>I have admired Doug for many years, used his writings as a reference point and
>suggested to others that they pay attention to his important work. So it was
>kind of sad to read him say that my politics are "underdeveloped...and ad
>hoc," that my idea that the auto companies be forced to develop mass transit
>systems was "surreal," and that my quote from the Bible about the rich not
>getting into heaven apparently did not include my (rich) self. He also said
>that "gets" what "Cockburn's beef is with Moore."
Michael, I think you're a very talented guy. So all my criticisms are in a context of admiration. When I say your politics are "underdeveloped" and "ad hoc," I mean that, in the GM instance, it's not "Roger Smith" who shut plants and fired thousands, it's capitalism. But you can't make movies about "capitalism," or at least movies that more than a few geeks would go see. So I understand where the pressure comes from to personalize things, to put faces on abstract forces. But somehow the point has to be made that there are a thousand potential other Roger Smith's out there who could have done the same thing. (Actually, from watching him on TV, Smith struck me as one of the dimmer CEOs I've ever seen, but that's neither here nor there.) Competition from other automakers and pressures from shareholders are what have driven the lean and mean agenda. That's an extremely difficult point to make in a movie, I know, especially a movie you wan't people to laugh at. The Council of Institutional Investors isn't exactly a laff riot.
>Part of these attitudes, I understand is class-based. Those of us from the
>working class know what you think of our "underdeveloped" politics. We think
>you're a bunch of smarty-pants and we know you've never really worked a day in
>your life when we shake your hand and feel how smooth it is, how clean the
>fingernails are. We have to stop thinking less of you because you really do
>mean well and are working to create a more equitable distribution of the
>wealth.
And some of us even want to go beyond redistribution and make the working class the owners.
The portion of Cockburn's beef with you that I share is that your definition of the working class is awfully constricted. In your image right here, for example, the workers have rough hands and dirty fingernails. But in the U.S. today, there are about 19 million manufacturing workers - compared to 19 million in government work and 22 million in retail. Most of those people are working class, and most of them have pretty clean fingernails and smooth hands (except maybe for some paper cuts). Almost all us smarty pants on this list work, too, and most of us for fairly modest pay. (I'm the first member of my family to graduate from college, too.) As Wojtek pointed out, there's a lot of good stuff about smarty pants culture - so good, in fact, that it shouldn't be hoarded as a privilege. This is another aspect of your constricted image of the working class - do workers never read poetry, learn a foreign language, or drink wine from other than screwtop bottles? It's as if you take the Bundy family as a model of working class authenticity.
Doug