> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> > ... Once when we were in heated debate, he waved his hand and
> > proclaimed at me, "Back, back to the margins of politics from whence
> > you came." And yes, Jed being the nice guy he is, actually came up
> > to me later to assure me he meant nothing mean by the comment.
>
> You mean he said it before the audience, yet later on in private he
> admitted he didn't mean it literally?! How ironic.
Of course, he was making a joke, commenting ironically on how unacceptable my views were in the mainstream. But the public-private distinction shouldn't be taken too seriously. In a less heated environment publicly, he would and has appreciated challenges of a more radical nature than his own. He said to me how sad it is that someone like Robert Kuttner, who is a democratic socialist in his private views, positions himself as a "liberal" to deal with the constraints of entering public debate- another part of the problem of irony he sees where strong views are unacceptable in a culture of bland ironic conformity. And he dislikes the whole selling of himself by publishers and the press as some kind of nature boy hick discovering the corruption of the big city, since reporters pick and choose comments he and others make to fit that story.
> Well, Mr. Purdy got his seventy-five grand.
I'll admit to a twinge of jealousy at Jed's mass media success (although the savage reviews he is receiving tempers that a bit), but this last comment really is uncalled for. I get the sense in it and some of the reviews by various baby-boom generation reviewers that they really like trashing any sincere Gen-X writer. The Port Huron statement is as pretensious and naive as anything Jed has written, but it seems that you hard-bitten old folks begrudge even the hint of sincerity and look to trash the motives or aspirations of anyone evidencing that view. Which is the core of where Jed is absolutely right in his comments about a culture of irony.
There was a roundtable on the Atlantic Online site talking about Gen-X politics (following up on Halstead's article on the same subject). Rightwinger Tucker Carlson argued that the Gen-Xers really shared almost no view in common, other than hating the sanctimoniousness of the Baby Boomers towards everyone younger than them.
A reasonably friendly critique of Jed's writing is reasonable by left writers, but this is a guy who comes out of the social democratic left tradition, denounces strip mining and the power of capital to destroy peoples lives, and argues for civic engagement rather than a culture of get-rich Internet individualism. We should be all wishing him all the success in the world in becoming a media star and public intellectual on the scene, when the rest of the media is trying to promote "Third Millenium" yuppie libertarianism as the "voice" of younger folks.
--Nathan