Richard Blow is the former executive editor of George Magazine. He is author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and is writing a book about Harvard University.
There are those who argue that the best thing to happen to the anti-abortion movement was Roe v. Wade, because the Supreme Court decision stunted an incipient grass-roots movement to liberalize state abortion laws. As a result, pro-choicers grew complacent. Their energy, when it was exerted, was essentially defensive. But abortion opponents had been handed a convenient rallying cry; they took the offensive by decrying jurisprudence that was, by its very nature, undemocratic. That's why 30 years after Roe v. Wade you still hear about the "debate" over abortion, despite the fact that polls have consistently shown that 80 percent of the country supports legalized abortion.
In a parallel way, a similar process helps explain the vitality of conservatives in the media and the declining status of liberals. For two generations of journalists, liberalism was the defining ethos. The conservatives who came to oppose them were both more fervent and more entertaining -- qualities which the modern media both demands and fosters. For about 25 years, beginning with the election of John F. Kennedy, liberalism was the primary motivator for aspiring journalists. JFK's idealism was followed by the struggle against the war in Vietnam and for civil rights. Journalists who covered these events couldn't help but be shaped by them.
Perhaps the singular influence was Watergate. The investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein inspired reporters for the next decade. Built into the world view of these Woodstein descendants was an instinctive distrust of politicians, especially Republican ones; a skepticism toward big businesses, such as those that had supported the Vietnam war or the Committee to Re-Elect the President; and an ambivalence -- if not hostility -- toward mass manifestations of patriotism.
In the 1960s, the mau-mauers were liberals and the flak-catchers were the establishment. But in the 1980s, that equation reversed itself. True, for many young journalists Ronald Reagan was the great Satan. But Reagan's election was a huge boost to conservative journalism. Funded by wealthy patrons, conservative newspapers sprung up on college campuses from California to New Hampshire. Reagan's idealism, callow and exclusionary though it was, provided young conservatives with something to believe in, something to grow on.
These young warriors of the right celebrated their opposition to the mainstream, and while their acting out was often hurtful and destructive -- bashing gays and tearing down anti-apartheid shanties -- they were also entertaining, outrageous and fearless. I'll never forget my right-wing Yale classmate who disrupted a seminar on Vietnam (led by a leftie grad student) by blasting Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" -- i.e., Robert Duvall's theme song from Apocalypse Now -- out his dorm room window. Yes, it was juvenile. But it was pretty funny, too. And the seminar's earnest liberals could only mutter and fume in response.
At the same time, some prominent liberals were also feeling alienated. Erstwhile anti-war activists such as New Republic owner Martin Peretz and biographer David Horowitz rejected their baby-boomer liberalism. They preached the neo-con faith with the passion of the converted -- even as, over the course of the 1980s, liberalism itself degenerated into special-interest, politically-correct dogma. Formerly liberal journalists such as P.J. O'Rourke made a good living by parodying that dogma, and liberal magazines such as Rolling Stone printed their work not because they endorsed it, but because it was fun, and because printing such contrarian stuff had become its own act of rebellion. Conservatism had become counter-culture, and counter-culture is always cool.
As were those young conservatives who surprised journalists by being "conservative-ands" -- as in, conservative and female, conservative and black, conservative and gay. The media loved these fresh and apparently oxymoronic faces. The New York Times Magazine put Dartmouth Review alum Laura Ingraham on its cover in a leopard-print mini-skirt (conservative and sexy). Andrew Sullivan (conservative and you-name-it) appeared in a Gap ad. New York Post columnist Robert George is a very smart guy, but there's no question that part of his success comes from the fact that no one expects an African-American to be conservative, and vice versa. In some ways, conservatives benefit from affirmative action more than liberals do.
As minority voices, conservatives learned to shout louder to make themselves heard. And mainstream liberals often promoted these conservatives out of a sense of fairness and, yes, guilt. I know TV bookers who think, "We have to get a conservative on the show," but would never say, "We have to get a liberal on the show" -- because they assume the ethos of a particular program is liberal already. Look at the old line-up of ABC's "This Week." The shows always had conservative-partisan journalists such as George Will or Bill Kristol. But the ostensible liberals, Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, were supposed to be objective journalists. They didn't dare come across as partisans. Here was liberalism that had effectively muffled itself. But, then, that's the problem with being on top. You can only go in one direction.
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