( AHR-mah wih-ROOM-kweh)
In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age.
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Feb 07, 2012 05:46 PM
by James Bowman
The hard-hitting journalism of The New York Times took us behind the scenes yesterday to show us the oppo research operation of the Obama campaign in action at the very moment when it pounced on Mitt Romney’s remark that he was “not concerned about the very poor.” The writer, Helene Cooper, seemed almost as excited as Brad Woodhouse, “a high-octane party spinmaster” for the President who mans what she calls the campaign’s “flub watch.” Everybody else calls these things gaffes, by the way, but for some reason Ms Cooper thinks another word is required — maybe because people are getting a little sick of the gaffe-hunt. She also includes this curious parenthesis:
(To be clear, Mr. Romney said he was not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net, one he said he would fix if needed. Rather, he said, “I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 percent to 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”)
In other words, putting the quotation in its context — and being clear — was an afterthought for her. Effectively, Mr Romney must be deemed to have meant what Mr Woodhouse and his merry band of flub-watchers say he meant — because they will take care that, insofar as they have anything to do with it, that’s what people will take him to have meant. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so jubilant over “another gift from Mr. Romney.” This is what interests The New York Times. Likewise, at the weekend The Washington Post ran an analysis piece by Paul Farhi on the front page of the Style section headed: “As Romney’s slip-ups show, gaffes nearly unavoidable on modern campaign trail.” Mr Farhi, who uses the more traditional word, believes that “there’s no doubt Romney’s camp would like to take back those comments “primarily because they reinforce — fairly or not — a caricature of him as a wealthy man who is out of touch with people struggling in a tough economy.” Like Ms Cooper, Mr Farhi knows what the candidate meant — and that what he meant wasn’t that he didn’t care about poor people. But he assumes that, “fairly or not,” the vast mass of the unthinking electorate will misconstrue the comment and there’s nothing he or anyone else can do about that. As Adlai Stevenson is said to have pointed out, the unthinking constitute the majority. You would think that the function of the media in a democracy would be to report what the candidates mean, so that their audience can make an informed judgment about them, and not what the stupid, the partisan or the inattentive are likely to think they have meant. But elections can turn on stupidity, partisanship and inattention and, like the Obama flub watch, the media are always on the alert for such things — especially when they help the media’s own favored candidates. It’s not just their biases at work either, for the likes of Ms Cooper and Mr Farhi are typical in assuming that their audience consists of an elite who, like themselves, observe bemusedly the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic misunderstandings of an intellectual underclass which has inexplicably been given the power, through mere force of numbers, to choose our leaders for us. To say that a remark will be misunderstood thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, if only because the chance to put the remark in its proper context and tell how it ought to be understood is missed — or buried in a parenthesis. This kind of reporting also acts as a permission to those who are disposed to be hostile to the gaffe-commiter to treat the misunderstanding of his meaning as being a legitimate meaning. Thus Paul Farhi: Romney’s latest statements are likely to be added to a list of similar comments, such as when he said that the $374,000 he earned in speaking fees in 2010 wasn’t “very much.” Or when he said, half-jokingly, that there were times when he worried about being laid off. Or when he proposed a $10,000 bet with Texas Gov. Rick Perry during one of the Republican debates. Or when he said “Corporations are people, too, my friend,” in response to a heckler who had taunted him about his reluctance to raise taxes on corporations. All the previous gaffes are thus repeated by way of explaining to the elite how the rhetorically less sophisticated than themselves will understand them — and suggesting, perhaps, that their misunderstanding reveals Mr Romney’s real meaning. Now it’s not, it seems, scandalous that Mr Romney has no plans to do anything about the very poor. Neither does President Obama nor anyone else currently on the national political stage. The history of government attempts to lift the poor out of their poverty has not been a happy one, and the futility of any such attempt now amounts to tacit knowledge which, nevertheless, it is in rather poor taste to speak of openly. The politically correct attitude to the poor is to re-direct attention to one’s own fine feelings and compassion towards them and otherwise to ignore them. That Mr Romney has blundered, and on more than one occasion, into a form of words that suggests he may be ignoring them without this ritual expression of sympathy and concern, offers opportunities for the media to hint to their readers, watchers and listeners that somebody else is likely to find this a disqualification for office, somebody disposed to judge a candidate on his feelings rather than his policies. In reality, of course, this somebody else is really the media themselves, who are ashamed to come right out and say so. Instead, they attribute their own superficiality to the imagined mass of fools and gulls whom it is their job to report on with condescension and the job of the clever politician to cozen. Yet widespread hatred of the media and politicians may indicate that people are not quite so stupid as the flub-watchers and spinmasters think they are.
Feb 07, 2012 11:53 AM
As readers may know, Charles Murrays new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, has been getting a lot of buzz, and for good reason: Murray presents an important and provocative thesis about the growing disconnect in values between Americas richest and poorest citizens, a rising "cultural inequality":
Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from Americas core cultural institutions.
He then lists a variety of alarming statistics that prove the growing cultural divide among the top 20 percent of Americans and the bottom 30 percent of Americans when it comes to marriage, single parenthood, industriousness, crime, and religiosity. In the 60s, the two classes were nearly indistinguishable in these regards, but by 2008, the gap widened starkly. For the bottom 30 percent, the American way of life is "coming apart," while its in good working order for the top 20 percent, who have embraced civic virtue and "shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity."
Murrays solution is for the top 20 percent to preach what it practices:
The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations. Public policy has certainly affected the culture, unfortunately, but unintended consequences have been as grimly inevitable for conservative social engineering as for liberal social engineering.
The "something" that I have in mind has to be defined in terms of individual American families acting in their own interests and the interests of their children. Doing that in Fishtown requires support from outside. There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold. The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending "nonjudgmentalism." Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldnt hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.
The upper and lower classes may be pulling away from each other, and living in two different American subcultures, but there is world of experience they continue to share: that of popular culture. I find in interesting that Murray thinks that the elites should start practicing what they preach because one set of elites, those in Hollywood, have turned the experience of being in the bottom 30 percent into a kind of stardom.
Think of the MTV shows 16 and Pregnant and True Life, or these prison reality shows, or movies that glorify the experience of being unemployed, unmarried, and lazy—of being a slacker—like The Big Lebowski and Step Brothers. Then there are shows like Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil, Maury, etc, which are fueled by the "coming apart" of the bottom 30 percent; they dramatize single parenthood, paternity tests, family dissolution, drug use, criminality, unemployment, etc.
In the case of the television shows I mentioned, they may have been conceived as cautionary tales—look what happens when you get pregnant out of wedlock—or, more likely, they were created to appeal to the cultures lowest common denominator, that part in many of us that wants to read the tabloids when no one is looking or cant help but watch the car crash (metaphorical or literal). Regardless, they have turned their subjects into celebrities, aggrandizing their less-than-exemplary experiences by the simple act of televising them to millions of viewers. The Big Lebowski, which is admittedly a hilarious and entertaining movie, has a cult-like following. But its antihero, the Dude, is a jobless slacker who does drugs, bowls, and ends up tangled up in crime.
If the upper class is to practice what it preaches, the pop culture is a good place to start. "Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldnt hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms," Murray writes. That sounds like an awfully moralistic and righteous message for television, film, and music. But is it, truly?
Maybe not. Take the show Modern Family. Its the perfect example of "married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids." And its a hit, which shows theres a market—a yearning—for this kind of TV. Everybody Loves Raymond is another show in this vein, as was Family Matters, one of my regular childhood watches, which is about a middle-class African-American family from Chicago. In fact, theres a whole history of comedies that celebrate American values: I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Honeymooners, and more recently, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which bridges the cultural gap that Murray writes about, albeit in black America, not white. The show is about an African-American teenager (Will Smith) from inner-city Philadelphia. At the prodding of his mother, who wants him to have a better life, he moves in with his wealthy uncle (a judge), aunt, and cousins in Los Angeles, where he absorbs their family values and ethic of hard work.
This theme was covered in an excellent essay by Modern Family co-producers Brad Walsh and Paul Corrigan titled "The American Dream: Twenty Two Minutes at a Time." The essay is in the book Acculturated, and here is a short excerpt:
. . . sitcoms re?ect something unique about Americans and American culture. We are an aspirational people—just like our favorite sitcom characters. In life, we’re aware that repeated failure can be a deterrent; it can undermine our sense of purpose. It can defeat even the most entrepreneurial among us. But in comedy it doesn’t have to be that way. Failure is something to laugh off, to forget. Tomorrow will be another day . . . Sitcoms, whether we’re writing them or watching them, bring Americans a certain degree of comfort. While our worlds are in constant motion—particularly thanks to modern technology—and we often feel as though the rug could be pulled from under us at any moment, sitcoms promise stability. The characters will largely behave the same from week to week. The sets will not change much and neither will the setups. That they’re on at the same time every week is even a way to mark time. Theyre a reason to gather with family and friends on a set schedule. But the fact that the characters are always trying to break out of that world—that Ralph Kramden is always trying to be a better husband, that Michael Scott is always trying to be a better boss—to bring about some fundamental change is touching. One man’s aspiration is another one’s inspiration.
So . . . maybe its not all bad news after all.
February 02, 2012 02:22 PM
by Roger Kimball, from Roger’s Rules
Which would you prefer: a female al-Qaeda terrorist? Or a Somali refugee who has dedicated her life to combatting religious oppression and fighting for women’s rights? You might think it a no-brainer: the Somali refugee, right? Not if you are Deborah Scroggins, who shows that the question really is a no-brainer, but in a sense [...]
January 31, 2012 03:42 PM
by Roger Kimball, from Roger’s Rules
Ah, the venerable London School of Economics. According to its web site, the elite social science institute was “set up to improve society and to ‘understand the causes of things.’” The LSE, continued the bulletin, “has always put engagement with the wider world at the heart of its mission.” What better way to accomplish that [...]
January 28, 2012 03:01 PM
by Roger Kimball, from Roger’s Rules
John Stuart Mill famously described Conservatives as “the stupid party.” The description has unwritten boundless hilarity among liberals for more than a century, but that is only because they (stupidly?) neglected to take Mill’s deeper message on board. Every true partisan of liberalism, Mill wrote, should pray for the enlightenment and acuity of Conservatives [...]
January 25, 2012 02:29 PM
by Roger Kimball, from Roger’s Rules
In “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” his brilliant anatomy of covert state despotism, Edmund Burke noted that “the forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary [i.e., despotic] Government” are not at all incompatible. You may well live in a country in which the law of the land states [...]
January 25, 2012 02:29 PM
by Roger Kimball, from Roger’s Rules
In “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” his brilliant anatomy of covert state despotism, Edmund Burke noted that “the forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary [i.e., despotic] Government” are not at all incompatible. You may well live in a country in which the law of the land states that [...]
Jan 20, 2012 11:56 PM
by James Bowman
In my book, Honor, A History, I wrote of Lord Herbert of Cherbury who, shipwrecked at Dover in 1609, commandeered the only rescue boat and, with his drawn sword, kept anyone else off of it and on the sinking ship except Sir Thomas Lucy. He later mentioned the incident in his autobiography without any apparent sense of shame. The point was to show that the Victorian notion of chivalry was not, as is often thought, medieval in origin but an invention of the late modern era. When a hundred years ago this April the gentlemen on board the Titanic made way with remarkable unanimity for "women and children first" on the doomed vessel’s lifeboats, they must have had a strong sense not only that they were behaving honorably and chivalrously but that such notions of honor and chivalry were the most up-to-date and progressive ones available and not some throwback to a more primitive era.
The reaction to the apparent abandonment of his ship by the captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, shows that these notions are still, after almost a century of honor’s disgrace and desuetude in the general culture, remarkably current. We may laugh at the idea for the formation of the character of young men put forward by Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, that they should be "acceptable at a dance, and invaluable in a shipwreck," but let a Captain Schettino prove the opposite of invaluable in a shipwreck and people will notice. And condemn.
In an interesting essay in the London Daily Telegraph, Theodore Dalrymple argues that we might excuse the Captain on the grounds that he was the product of a culture which had neglected to supply him with "an unthinking allegiance to a standard of conduct that in some circumstances might be, or might appear, ridiculous or counterproductive but in others is essential to the performance of difficult duty." In short, with a sense of honor. He goes on to distinguish between wickedness and weakness, concluding that "on the scale of human monstrosity, the Captain does not climb very high. His place on the scale of human weakness is another matter."
As Milton’s Samson points out, all wickedness is weakness, but it doesn’t follow that all weakness is wickedness. We struggle with the moral status of the Captain’s behavior because we lack the language of honor, which would give us a better metric. His failure was not so much a moral one as a failure to live up to the responsibilities and expectations of his office and the authority that he had been entrusted with when he assumed it. Today’s progressives don’t like that kind of talk and insist on a single standard for everyone. They speak of those, like me, with a lingering attachment to the idea of honor as exponents of a "counter-enlightenment" — which I guess is an odd euphemism for endarkenment. Even military men nowadays, like Rear Admiral Chris Parry of the Royal Navy, writing in The Times of London, are inclined to say that "none of us should rush to vilify" Captain Schettino, as any of us might have done the same.
Well, maybe. But the Italians who have had Vada a bordo, cazzo — the obscene command of Coast Guard Gregorio De Falco to the Captain to "Get the **** back on board" — printed on T-shirts all over Italy must long for that missing honorable standard as I do. I wonder if some such longing isn’t what lies behind the current popularity of "Downton Abbey"? I notice that Professor Simon Schama has lately dumped all over that show as a "servile soap opera" and a "silvered tureen of snobbery." What’s it to him, I wonder? I suspect that if a progressive like the professor feels aggrieved about a TV show it’s not because of its snobbery but because, like James Cameron who re-wrote the history of the Titanic to bring it more into line with his ideological beliefs, he can’t stand the fact that it shows nobles behaving nobly.
January 20, 2012 11:20 AM
by Roger Kimball, from Roger’s Rules
I am down in Antigua for a few days with friends sorting out the problems of the world. It seems as remote as it is beautiful here high on a bluff overlooking Green Island then three thousand unobstructed miles to the coast of Africa. Modernity is just about everywhere, though. The beach below my window [...]
Jan 18, 2012 10:08 PM
by James Bowman
Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard’s "Morning Jay" has a great analysis of the slight uptick in the President’s approval rating in recent weeks — something he sees as reflecting a solidification of the Democrats’ liberal base in response to Mr Obama’s aggressively left-wing moves in recent weeks. If so, this would be consistent with the finding of the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll showing, in the words of the Post’s analysts, Jon Cohen and Dan Balz,"a dispirited and polarized electorate that is sharply divided over his record." But the poll also showed a worrying result for his Republican opposition. According to the Cohen-Balz tag-team of Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake,people still blame former President George W. Bush for the weakness of the economy by nearly two to one:
Fifty-four percent of respondents said that Bush was more to blame while 29 percent put the blame on Obama; 9 percent said both men deserved blame while 6 percent said neither did. Among registered voters, the numbers are almost identical; 54 percent blame Bush, while 30 percent blame Obama. Independents, widely considered the most critical voting bloc this fall, continue to blame Bush far more than Obama for the economic troubles. Fifty-seven percent of unaffiliated voters put the blame on the former Republican president, while 25 percent believe the blame rests more with Obama. Heck, even one in five Republicans say Bush is more responsible than Obama for the state of the economy!
As this must be recognized by respondents as to some extent a technical economics question, I wonder whether this result doesn’t reflect the lingering media consensus, left over from the 2006-2008 period, that George W. Bush was the country’s designated bad guy, to blame for anything and everything, from Hurricane Katrina to the seemingly endless war in Iraq? The media, of course, decided this early on, but the 2006 election result amounted to a ratification of their view, perhaps in a majority that was later to turn out for President Obama at close to the 54 per cent level.
The point is that, because this consensus was well-established long before the economic crash of 2008, the scapegoat for same was already in place. He will continue to bear the blame, therefore, because that consensus must remain in place until another comes along to drive it out. This may happen, and Mitt Romney’s "he made it worse" mantra may eventually emerge as the consensus on Obama, at which point the blame will fall on him. But that consensus has not yet formed, nor is it likely to do so pending the re-election campaign. People won’t know what to think of him until they have definitively decided to vote him out of office, and they won’t do that, if they do it, until the election is upon us. It was the same with Jimmy Carter, I believe, as people only decided to buy the Reagan view of his responsibility for the bad economy of 1980 (also four years after that of 1976 swept him into office) quite late in that fall’s campaign.
One straw in the wind from the Post report is that
just 15 percent of respondents in the Post-ABC poll said they were better off now than at the start of the Obama presidency, while 30 percent said they were not as well off and 54 percent said they were in about the same shape. So while Bush may have started it, people by and large think it has gotten worse under Obama.
That would seem to indicate that there is a good chance the alternative, anti-Obama consensus may indeed emerge before the election in response to a Reaganesque campaign on the theme: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"
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