I heard Charlie Gibson's commencement address at the elite New York high school, the Dalton School, last June. The tone was: aw shucks but I went to Princeton; I'm just an ordinary guy, I did poorly in economics, but I'm no dummy either. I had the impression that he did the address partly because his wife was lately head of school at Spence. Almost as fancy as Dalton. The same community. Upper East Side New York. And Gibson's on the Princeton board.
I believe that Gibson secretly judges Sarah Palin, as well he should. That is the tone of the interchanges I've seen so far. A quiet gotcha. He seeks to make clear that she has no clue what the Bush Doctrine is, and he absolutely nails the fact that she will not second guess Israel's prerogative to fold spindle mutilate Iran. He asks her about this three times and gets the same rote answer, We can't second-guess Israel. Scary. He seems silently appalled. He pushes her around a little on Iraq too. I have to believe that Gibson has quiet elitist prejudices (i.e., snobberies) that are coming to bear, and a good thing, too. This woman's a dope on foreign policy, hasn't got a clue. And she made inquiries about banning books at the Wasilla library. If you love education as much as Gibson does, this is scary. In his quiet way, he's putting his body down.
Too bad the eggheads that have given us the horrible foreign policy that is in practice right now go largely untouched. Is that due to elite prejudice also?
The problem with the elite in America is it ain't elite enough. When I am in third world shit holes, I have conversations about politics, art, philosophy. When I am in Manhattan, with my media/advertising coterie, we talk about real estate.
I remember once in Buenos Aires, a big fat working class taxi driver spent the entire ride telling me about Herbert Marcuse. For this taxi driver, knowing something about contemporary philosophy and politics was essencial for his sense of himself as a human being.
A few months later, I moved to the US, to Princeton, to attend college. The lack of intelectualism in this tip top university blew me away. Smart people went out of their way to act like they didn't care about high culture. Fuck Shakespeare I love the three stooges was not an unheard of affectation.
So in a way it is the fault of the intelectuals by downplaying the value of what we know, what we contribute, that allows Bush and McCain and Palin to feel so proud of their own ignorance.
People have a deep hunger to talk about bigger topics than the weather, the football game and their lawn.The first person to explain to me the dot com boom was a biker in a bar in South Dakota. If you hang out in rough and tumble bars you will be shocked at the profound knowledge, of history, of art, of economics lots of "ordinary" Americans have.
Talking about Borges or Carravagio has gotten me laid all over the country. Being intellectual is cool. Lets act that way, lets be proud of it, let us not be so alienated from ordinary Americans that we assume they don't like thinking too.
The problem with the elite in America is it ain't elite enough. When I am in third world shit holes, I have conversations about politics, art, philosophy. When I am in Manhattan, with my media/advertising coterie, we talk about real estate.
I remember once in Buenos Aires, a big fat working class taxi driver spent the entire ride telling me about Herbert Marcuse. For this taxi driver, knowing something about contemporary philosophy and politics was essencial for his sense of himself as a human being.
A few months later, I moved to the US, to Princeton, to attend college. The lack of intelectualism in this tip top university blew me away. Smart people went out of their way to act like they didn't care about high culture. Fuck Shakespeare I love the three stooges was not an unheard of affectation.
So in a way it is the fault of the intelectuals by downplaying the value of what we know, what we contribute, that allows Bush and McCain and Palin to feel so proud of their own ignorance.
People have a deep hunger to talk about bigger topics than the weather, the football game and their lawn.The first person to explain to me the dot com boom was a biker in a bar in South Dakota. If you hang out in rough and tumble bars you will be shocked at the profound knowledge, of history, of art, of economics lots of "ordinary" Americans have.
Talking about Borges or Carravagio has gotten me laid all over the country. Being intellectual is cool. Lets act that way, lets be proud of it, let us not be so alienated from ordinary Americans that we assume they don't like thinking too.
Brilliant post, Tom.
But truthfully, aggressive ignorance is in, and being smart is out.
It starts out in kindergarten, all the way through high school, where a few idiot bullies can basically rule and shut down a school at will.
"People have a deep hunger to talk about bigger topics than the weather, the football game and their lawn."
I disagree with this. What I see in suburbia, and to some extent in cities also, is that people are afraid to open up. That is why at work (and not this attitude has seeped into everyday life) the topics are strictly football, baseball, weather and possibly the stock market or other money topics.
That's it.
It got to the point that when I go back to Chicago I go to a polish only bar and there – oh my! – we can talk politics, religions, world views, all the while getting plastered with multiple shots and drinks.
It got to the point (especially where I am living now, smalltown s**thole USA) that there is no point for me to go out to the bars here – what would I converse about – yes, you guessed it, football and baseball.
Forget that.
Worse, it got to the point that I do not find women in those bars attractive. I would like to know that I am f***ing a human being, not a neanderthal.
Do you find it strange that I do not find Jessica Simpson attractive?
Woe is me.
'He seems silently appalled. He pushes her around a little on Iraq too. I have to believe that Gibson has quiet elitist prejudices (i.e., snobberies) that are coming to bear, and a good thing, too. This woman's a dope on foreign policy, hasn't got a clue.'
I suppose it's a good thing he's 'appalled' by the prospect of this Manchurian candidate, owned and controlled by a predatory elite, taking the levers of power in November. It would have been better though if Gibson and his fellow elitists, especially in the media, could have taken some time out from enjoying the privileges of their position in order to muster some umbrage, or even outrage, at key points in the last eight years. It's a bit fucking late now.
Chris Floyd just wrote:
'The Nazis launched unprovoked wars of aggression and despoiled whole nations. So do we now; who cares? The Gestapo and the KGB snatched people from the street and held them without charges in secret prisons, tortured them with brute force and with exquisitely calibrated techniques approved by the highest authorities. So do we now; who cares? The Soviets spied without qualm or restraint on their own people, no warrants needed, no evidence required, just a nod from some faceless official in the security organs. So do we now; who cares? The Nazis believed that the national leader is beyond the law, that any order he gives is rightful and just and cannot be punished, simply because he has given it. So do we now; who cares? The Soviets and the Nazis treated protests against the established order as security threats and acts of terror, and repressed them with mass arrests and police violence. So do we now; who cares?
All of these things, and many more besides, have been done and are being done by the government of the United States today, with either the full-throated approval or the meek acquiescence of the political opposition and the nation's institutions. The people too seem largely in agreement, or completely indifferent. We have just finished a primary campaign in which tens of millions of people voted for candidates who support the system described above in almost every particular — quibbling about some of the details and tactics perhaps, but expressing absolutely no dissent from its basic premises.'
The reason there's no dissent is because there's no knowledge and the reason there's no knowledge is because stylish but substance-free empty vessels like Gibson dominate the media. Telling really that it's only the possibility of the lower orders entering the corridors of power that has disturbed his slumber. Bush's crimes could be tolerated; he is a Bush after all.
'Talking about Borges or Carravagio has gotten me laid all over the country.'
I'm on my way over.
'Do you find it strange that I do not find Jessica Simpson attractive?'
Not at all. Ugly Betty over Sarah Jessica any day of the week.
The reason Gibson pushed Palin on Israel was not because he particularly disagreed with her or thought her position unduly warlike. He was desperately hoping to find a chink in her defense of Israel, hoping that by the time he asked the question the third time she'd get the hint and back off. Of course, if she had it would be ten-inch headlines in the New York Times–"Palin Disses McCain, Says Israel Has No Right To Self-Defense," whereupon McCain's Jewish donors would vanish overnight. Palin probably does believe that Israel should bomb Iran, the sooner the better, but even if she doesn't, there's no way she could have said anything other than what she did to Gibson.