of old shoes onto tree branches and electrical wires to show solidarity with “Old Shoe” while a second theme song is hurriedly recorded and stuffed into the stacks of the Library of Congress for convenient “discovery.”

    What’s perhaps most shocking about watching Wag the Dog in 2008 is to observe its uncanny prescience. Made a year before Bill Clinton asked lawyers to parse the word “is” in the Monica Lewinsky show trials, and a full five years before George W. Bush was transformed overnight from a pathetic silly-billy into a messianic warmonger, the film reveals some curious insights about our perennial political games and some particulars about our lamentable present. In Wag the Dog, the creative Hollywood minds to whom we entrust so much of our credulity function as plausible foils for the real-life think tanks and lobbyists that influence our policy and budget appropriations. They are organized, they are supremely well funded, and they know how to meet tight deadlines. Those that do the job well are those that best captivate audiences with the most compelling narratives. Success is not predicated on rational strategy or commonsense problem solving but on effective storytelling. And when the story itself sags, sound, image, and special effects collaborate to wash away the leaks in the design.

    This November, our national story is certainly sagging. A serious financial crisis is at hand. Wars against abstract nouns rage on without cease, with an overextended military straining the operational budget and inflating the mounting debt. Unemployment plagues many states and cities. In short, there’s a lot indeed to be distracted from. In the past week, U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan conducted cross-border raids into neighboring Syria and Pakistan, respectively, killing eight “militants” in the former, and at least two dozen in the latter. If anyone noticed these signs of an escalating war on terror, nobody seemed to be talking much about it, nor has the U.S. government recognized the likelihood of civilian casualties. The presidential campaigns failed to make mention of them, or if they did, nobody watching cared. Given that Obama and McCain locked horns over the theoretical advisability of widening the war on the Taliban and al Qaida in two televised debates, their subsequent neglect of an actual air strike on Pakistani soil seems both bold and willfully dishonest.

    Other unsavory news includes the breakdown in negotiations over a Status of Forces Agreement with the “sovereign” Iraqis, who understandably have serious concerns about the draft resolution they’ve been presented and will be unlikely to approve it before the expiration of the current U.N. mandate that grants U.S. forces legal authority to remain in Iraq on December 31st. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the various factions putting pressure on him are haggling over the precise date of withdrawal of forces and the matter of jurisdiction over coalition misdeeds. McCain likes to scold Obama for his unwillingness to recognize the success of the mythical surge. Obama wisely demurs; perhaps he has read reports from the many informed experts who argue that the troop surge’s association with decreasing violence is a classic instance of correlation without causation. In fact, ethnic cleansing – the systematic dismantling of mixed Shi’a and Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and other cities – is chiefly responsible for whatever calm is said to exist. The other factor is the rarely-discussed program by which 100,000 Sunnis, many of them former insurgents, are simply paid – with U.S. supplied funds - to halt their resistance and instead join the employ of the goverment-sponsored militias, the Awakening Councils. Not very democratic these trends, but this war was never about spreading democracy, regardless of what President Bush chooses to believe.

    Mere details, you say? For the Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, and Pakistanis at the core of these untold stories, the details matter. Of course, few Americans want to be reminded that our wars are not going well: the “bad” war of choice that Bush will bequeath his successor is no nearer to “victory” than it was before the much-lauded “surge” came into effect; the “good” war in Afghanistan is deteriorating with each week of continued violence. These are unpleasant stories, and on the eve of the most important election in a generation, few seem interested. Meanwhile, our candidates make appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and “Letterman” and pay sportsmanlike homage to the studio altars of our national obsessions. Our news media track stories about Sarah Palin’s costume allowance, Obama’s immigrant aunt, and John McCain’s eight houses. We are caught up in hundreds of narratives at once and the endless patter of competition simply overwhelms us, exactly as it is meant to. Who will prove the more successful manipulator of our affections is still hard to tell, but the prodigious fortune spent toward this end projects a very ugly trend that is neither new nor necessary, as some have suggested. It turns out that truth imitates fiction in strange ways, in a striking inversion of the premise of Wag the Dog: instead of a phony war distracting American voters from the antics of an insipid political campaign, we have an increasingly superficial political campaign distracting us from the fallout of an ignoble war.

Biden vs. Palin: An Exercise in Self-Restraint

by Joshua H. Liberatore

The vice-presidential debate of last Thursday evening between veteran Senator Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin served a few simple purposes. First and foremost, it satisfied anxious Republican pundits and campaigners that the PBS-supplied moderator, Gwen Ifill, would not bias her questions or her adjudication in favor of Obama, the subject of her forthcoming book. In fact, Ifill’s approach was notably light-handed; she was strict and disciplined only when it came to timekeeping. She did little to challenge the content and sway of either opponent’s responses or the expected repartee. She neither pushed nor prodded the way she might have done, had not recent criticisms and a brief media frenzy chastened her toward a consciously bland umpireship.

    Governor Palin burnished her “average American” credentials and made a grand show of appealing directly to voters, which in the medium of television meant staring directly into the camera without cease, smiling broadly, and even winking flirtatiously at times. She peppered her comments with folksy expressions such as “gosh darn it” and “well, you know . . . up there in Alaska.” For the most part, she successfully avoided the awkward pauses and lexical monstrosities that characterized her unequivocally bad performances in recent network interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric. She offered a few policy “details” to shore up her appearance of preparedness, confidently deploying Ahmadinejad’s name whenever she had the chance, whether the Iranian president was immediately relevant to the discussion or not.

    Biden, for his part, was calm, jovial, and exceedingly warm. He watched his tongue carefully, resisting opportunities to attack, and hardly ever engaged his direct counterpart; every policy jab was directed at the absent father, McCain, who in turn became a proxy for the loathsome George W. Bush – safe choices on both accounts. Thus, Biden’s sharpest barbs were often a full two steps removed from the juicy target to his left (stage right), who simply smiled and embraced the event as another opportunity to get to know people: Biden, whom she had just met for the first time but called Joe, and the American people, through the picture tubes and plasma flatscreens of 50 million plus American households. As expected, Senator Biden presented more in the way of details, and leveled a few fresh criticisms of McCain platforms, but overall, he visibly downplayed his expertise and wide knowledge of foreign policy in the favor of a gentlemanly conversation in which “fundamentally different philosophies” were blithely accepted without either the fierce clobbering that many Democrats craved or the gaffe-ridden tirades that his campaign handlers feared. Early in the debate, he shyly pointed out to Ifill that Governor Palin had not answered her question, much as the polite student in the first row reminds an impassioned teacher that the bell has already rung. Even though he might have profited from pressing the issue, Biden seemed to understand that such limits must be tolerated without complaint, and did what he could to balance Palin’s “human narrative” appeals with his own authentic storytelling, blue-collar roots and all. In the end, like that well-meaning but essentially powerless student, he earned credit among his peers for issuing the notice without being able to restore full confidence in the system designed to obviate such reminders.

    Although arguably more interesting and lively than the first showdown between their principals Obama and McCain, the Biden-Palin debate was effectively a neutralizer in terms of campaign advancement. Nobody was humiliated, nobody did much damage. Highlights in the colloquy were subtle. Biden took the opportunity to teach viewers an important fact about Iran: the Ayatollahs, not the president, control “the security apparatus” (i.e. the Revolutionary Guard and the non-existent nukes). Ahmadinejad’s spicy rhetoric, which tends to be both deliberately inflammatory and viciously anti-Semitic, as Palin reminded us several times (true to her intensive coaching at the McCain compound), elicits a lot of media attention and U.N. consternation, but has all the real-life force of our own Secretary of Interior’s pronouncements. This minor structural detail holds, of course, immeasurable significance for actual diplomacy and foreign policy, but as many Americans were meant merely to be impressed by Palin’s frequent use of a difficult foreign name and a few tidbits from translated speeches, Biden’s gentle correction of a widespread public misconception went largely unnoticed.

    Also subtle but vitally significant was Palin’s early warning to viewers that she might not answer the questions in the way expected by her opponent or her moderator, a bizarre if revealing strategy, which nevertheless went unchallenged. Our leniency in this matter was merely assumed. The substantive link between question and answer is apparently the province of the conformist mainstream, to which Biden and Ifill were instantly condemned by this outrageous disclaimer. Only self-appointed “mavericks,” on the other hand, deal in that “straight talk,” which “the American people are craving.” Lessons in straight talk notwithstanding, Palin twice invoked the name of the commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan as McClellan (a former White House Press Secretary perhaps?). Biden visibly registered this error but, per the reigning formula, did not call attention to it; certainly he knows that David McKiernan is the commanding general in question, because, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, it’s his job to know such details not just drop names in televised speeches. It was a minor, forgivable blunder perhaps, and one Palin’s defenders are all too ready to overlook, even as it reveals the shallowness of her competency and preparedness for a role in which mistakes of this variety would embarrass her personally, her would-be boss, and the nation at large. Frankly, we’ve had enough of that kind of thing.

    Probably the most sinister subtlety of the conversation emerged from Palin’s response to Ifill’s question about each candidate’s understanding of the vice president’s responsibilities. Without ado, and clearly riding high on the leverage her vast executive experience gives her, the Alaska governor mused – rather too casually for my taste – about a potentially expanded legislative function of the vice president’s office. Apparently, Palin harbors a vague fantasy of basking in Cheney’s legacy of aggrandizement, manipulation, and behind-the-curtains ambition, a prospect that Biden, a career senator with an intimate knowledge of the constitutional separation of powers, was wise to eschew on national TV. This confession, fleeting and brushed aside as it was, too became a pregnant detail of the evening’s faceoff. But subtlety doesn’t play well on television, and in the end what was missing from the debate – sustained argument and precise responses to well-prepared questions – disappeared into the ether of a tightly managed public relations skit, in which all three actors capably acted their assigned roles. And a little over two thirds of the way into this ninety-minute docudrama, one looked at the clock and sighed, grateful merely for the harmless neutrality of the performance but far from enlightened.

Economic Apocalypse or the ‘Parturition of Self-Knowledge’

by Joshua H. Liberatore

For a while now I’ve thought that a handful of essays in our language should be reread every three or four years, throughout one’s lifetime, just to keep the ideas fresh and secure in our collective consciousness. Among these would have to be Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience” (1949), Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963), and certainly George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (1946). All of these works offer critical reminders of the vigilance and discipline thoughtful people must maintain against threats mounted by dangerous political monopolies, ideologies of coercion, and the concomitant erosion of individual liberties. Given the financial volatility of recent weeks, it occurs to me that Anthony Burgess’s insightful “Is America Falling Apart?” – first published as an editorial in the New York Times November 7, 1971 – is a necessary addition to this short list of prescient commentaries. Burgess, the British novelist and critic best known for A Clockwork Orange, had just spent a year as a visiting professor at Princeton University, and he proved himself a keen observer of some disturbing trends in American society, patterns whose legacy we face with greater acuity every day in 2008.

    The overarching theme of Burgess’s essay is that America’s historical resistance to government intervention and centralized authority (for certain measures anyway) is the root cause of various degradations in services and infrastructure that Burgess observed firsthand. Such an attitude was leading the United States down a path of psychic and physical self-destruction. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, what most struck a European visitor like Burgess was the dreadful state of public transportation and roadways in and between American cities. He also noted a beleaguered education system. Concerning the rather prosperous New Jersey school district in which he placed his six-year-old son at the time, he remarked: “America has always despised its teachers and, as a consequence, it had been granted the teachers it deserves.” He was amazed, in turn, at how disposable and poor our consumer products seemed in comparison with the tremendous might and ingenuity of our industrial capacity.

    Burgess attributed these domestic shortcomings to America’s being what he called a “prewar country, psychologically unprepared for one thing to go wrong.” Because America had never been thoroughly devastated by the wars that had brought Europe to its knees twice in thirty years, it had simply never expected its government to offer more in the way of comprehensive public services. He could also see that though many Americans took visible pride in cultivating a sense of self-reliance and autonomy – where transportation, education, and consumer satisfaction were concerned – America was also showing some serious fissures in its foundations. Burgess was astute to see that “where private ownership prevails, public amenities decay or are prevented from coming into being.” In the wake of the current mortgage meltdown, we’d do well to reflect on this imported wisdom.

    What President Bush is now fond of calling “the ownership society” has basically relieved governments – state and local, but most egregiously Federal – of the responsibility to look after the people’s basic safety, health, and tuition. Burgess was well aware of the American fear of state planning, long associated with the failed communism of the Eastern Bloc. What Americans neglected to see (and often still do) is that some degree of socialism has worked quite well in the rest of Europe. In one of the most trenchant passages of the essay, Burgess remarked:

America is anachronistic in so many ways, and not least in its clinging to a belief – now known to be unviable – in the capacity of the individual citizen to do everything for himself. Americans are admirable in their distrust of the corporate state – they have fought both Fascism and Communism – but they forget that there is a use for everything, even the loathsome bureaucratic machine. America needs a measure of socialization, as Britain needed it. Things – especially those we need most – don’t always pay their way, and it is here that the state must enter, dismissing the profit element. Part of the present American neurosis, again, springs from awareness of this but inability to do anything about practical implementation. Perhaps only a country full of bombed cities feels capable of this kind of social revolution.

Burgess understood that sacrifices were inevitable, in so far as budgets are limited. He knew that throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, many European countries – England, France, and Italy – had been forced to cut back significantly on military spending in order to keep their vast social programs solvent and operational. Imperial egos were bruised, of course, but even Great Britain was wise enough to see that its world ambitions had become too expensive, too unwieldy, and spending at home was not only necessary but indeed the only humane option.

    Nearly forty years later, America is still not, strictly speaking, a “country full of bombed cities” and has still never seen the kind of mass slaughter and brazen destruction of property that led most European governments to invest more heavily in what we naively call “social services,” as if basic health care and general literacy were mere bonuses and not the core elements of a stable, self-respecting community. The European birthright of guaranteed health care, generous unemployment and pension benefits, fair and equal, top-down education programs, and of course, high-quality mass transportation grew out of the traumatic experience of near self-effacement. But even after the terrorist attacks of September 11th in 2001, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Minnesota bridge collapse in August of 2007 – just to list three of the more memorable policy failures – many Americans still do not seem persuaded that our government should and could do more to maintain and improve quality of life at home. (Even if we must accept the inevitability of fruitless wars abroad and a “defense” budget that readily consumes more than fifty percent of tax revenues, to say nothing of deficits beyond comprehension.) Thus, we are moved to repeat Burgess’s provocative query: Is America falling apart? As the financial markets nearly collapsed and one institution after another went bankrupt in the past few weeks, many at home and around the world undoubtedly asked that very question. In the absence of a promising answer, what we did hear was a frenzied response from the Federal government, as this most Republican of Republican administrations was forced to silence its rhetoric against regulation and government intervention and take activist measures, through the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, to staunch the fiscal hemorrhage. A profoundly deregulated mortgage market and the bad borrowing habits of ownership-minded Americans had apparently caused the crisis, and only the deep pockets of the U.S Treasury, with its trusty flow of loans from Asian and European banks, could feasibly effect a turnaround.

    As investors and homeowners watched, drop-jawed, from the sidelines, our government stepped up to a Herculean labor in damage control, the very kind that Burgess had seen England embrace after World War II, the very kind he figured Americans eschewed from the depths of their souls even when the need was often clear and pressing. First Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, then Bear Stearns, then AIG – sorry Lehman Brothers! – then Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs felt the clammy but firm clutch of the Federal colossus under their trembling thighs. And Americans of both stripes knew something remarkable was happening, something only vaguely captured by the grandfatherly reassurance of the gentle Henry Paulson and his confused looking boss, who looked the nation in the face and postured confidence in “the system.” Ominous phrases such as “market correction” and “injected liquidity” were uttered, measures undertaken to forestall the “disorderly failure” of certain institutions. No one yet knows what the result will be of these massive mobilizations of taxpayer-funded resources (estimated cost: $700 billion), but what’s already noteworthy is the mere willingness to engage such options, not to mention the public’s trust that they will be effective in the long run. Questions remain about who the primary beneficiaries of the bailouts will be – CEOs and corporate board members or lowly bank account- and mortgage-holders. Our leaders assure us that they are acting with the interests of both Wall Street and Main Street at heart. Is such a balance possible?

    During a political epoch in which we have spent an unfathomable amount of money, dedicated immeasurable resources, sacrificed much human life, and indeed relinquished sacred civil liberties in the name of such nebulous causes as “the global war on terror” and “ensuring the blessings of liberty” overseas, we must recognize that the comforting myths of self-reliance and rugged individualism and our presumed distaste for government interference are as vacuous and illusory as our naïve faith in the fabled free market. Our government interferes all the time, just not in those areas of public life where we shudder to countenance the intrusion of – dare we say it? – socialism. In 1971 Anthony Burgess discerned a sort of mild neurosis among Americans who knew that the system was broken but could not foresee a solution. But he also interpreted this neurosis as a positive signal that Americans too felt something akin to the collective pain that had ultimately delivered necessary social improvements to Europe in the post-war period. This general uneasiness constituted, he decided, the early pangs of a wounded innocence giving way to realism. “The agony that America is undergoing,” he said, “is not to be associated with breakdown so much as with the parturition of self-knowledge.” If the recent actions of the government to insert itself in realms it typically chooses to ignore serve as any indication of a shifting paradigm, we wait patiently for its further translation into much needed domestic improvement projects of equal proportions.

Ribbons and Fireworks at the Democratic National Convention

by Chiara Liberatore

I’ll admit it. I was totally inspired by the recent speeches at the Democratic National Convention. I was drawn in by the seemingly vulnerable and human qualities of the speakers’ emotions and personal stories. I believed in the promises and even felt a little . . . should I admit it? Patriotic. Wow. At work during the night of Obama’s speech, I was receiving text messages from friends around the country exclaiming over the speech and the man. I could barely wait to get home to watch it. So I went home and watched and listened. At this point, I was already very aware of the overall tone of the conference. I had watched Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, and several members of the audience choke up during Beau Biden’s introduction of his father. Early on, I recognized the theme of many of the speeches in which the speaker introduced himself or herself first as a father, mother, or sister, etc. before moving on to his or her political status. And at the end of Obama’s speech, when fireworks and ribbons framed the two Biden and Obama families on that huge stage, and Star Wars-themed music pumped through the loudspeakers, I begrudgingly recognized that I felt a little exploited by the fanfare. Was this the Olympics or the DNC? But the moment passed, and I went back to feeling hopeful and pleased with the candidates again, and I will tell you why.

    I am an Obama supporter. I do think that he has the ability to be a catalyst for major change in the United States in domestic policy, foreign relations, and overall public political engagement. I absolutely want him to win, but fortunate or unfortunate as it may be, I believe that this type of campaigning is what it will take. I am part of a generation that I find overwhelmingly politically apathetic. At times I find this to be more discouraging and detrimental to progressive change than the existence of dangerous (in my opinion) ideals or political opposition. I have two adult coworkers who proudly describe themselves as apolitical and tout the fact that they don’t vote or support any political candidate. In my opinion, this is proof of a weakened state. We live in a time when reality TV is king, and celebrity stories, People magazine, and talk show hosts dominate our airtime and news stands. If Obama (whom I also find more interesting for his ideas and leadership ability than his background) has to play into this social phenomenon to win a seat in the White house, I am all for it.

    During this election, for the first time in my lifetime, I feel the sedated political nature of our culture shifting. There is a palpable momentum among those of many different generations to follow the election and even make the decision to vote. This has been building for a while in connection with Obama. In 2004, when Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, a forty-year-old employer of mine announced to me that she would be voting for the first time in her life, and although she was supporting Bush in the presidential election, would be voting for Obama for the Senate seat. My husband and I waited in line for four hours to caucus for Obama this past spring. Granted, we don’t have many polling places in our small city, but the turnout made the record books in Portland, Maine, as it did all over the country. I think this shift is the beginning evidence of the change that Obama promises. This may be his biggest role: to get us up off our feet and take stake in what is happening around us. Of course, as President he will have major decision-making power, and we should know and agree with his ideas before we blindly choose him as our leader. But waking us up might be the first step in getting us to find out these facts. And if we are in agreement, then our next charge is to elect him as President. The camera shots of his charismatic younger daughter smiling may just be the modern-day equivalent to Kennedy’s wearing makeup in that famous, historic debate with Nixon.

    Our editor includes a quote from Kennedy in which the nominee states that his religion is not relevant. Isn’t that similar to what Obama is telling us over and over about himself? Yes, I may look different from what you would expect a President to look like, but it shouldn’t matter. Look beyond my skin color, my middle name, my extremist associates (Reverend Wright) and TRUST me. I think that is what the campaign is shooting towards. I am still amazed in this day and age over some people’s racial ignorance and lack of exposure to those who look different from them. And when I catch a glimpse of this ignorance, I worry that we actually do live in a time when a candidate’s race could prevent him from gleaning votes from even those folks who may agree with his policies. As a waitress, I often get to overhear people during their dinner conversations. I share a few of these quotes with the understanding that these folks never expected what they were saying to be overheard, but overhear them, I did.

    “Is Obama black or white?”
    “That’s easy; he’s Tiger Woods.”
    Funny, I don’t see the comparison at all except that maybe both Tiger Woods and Obama are famous, and they both have non-white fathers.

    “The only reason Obama got this far is because he is black.”
    Deep breath, deep breath; clear the steak knife, and exit.

    Harmless comments, some might say, but I think they indicate a resistance to racial difference. I should also add that I work in a restaurant that is priced and located such that the clientele that frequents the place is about 99% upper-class whites.

    And so, I think the Obama campaign is absolutely playing into our emotions and wanting us to relate to him and “trust” him as a direct strategy toward winning this election. Kerry and Gore certainly didn’t have this star power, and Democrats are not taking another chance. I think that McCain’s choice in a running mate illustrates this point very clearly. Sarah Palin is already being described for her personality versus the politician she has been. The first thing I read about her in the paper was that she enjoys hunting wild game, just like her father does. Digging a little deeper, I learned that she supports the doctrine of creationism taught in some schools and opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest.

    Although I exist in a social circle of those who regularly vote and participate loosely in politics, I received no text messages or calls from people during any of Gore’s or Kerry’s campaign speeches during their respective runs for the Presidency. The energy is here now.

    If I could choose a political climate, I would prefer to live in a time when a candidate’s ideas and policies made the front page, and got people talking on the street. But I don’t. If I did, then candidates like Gore, Kerry, or even Dennis Kucinich might have a better chance.

    I think it is problematic that a candidate’s policies and ideas are hidden underneath their personal image. We shouldn’t have to dig deep to learn the facts that will begin to shape the state of our country. But image-driven politics has become part of our political game. Even Obama doesn’t have the power to change that. If he is to win, he must enter into the game. As a baby step towards a more engaged population of citizens, I’ll take it. Did America’s romanticism over the Kennedys incite more social action and political involvement from the America public? I don’t know. I do know that a lot of great change happened during their time.

    I agree that Obama’s speech at the DNC was slim on examples of concrete policy ideas. But I heard something else that might be important to policy change and reform. I heard him saying that he is one person, a leader who promises to take us towards change. Then he made a request. Obama asked us all to become social activists ourselves. He put the responsibility back on us. Isn’t this how it should be in a true democracy? I don’t think Obama is Superman or that he will magically fix all that is wrong with his winning smile. But I do think he will be a small, necessary force to get us slowly to nudge the wheel, and turn this thing around.

    So, I tolerated the constant camera shots of people holding back tears. I enjoyed seeing Michelle and Barack Obama tell each other they loved each other through a video screen and even found myself Googling “Beau Biden” to find out more about his career. I let myself get attached to these people for their personalities for just a minute, because for the first time since Clinton ran, I thought to myself: This guy, my candidate, is going to win.

    Good thing I agree with most of his policies, huh?

The Pitfalls of Identity Politics

by Joshua H. Liberatore

The tenuous balance between substance and image in the public perception of presidential candidates has been a constant feature in previous elections (at least since the first televised debate between Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960), and this year’s battle for the White House is certainly no different. Both Barack Obama and John McCain have used the disparity between appearance and reality as a weapon of public relations and political gain, and reflexively, both have sustained (and so far survived) attacks in this category. The themes of these attacks are well known and don’t need further rehearsal here, until the debates bring these two men face to face in rhetorical combat, when voters and pundits alike will see for themselves who fares better in parrying real-time thrusts that concern character versus political wind, a favorite tender spot in viciously partisan American politics. In the days following the closing of the Democratic National Convention in Denver and before the spotlight shifts to John McCain, one niche in the trend of delicate identity politics that has been on display for the past four days seems worthy of further inspection: the dangers of personal identification campaigns.

    Long accused of residing in a dreamy, heady elitism and Ivy League aloofness by both his rival John McCain and his former adversary Hillary Clinton, Obama has been at pains in recent months to portray himself as an ordinary mortal, with a family, a rustic background, and proud Middle Western roots. As the convention proceeded and gathered force, we heard countless stories – or “testimonials,” as NPR correspondents unabashedly called them – from high profile national politicians and anonymous convention delegates that attested to Obama’s bona fides as a regular guy. Michelle Obama’s now famous speech even featured a broadcast conference call that linked the Obamas’ two young daughters with their father, out on the campaign trail (guess where: the Midwest). It was a forgivable Hallmark-variety skit perhaps, but absolutely devoid of political import and wholly designed to humanize the candidate. We had Obama’s sister, Maya – who came to the stage as “We Are Family” resounded in the Pepsi Center – praising her brother for his many admirable qualities, among which she numbered his being a “good listener,” his belief that hard work leads to success, and his sense of responsibility. And while none of these attributes are in doubt, and we certainly welcome their novelty in Washington, they don’t speak to the core of what should be and is his campaign promise: dramatic policy changes.

    In other speeches, we heard repeated references to Obama’s being raised by a hard-working single mom, his grandfather who fought in Patton’s army in World War II, his grandmother who sacrificed her own comfort to save money for Obama’s first-rate education. Obama himself, in his Thursday evening acceptance speech, drove all of these themes home with a complex message: yes, I’m different, my “pedigree” is unusual (and yet thoroughly American), and I’m just like you. From the sounds of it, excited conventioneers and radio callers were eating it all up, many claiming that they “saw themselves” in Obama, could relate to his experiences; they too were raised by single moms or were themselves single moms who took comfort in his family narrative. Meanwhile, my wife and I wondered: Did they also graduate with honors from Columbia and edit the Law Review at Harvard? Probably, most did not.

    So, amidst all this cozying up to Obama the man, we must pursue some thorny philosophical questions. First, why do we want to see ourselves in our leaders, especially the most powerful of them all, the President of the United States? Second, is personal identification a plausible political strategy? Does it work? And what risks does it entail? The first of these questions is rooted in basic psychology, I suppose. We speak of “trusting” candidates, “believing” in them, “connecting” with their backgrounds, which are all emotional – rather than intellectual or even ideological – aspects of our favoring one and not the other. Simply put, we just like one and don’t like another, or we just like one more. (For the physical aspects of our attraction to political candidates, I defer to the many insightful comments that have been written about the subject from the famous Kennedy-Nixon debate in which television audiences thought the handsome, heavily made-up Kennedy trounced the gray, badly shaven Nixon, whereas radio listeners thought Nixon the clear victor; to Clinton’s famed good looks and charm giving him the advantage over pinch-faced, nasal-voiced George H.W. Bush in 1992, with a little help from that chipper quipper, Ross Perot.) Sure, we like to believe our preferences are based on “the issues” and a candidate’s platform, but we can’t ignore how much our choices come down to emotional factors.

    What’s troubling about this trend is that the practical demands of the President’s job, when we really think about its day-to-day workings, require of someone anything but ordinary traits in intellect, stamina, leadership capacity, eloquence, and charisma. In short, the job requires extraordinary talents, which frankly most of us just fall short of possessing. I’m perfectly comfortable admitting that I don’t want someone I can identify with as the Commander in Chief of our nation, the principal spokesman of our foreign policy, and the face of our public image. On the contrary, I want someone smarter, more ambitious, more energetic, more decisive, more articulate, and more self-disciplined than I am. I’m quite happy with any elitism that formula presupposes; it seems clear to me that the job demands someone really special, someone of the elite. If nothing else, the past eight years have shown us what happens when someone thoroughly mediocre gets the job. George W. Bush, for all his regular-guy appeal in two campaigns, for all his triumphant lack of elitism, is the illustration par excellence of an administration short on ideas, intellect, and curiosity, and long on appeals to our trust, our faith, our fears, our emotional attachments to the solid American virtue of being average. Remember the oft-cited poll in which more Americans claimed to prefer the opportunity to sit down for a beer with George W. Bush than with his duller, more technocratic-minded opponent (whether Gore or Kerry, does it matter?) and the outrageous irony that Bush doesn’t even drink. Let that serve as a sober (sorry!) reminder that our perception and our judgment, when it comes to the appearance and painful reality (beer or no beer) of a “regular guy” at the helm of the free world, needs to be scrutinized more candidly.

    What about the overall effectiveness of a political strategy catering to personal identification among many voters? Let’s consider some of the risks. Here Obama’s somewhat contradictory appeal – I’m different, I’m new, but I’m just like you – shows some peculiar vulnerabilities and provides a perfect illustration of the pitfalls of identity politics. What individual voters “identify with” is by definition incredibly diverse and therefore, extremely narrow. Facing this paradox, politicians must generalize in making their “human” outreach, and in doing so, aggressively dilute their own identity for maximum constituent coverage. Here the lowest common denominator is not only, well, very ordinary in its calculated lack of precision, but it is also profoundly uninteresting. Thus, listening to the speeches, the pageantry, and all the “human interest” testimonials this past week, ramping up to last night’s acceptance speech, I suppose I was expected to identify with Obama because I also had a Midwestern grandfather who fought heroically in World War II. Is that all? Because beyond ideas that we may share or policy initiatives I may agree with, as far as personal identification goes, we just don’t have that much in common. And in that pitiably narrow connection, my attention is drawn away from getting to know those ideas, those policy initiatives, and away from evaluating them on their own terms.

    Writing about Obama’s candidacy as an existential crisis in America’s race politics, conservative critic Shelby Steele, in A Bound Man, explores Obama as a politician straddling two conventional trajectories for the black man. As a “challenger,” Steele contends, Obama must bolster his credentials as a fighter for “black” interests and position himself as a loyal ally to the “black community” (a construction Steele critiques), whose goals and aspirations may appear threatening and too radical for the white majorities he must court in order to win. And yet, as a “bargainer” – Steele cites Louis Armstrong and the early Bill Cosby as prototypes – Obama’s mainstream successes and broad appeals to majoritarian platforms, his dreams of unity and post-partisan politics, his attractive “hybrid” pedigree, his overall rhetoric about America’s potential as a source of hope and shared narratives, could very well damage his reach among black voters. In Steele’s analysis, in other words, it’s very difficult to be both a “challenger” and a “bargainer” (witness Bill Cosby’s controversial footing), especially under the full weight of national scrutiny (i.e. we’re not in Illinois anymore). His strength as a “hybrid” original, consequently presents a more difficult balancing act than what a more cookie-cutter politician faces in building an effective consensus.

    In the penultimate chapter of Steele’s probing if slightly hostile treatise, he reflects on Obama’s claims to originality and his chances for success in the presidential arena:

Today, both blacks and whites see Barack Obama’s presidential bid as potentially a new signal from history. He makes whites hopeful for a new racial configuration in which they might get more benefit of the doubt; he makes blacks (though primarily the black leadership) anxious at this same prospect. Already, his bright success as a bargainer suggests that white America may be sending a signal of its own: that it is exhausted from forty years of being challenged and is therefore doubly grateful to blacks who approach with at least some faith in the fundamental decency of whites. And yet, apart from whatever he may portend, Obama is today a bound man who cannot serve the aspirations of one race without betraying those of the other. It is easy to have the impression, given all the excitement that attends him, that he is, as they say, ‘fresh,’ ‘new,’ and unconventional. But in many ways his truest problem – the reason he is bound – is exactly that he is so utterly conventional. Barack Obama works entirely within the current configuration of race relations – the masks of bargaining and challenging, the need in whites for racial innocence. And he exploits that world to move himself ahead, not to advance a new configuration of race relations – or to end such configurations altogether. He is neither a revolutionary nor even a reformist. He is simply infatuated with the possibilities of his own skin color within the world as it is, not as it should or could be. His genius is to know his own currency within the status quo (126).

This is a notion likely to be too cynical for most Americans to confront and it opens up areas of identity and self-construction beyond the scope of the more basic point in our present inquiry. For example, one feels moved to remind Steele that there are more than two races in America and that many people don’t feel the need for loyalty per se to any one of them. Nevertheless, Steele frames Obama in a way that many Democrats are desperately trying to avoid doing (and understandably: they want him to win). I quote this passage at length simply to illustrate the complexities of Obama’s careful politicking – whether premeditated or merely necessary – and to underscore its hidden fragilities.

    In closing, let me say that I actually believe Obama is more interesting for his ideas than for his background, more compelling for his leadership talents than his grand projections of American roots and messianic message of hope. I only wish I knew those ideas in more detail and that they received more attention at the convention. The key note speeches that touched on his ideas – Bill Clinton’s and Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer’s come to mind – were among the stronger moments of genuine substance amidst the fanfare. Interestingly, John Kerry, among others, attacked McCain for attacking Obama’s character and popularity to conceal his own lack of ideas, but even he didn’t get very specific about the strength Obama’s ideas. There’s a sense almost that these ideas are accepted without argument and can therefore afford to be tucked away without proper exposure. When Obama himself took the stage on Thursday evening, even he seemed hesitant about rolling out either his own intellectual credentials or spending too much time articulating the particulars of his platform (his innovative tax plan and energy initiatives were notable exceptions). Whether bowing under the tremendous pressure of the moment or following the trend of the three days of speeches that preceded his, Obama kept the narrative comfortable, easily applaudable, and personal – and not surprisingly, it was a hit. I guess he’s experienced enough to know that the details of policymaking bore most people, and his campaign handlers have no doubt told him that too much intellect may alienate voters.

    So he kept things rousing and simple. Like him, I suppose I’ll have to wait until the debates for the serious intellectual combat that America needs to overcome the eight years of sinister mediocrity we have endured in our leadership. When Kennedy – to whom Obama has often been compared – accepted the Democratic nomination on July 15, 1960 in Los Angeles, he warned Americans of similar dangers posed by the identity politics with which we are concerned. He said: “I hope that no American, considering the really critical issues facing this country, will waste his franchise by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.” As is well known, Kennedy won the general election – and perhaps not quite fairly – by one of the narrowest margins in electoral history. Democrats need to hope that Obama remembers the Kennedy example, and from this moment on, starts beating John McCain based on that understanding of political relevance and no other.