The Cultural Politics of the American Media

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Matthew Yglesias: You should definitely read this post from Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s a reminder that part of what drives the conservative meta-narrative about “authentic” working class conservatives versus liberal elites is the belief that black people — a bit over ten percent of the population, and usually closer to twenty percent of the voting base for a Democratic presidential candidate — just basically don’t exist. They’re invisible people. Likewise, Hispanics. And, indeed, white people don’t count either if they’re too poor:

Some of the numbers: Non-college whites in our latest poll split 50-41 percent for McCain over Obama. Advantage McCain. But whites with annual household incomes under $50,000 split by 49-40 percent for Obama. Advantage Obama.

But somehow this is all “inauthentic.” The only way to be a “regular person” is to (a) have white skin, (b) not descend from Spanish-speaking people, (c) not go to college, (d) not be poor, and (e) avoid living in a big city. Nevermind that a large majority of the American public falls into one of the Five Forbidden Categories of Irregularity.

And David Frum gloats over, as he puts it, not the reality but the media's "perception that [Obaama] is arrogant and out of touch":

Palin's Working Class Appeal: Few things enrage Democrats more than the consistent Republican success in branding Democratic presidential candidates as overprivileged snobs. And this year, it is happening again. John McCain may be the son and grandson of admirals, married to a woman with a fortune usually estimated at $100 million. Yet it is Barack Obama, son of a single mother and grandson of a Kenyan goatherd, who has suffered more damage from the perception that he is arrogant and out of touch. As the Onion headlined: “Portrayal of Obama as Elitist Hailed as Huge Step Forward for African Americans.” Democrats are left to fume in bafflement.

But it’s really no great mystery. Americans have accepted political leadership from wealthy men from Andrew Jackson to Arnold Schwarzenegger – so long as those men showed that they shared the values and outlook of less wealthy neighbors. But even the merest hint that a candidate regarded himself as somehow culturally or intellectually superior and – whammo! -- that was the end....

George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Bob Dole, Jack Kemp, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were and are all wealthy and successful men. But not one of them owed his wealth and success primarily to his education. Compare that list to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards. For almost all these Democrats, the decisive event of their lives was the letter admitting them to an elite university or law school -- or both.... Also familiar and also stark is the way in which their support is distributed.... Of the 10 states with the highest proportion of college graduates, Obama will almost certainly win at least seven, with only Virginia, Colorado and New Hampshire offering any hope to McCain. Of the 10 states with the lowest proportion of college graduates, McCain will probably win at least nine, with only Nevada contestable by the Democrat. The differences between the states are not small. Almost 45 percent of the population of Massachusetts has a university degree, compared to only 14 percent of the population of West Virginia....

With their nomination of Barack Obama, the Democrats have intensified their image as the party of minorities and the upper part of white America. Among whites, Democrats increasingly draw their votes from the educated, from those who have enjoyed success in a destabilizing postmodern culture and global economy. By choosing Sarah Palin, Republicans, by contrast, have reasserted their identity as the party of white working-class America...

Comments

[christofay]

It's like we never had to read Animal Farm in junior high.

Oh, my god, I mentioned a book and school.

It's like the media thought Animal Farm was a script that we all have to follow.

Of course both Bushes went to elite schools but just for the certificate to allow replenishment of the coffers.

Dole got his ticket punched repeatedly during the last war we actually won. He too experienced the RNC/Bush campaigning machine.

[bigTom]

I've been trying to say that this whole elitism thingy, is not about wealth, income, of the parents social status. It is instead about thinking and speaking styles. Those who clearly display superior thinking are tarred with the dislike of the common person for the teachers pets of their youth. This is simple anti-intellectualism in the clothes of anti-privilege. Of course the Republicans are masters at changing the frame to the one which offers their side the maximum advantage. The Democrats desperately need to start learning this game, or defeat will again be their fate.

[christofay]

But then counter examples intrude justifying the anti-intellectualism, Palson, Bernanke, Greenspam, the Meltdowns Feldstein and Freidman, nearly everybody in the C-suite of innovative finance sphere, have a heavy hand in our financial system depression. It's all top-down intellectualizing the economic system rather than bottom-up relying on the markets. Now the tax-payers are going to be stuck with the bill giving anti-Washington credence of keeps the Washington party in power.

Crazy, isn't it? Sort of makes it understandable that we have the mastermind killer of 3,000 Americans still on the lose, an unexplained anthrax domestic terrorist attack, losing two minor wars and seeking to add a third front, a collapsed financial system, and on and on

As to speaking style, Obama attracts all of his supporters with his speaking style. It's that group of teachers pets the media that puts its heavy hand on the scales to tilt it toward the soft sole guy with the squeeze in the $100,000 outfit. The school ma consensus being Washington DC here.

[Joe Smith]

I think you need to take Al Gore out of there. Isn't he the son of a wealthy Senator?

[Joe Smith]

Also, other than the fact that it is civic duty, why should I vote if I am in an uncontested State? Given our electoral vote system it really seems that voting does not make a difference other than providing the ability to say that one voted or didn't vote for the person in power.

[christofay]

One man one vote, stop the Republican small state dominance.

Otherwise why should I pay welfare in any form to a delusional Alaskan "libertarian"? Greenspan is a libertarian too.

Which is why a good step to reduce the moral hazard is to start defunding the central govt.

[wmmbb]

Hierarchical education systems, much like hierarchical sporting competitions, inevitably create sociological elites. Who seriously would select their leaders other than from educated elites, or those blessed with a high level of natural ability? No other country, than the United States it seems, and that recalls the comments of Bismarck in relation to "the special providence" of the United States. Abe Lincoln, for example, may have been born in a log cabin and from the backwoods, but his qualities were evident to his contemporaries in a way, for example, Ms Palin cannot claim. You may be able to ride your luck for awhile, but there will inevitably be a downside, in which sadly the rest of us will share.

[Gene O'Grady]

I think Frum's piece, besides being offensive, ignores something more significant than where you went to school. It's what you read after you're out of school, or what you think about what you read when you were young. Hence the influence of Plutarch on Harry Truman. Or take Theodore Roosevelt, a rather more elite president, who read Anna Karenina (which he didn't much like) while traveling by boat down the Missouri River bringing in some outlaws at gunpoint.

A related issue is the decline of the Protestant clergy in this country. My wife grew up Baptist in San Bernardino with a single mother who really couldn't cope. But she had the benefit of remarkable men in the pulpit (one of whom I later had the honor to meet in his final years), noteworthy for their learning, their character, and their cultivation. One of the reasons she is no longer a Baptist is that, with one dignified and impressive exception, the clergy she came across as an adult are basically salesmen, deriving from the modern marketing culture more than the great traditions of American Protestantism.

[albatross]

Frum didn't bother checking many of his facts, right? For example, Gore and Bush both had fathers in positions of political power, and both attended elite universities. Perhaps unintuitively, Bush actually finished his MBA from Harvard, where Gore didn't get any kind of postgraduate degree. (I'm trusting Wikipedia on this.) It's quite hard for me to see how the life stories of these two are so radically different that one is elitist and the other is a normal guy. Although the story is quite different for McCain, he's another of those "regular guys" who was born into an immensely influential family, and probably got into an elite school because of it. (But surely the turning points in his life involved his military service.)

Similarly, Kerry got into a good law school, but it sure seems like more fundamental defining points in his life were either his time in Vietnam (where he was heavily decorated), or his involvement in the antiwar movement when he got back. And he shares McCain's successful strategy for becoming very wealthy--he married well.

Edwards and Clinton probably did have their educational successes as major turning points in their lives, as did Barrack Obama, Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales. In all those cases, the reason was that they weren't starting out in positions of great wealth, power, and influence, so they had to distinguish themselves somehow, or they'd never have come into any position of great prominence. If any of those people hadn't been extremely bright and hard-working, they'd be working as managers at a Wal-Mart or something--they didn't have powerful, wealthy family members who were going to pull them up.

Shorter me: Frum's article is full of crap on the facts. Skill at spinning words together has only a very modest relationship with being careful about getting facts straight, or being very good at it.

[david]

Bill Clinton had a gift, the gifted ability not to sound as if he'd been an ivy-leaguer. Obama, rather unfortunately, does not have that gift. Albatross' comment about Gore and parentage is correct, however, and Frum has that wrong.

There's nothing but spin spin spin left in this election cycle. Sigh.

[Neal]

Easy to figure--ignorant people follow ignorant buffoons. People with limited world views are more likely to be swayed by messages of a dangerous world. People who have few things worry about those few things being taken away. Those people who have been screwed over respond to politics of resentment. Those at the bottom of the barrel envy and resent those that are able to climb out of the barrel.

It is amazing how the Republican political machine have figure how to reliably push these messages, campaign after campaign, indeed leaving the Democrats bewildered. And the necessary votes to cover the re-election of the Republican come rolling in.

[Michael Drake]

Mostly what albatross said. The key to understanding this phenomenon is that by and large the GOP has put their lot in with the authoritarian followers, whose beliefs are unusually conformable to their own desires and preoccupations while being preternaturally resistant to Bayesian updating.

These folks are virtuosos of the epistemic double standard: They can profess that faith is enough for belief in an invisible man living in the sky, but require "more evidence" to convince them that the central unifying theory in biology is true. *That* is how just about any given fact can be OKIYAR while being objectionable otherwise -- whether that be going to an elite school, marrying into money, considering the gender and racial characteristics of a candidate, or giving really popular speeches.

Naturally, it suits a hack like Frum to recast this manifest socio-psychological dysfunction as the wisdom of the folk. Good advocacy, bad citizenship.

[Roger Albin]

Al Gore's father was a successful politician but Al Gore Sr came from a rather modest background. Sr was probably one of the poorer members of the Senate, and while certainly affluent, I doubt the Gore family of Jr's youth would have been described as rich.
Frum is wrong about Cheney. Without the University of Wyoming (which had to admit him as a Wyoming high school grad after he flunked out of Yale), Cheney would now be retired from working for the phone company back in Wyoming. Not to mention the educational draft deferments he got to escape the draft.

[Whammer]

Dan Quayle is rich, indeed. And to what does he owe that?

Buehler?

[Nat]

So the R's listed owe their success to birth, birth, the G.I. Bill, pro sports, birth and vampirism. So what is the lesson we are supposed to take from this?

[piotr]

Apart from a curious question: why educated people with jobs that pay less than average are not working class? I would get some hope in the fact that the non-whites and the educated are increasing as the share of population, while uneducated whites are decreasing.

I hope that Palin will look quite a bit worse for the wear after some decent scrutiny in the next few weeks.

[JonA]

But do we even need these Elites, what with their peer-reviewed research and exacting academic standards? As every one who watches the O'Reilly factor knows, DARPA was funded by tax cuts, and the transistor was based on research conducted by the AEI. The LASER was developed by the Vatican. And who can forget the indispensable contributions of creation scientists to the Biotech industry? Donald Rumsfeld's at the Hoover Institute, but he's no elitist prick: he never sits down! Of course, he never really reads either, apparently.