I read his Nation article and at first felt sort of insulted because I describe myself as a liberal. But it's the semantics. When he talks about liberals, he is referring to the vast numbers of people who are proud of themselves for being pro-choice and for sending $20 here and there to the Wildlife Defense Fund and NPR and so forth, but who are otherwise politically inactive, who see no flaws in Clinton as he dismantles welfare and maintains the high defense budget and essentially maintains 100% of the status quo from the Reagan years (indeed, they don't even notice that he does this). And you wouldn't realize what a complete *lack* of class consciousness that the average liberal or moderate in this country has. 'Liberals' are highly prone to using the phrase "white trash" without a twitch, and they are very susceptible to the idea that the entire reason why the U.S. is a racist country is because of poor, unaesthetic white people, especially from the south, make it that way. I've seen this so attitude so much amongst supposedly tolerant kids at my college. Just get rid of the klan members and uneducated backwoods people who still say "negro" and the problem is solved. They don't recognize at all that college educated bosses and landlords who really hold the power, who have learned fairly recently to refine their mannerisms and use the correct speech in public, are the real problem. They would go to a rally against the Chief Wahoo symbol of the Cleveland Indians (which is an awful mascot), but they would never think to organize a protest against a local bank that redlines.
Anyway, I sort of defend moore because I think he was just exaggerating in his characteristic way, and he was just trying to jolt 'liberals' into thinking a bit more.
There was a sort of interesting exchange about this on the Z magazine web site where they have forums where Katha Pollit(Nation) and Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich, will respond to questions. And Pollit had been criticizing Moore's piece precisely for what you say... he's stereotyping working class people for being a homogeneous whole, and wrong about liberals... and then Moore went to the Forum and was totally steamed and started bitching her out.
> >and they should go line dancing and listen to country music and watch a lot
> >more primetime TV in order to understand how to build a political movement
> >that will be attractive to and representative of the working class.
>
> Sure. Why not? I don't think that all workers are fans of line dancing and
> country music, but they do appeal to some segments of workers, and I have
> no objection to attempts to understand their appeal better. A problem is,
> though, that 'working class culture' isn't as homogenous as Moore would
> like us to think. Country music is merely one aspect of it. There are other
> genres--punk, rap, heavy metal, reggae, etc.--even when we limit our
> discussion to music alone.
>
> >Read his The Nation article of a few months ago.
>
> I read it and thought it rather superficial and simplistic.
>
> Yoshie
>
>
>
Christine