David Brooks and Tom Frank
WASP Trumps Bobo
By Tom Frank
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000, at 7:42 PM ETDear David,
It looks like we agree on Al Gore's weird personality. You're right: The man really can't switch it off. But it seems to me this is less a function of a life spent in politics and more a malady of the successful generally. The compulsive optimism, the brown-nosing, the résumé-padding: Gore has utterly internalized the values of the meritocracy. Maybe a discussion of Al Gore should be Appendix A in the new, revised edition of Bobos in Paradise.
Bush fils, on the other hand, has different problems. He's glib, he's reassuring, he's got a certain charm. He represents a social type quite different from your basic Bobo: the WASP who has dealt with the decline of his species by learning to mimic his employees. What Bush has internalized is a lifetime of Marlboro ads and TV westerns. Of course, the man can't find his ass with both hands.
Fortunately for W., fake populism is precisely what the Republican Party required at this historical moment. You mentioned Gore's failure to win over the Democratic Party's working-class base, and I wonder if this failure wasn't related directly to the way in which each man performed the populist role. Gore, as I noted a few days ago, did a singularly poor job feigning concern for "working families." He just couldn't shake the meritocrat within. But Bush was able to pull off his swaggering variant of the populist charade with an impressive amount of style. (I saw a photo of him in the New York Times the other day where he was posed before a mantelpiece decorated gaily with an assortment of red bandannas. Now there's a weird WASP taste mutation that I think you could really sink your teeth into, David.)
When I say Bush is a populist I do not mean he subscribes to the racist right-wing populism of yore. I think he's more of a market populist, largely abandoning the culture war stuff and mixing militantly pro-business politics unproblematically with regular-guy appeal. For George W. Bush, the offspring of the oil industry, this came quite naturally.
Let me change gears here and address your curious remark about "Schadenfreude." Obviously no one looks forward to a recession, especially someone with my political sentiments: Workers are able to bargain most effectively when the labor market is tight (as they're about to find out at Amazon.com). And wage workers will also bear the brunt of any economic collapse, especially now that the far-sighted liberals of the Clinton administration have ended welfare. But at the same time, markets left to their own devices go through business cycles. It's systemic. There's no avoiding it, despite the shimmering fantasies of the New Economy believers. And trying to pin the savage ups and downs of the market on anyone other than those who have worked for deregulation, privatization, and de-unionization over the last 20 years--as the Wall Street Journal does so frequently--is close to political derangement.
One other thing: The health of the stock market is most definitely not the health of the nation. A terrific amount of resources have gone into persuading us otherwise over the last 10 years, of course, but it is simply not the case. Stocks do well when wages do not. Stocks do well when unions are beaten, when workers live under austerity regimes, when all the power is with management. True, 48 percent of families own some shares. But, as Doug Henwood of the great newsletter Left Business Observer points out, the top 1 percent of stockholders actually control 48 percent of total stock while the top 10 percent control 86 percent. The bottom 80 percent of stockholders control only 4 percent. Yes, some people have 401(k)s, but why should their earnings from those tiny holdings always be privileged over their earnings from wages?
Would I feel a little cheery if the Nasdaq tanked? I admit it might be nice to see James Cramer and the CNBC gang eat a little crow. But the real point is this. Today you suspect critics of the market of Schadenfreude; tomorrow (when Bush II has "invested" Social Security in the markets) others will accuse us of taking bread from the mouths of dotards, widows, and orphans. That's the problem with these putatively results-oriented "market solutions." They are in fact a gun pointed at the head of any politician or interest group that doesn't march in lockstep with Wall Street.
WASP Trumps Bobo
By Tom Frank
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000, at 7:42 PM ETReader Comments from The Fray:
[Wednesday Notes from the Fray Editor: And what does the Grinch have to do with it? Click here to find out. Kevin Thomson wants to know how elastic the term BoBo is: "Are you talking about 20,000,000+ people or about 500 people? Are you talking about the 5% of Americans with advanced degrees or about the .01% that might get their wedding announcement in the Times?" And Aaron Varhola--"Union Dems vs Bobo Dems"-- thinks the Democrats should run a candidate who knows something about sport and popular culture.]
Is this the only country in the world where nearly 40% of the people don't have the foggiest idea of who they are and what they are to become? Would a scientific study reveal that only in America are people so completely unaware of where they are in the economic world? Shouldn't somebody be seriously studying this question? Did this situation suddenly occur, or have Americans always been out-to-lunch on this question? If the 40% figure accurately reflects where people think they are, or soon will be on the ladder of economic success, it explains a good deal about the recent election and why GW got as many votes as he did. The answer is a very harsh one; Americans are incredibly stupid about the facts of life. They are a pushover for brainwashing, and soft in the head for Republican propaganda. Just keep putting out that message: If you're not a millionaire or expect to be one soon, something is wrong with you. And, omigod, 40% of Americans believe it's so. How did they get that way, and what's going to happen to this country and in this country when those 40% wake up and realize that they have been had? There is a time bomb ticking in this country and it will not simply tick forever.
--Richard Walrath
(To reply, click
here.)
In order for people to mistakenly believe that they're in the top one percent, when in fact they're not, they must have a falsely low notion of everyone else's income, not falsely high. In other words, they haven't been fooled by techno-libertarian free-marketeers talking up the New Prosperity, they've been fooled by crypto-socialist paleo-lefties repeating that the rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor. Once they've swallowed that line, what are vast numbers of reasonably-prosperous people to conclude but that their comfort represents top-one-percent wealth?
--Comrade Ogilvy
(To reply, click
here.)
Americans do have a strong sense of natural law and of an eternal moral order. These powerful instincts were responsible for the profound feeling of revulsion that Ken Starr inspired in the public. We have always been forgiving of simple human weakness, but revolted by those who pervert justice and morality and misuse power.
--Paul Gottlieb
(To reply, click
here.)
[Monday notes from the Fray Editor: Quick response on this one. Should Mr Frank bear a grudge against Mr Brooks? Is he tall and amusing? And a first citation of Ayn Rand--always a Fray favorite but not usually this early in the week--here.]
Mr Franks makes a critical mistake in describing "Reagan Democrats" as siding with conservatives on social issues. It is exactly the opposite. Reagan democrats (I was a reluctant one in 1980) voted for conservatives on economic issues, not social ones. We fled the left because of its idiotic anti-business ideologies and incompetent managerial irresponsibility. We did not move to the right on social issues, however. In fact, most conservatives (except for the fundamentalists) have been moving steadily to the left on social issues since the '60's, just as liberals have been increasingly marginalized on economic issues, and moving to the center.
Economic "conservatives" who believe in the free market are actually believers in "liberal values", in which the value attached to anything is determined not by its fundamental worth, but whatever the market determines. So, those who immerse themselves in "the marketplace" begin to use the notion of relative value in everything in their life, and free market economics, championed by conservatives, actually produces a nation of cultural liberals.
Social conservatives actually believe in fundamental values, and often in fundamental religion. Yet they have mixed feelings about the marketplace--on the one hand they don't like the idea of allowing anyone to take control of it, because they fear an overt liberal agenda with do so, and yet they also fear what the marketplace is doing to them. Their fear and anger at the open marketplace is displaced, however, and heaped upon liberal cultural movements instead, which accounts for the self-denying vitriol of the social conservatives. They can't admit that their marriage to economic conservatives is what is actually killing of their world of traditional values.
There is no real contradiction between liberal cultural values and conservative economic ones. And the social conservative movement continues to fight its battles in an increasingly leftward direction. We're not arguing about whether to show Elvis' hips on TV anymore, you may have noticed. But there is of course a growing tension between those who truly do believe in intrinsic, innate, inherent cultural values, and those who see such values as relative. The "Bo-bos" are those who have embraced the world of relative values, and those who react to them are those who cling to fundamental values. And that is a warfare of values that has not yet even surfaced fully, because the social conservatives are still in bed with their enemy, the free-market economic conservatives. And Frank is right to think that someday soon they will wake up and smell the Starbucks, and realized that the people they have been in bed with are slowly poisoning them. When that day comes, say in about 20-30 years, we will probably have another massive cultural clash as in the '60's.
--Conrad Goehausen
(To reply, or to read a fuller version of this post, click
here.)
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Wednesday Notes from the Fray Editor: And what does the Grinch have to do with it? Click here to find out. Kevin Thomson wants to know how elastic the term BoBo is: "Are you talking about 20,000,000+ people or about 500 people? Are you talking about the 5% of Americans with advanced degrees or about the .01% that might get their wedding announcement in the Times?" And Aaron Varhola--"Union Dems vs Bobo Dems"-- thinks the Democrats should run a candidate who knows something about sport and popular culture.]
Is this the only country in the world where nearly 40% of the people don't have the foggiest idea of who they are and what they are to become? Would a scientific study reveal that only in America are people so completely unaware of where they are in the economic world? Shouldn't somebody be seriously studying this question? Did this situation suddenly occur, or have Americans always been out-to-lunch on this question? If the 40% figure accurately reflects where people think they are, or soon will be on the ladder of economic success, it explains a good deal about the recent election and why GW got as many votes as he did. The answer is a very harsh one; Americans are incredibly stupid about the facts of life. They are a pushover for brainwashing, and soft in the head for Republican propaganda. Just keep putting out that message: If you're not a millionaire or expect to be one soon, something is wrong with you. And, omigod, 40% of Americans believe it's so. How did they get that way, and what's going to happen to this country and in this country when those 40% wake up and realize that they have been had? There is a time bomb ticking in this country and it will not simply tick forever.
--Richard Walrath
(To reply, click here.)
In order for people to mistakenly believe that they're in the top one percent, when in fact they're not, they must have a falsely low notion of everyone else's income, not falsely high. In other words, they haven't been fooled by techno-libertarian free-marketeers talking up the New Prosperity, they've been fooled by crypto-socialist paleo-lefties repeating that the rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor. Once they've swallowed that line, what are vast numbers of reasonably-prosperous people to conclude but that their comfort represents top-one-percent wealth?
--Comrade Ogilvy
(To reply, click here.)
Americans do have a strong sense of natural law and of an eternal moral order. These powerful instincts were responsible for the profound feeling of revulsion that Ken Starr inspired in the public. We have always been forgiving of simple human weakness, but revolted by those who pervert justice and morality and misuse power.
--Paul Gottlieb
(To reply, click here.)
[Monday notes from the Fray Editor: Quick response on this one. Should Mr Frank bear a grudge against Mr Brooks? Is he tall and amusing? And a first citation of Ayn Rand--always a Fray favorite but not usually this early in the week--here.]
Mr Franks makes a critical mistake in describing "Reagan Democrats" as siding with conservatives on social issues. It is exactly the opposite. Reagan democrats (I was a reluctant one in 1980) voted for conservatives on economic issues, not social ones. We fled the left because of its idiotic anti-business ideologies and incompetent managerial irresponsibility. We did not move to the right on social issues, however. In fact, most conservatives (except for the fundamentalists) have been moving steadily to the left on social issues since the '60's, just as liberals have been increasingly marginalized on economic issues, and moving to the center.
Economic "conservatives" who believe in the free market are actually believers in "liberal values", in which the value attached to anything is determined not by its fundamental worth, but whatever the market determines. So, those who immerse themselves in "the marketplace" begin to use the notion of relative value in everything in their life, and free market economics, championed by conservatives, actually produces a nation of cultural liberals.
Social conservatives actually believe in fundamental values, and often in fundamental religion. Yet they have mixed feelings about the marketplace--on the one hand they don't like the idea of allowing anyone to take control of it, because they fear an overt liberal agenda with do so, and yet they also fear what the marketplace is doing to them. Their fear and anger at the open marketplace is displaced, however, and heaped upon liberal cultural movements instead, which accounts for the self-denying vitriol of the social conservatives. They can't admit that their marriage to economic conservatives is what is actually killing of their world of traditional values.
There is no real contradiction between liberal cultural values and conservative economic ones. And the social conservative movement continues to fight its battles in an increasingly leftward direction. We're not arguing about whether to show Elvis' hips on TV anymore, you may have noticed. But there is of course a growing tension between those who truly do believe in intrinsic, innate, inherent cultural values, and those who see such values as relative. The "Bo-bos" are those who have embraced the world of relative values, and those who react to them are those who cling to fundamental values. And that is a warfare of values that has not yet even surfaced fully, because the social conservatives are still in bed with their enemy, the free-market economic conservatives. And Frank is right to think that someday soon they will wake up and smell the Starbucks, and realized that the people they have been in bed with are slowly poisoning them. When that day comes, say in about 20-30 years, we will probably have another massive cultural clash as in the '60's.
--Conrad Goehausen
(To reply, or to read a fuller version of this post, click here.)