Ehrenreich on fun

[Liza Featherstone]

as for the hair-shirt thread, I completely agree that the left has a big problem 
with fun -- food, buying stuff, sex, movies, parties, clothes, making things look 
nice, whatever. I liked the BE piece. I also think, happily, this whole 
puritanical ethos is dying out and that the left is gradually (very gradually) 
loosening up a bit and developing more helpful analyses of pleasure and um, 
having a little more fun. I attribute this to a couple of things: changes in 
feminism (the "pro-sex" folks basically won the very bitter sex wars over 
pornography and other stuff, and in general feminism has become a lot more 
culturally diverse which has helped it to shed much or mostof its anti-sex and 
mandatory bad dressing baggage); cultural studies in academia -- much 
theorizing about the pleasures of pop culture, etc; more perpsectives from cultures 
which unlike Anglo-Americans, don't necessarily equate deprivation and 
sacrifice with virtue.   tho of course the hair-shirt thing still exists -- just look at 
all the hardcore vegetarians and vegans that still populate campus progressive 
circles ( which has often seemed to me like middle-class girl food anxiety 
masquerading as politics). 

one thing I thought was odd about the BE piece was the notion that the right is 
better on fun. doesn't everyone think the party's elsewhere? I think one of the 
things the right hate even about right-wing liberals like Clinton is that they 
seem to have too much fun. I mean, sure the Christian right  can throw a good 
revival meeting, but in terms of what they actually believe about fun (sex for 
instance), you couldn't ask for a colder shower.  the anti-fun sentiment on the left 
is at least contested, ambiguous, and a matter usually more of innuendo and 
implication than Biblical text. 

Liza