Chomsky's detractors can't seem to agree on his style, either he's "unable to connect with ordinary folk", or on the flip side his ideas are too simplistic (e.g. easy for "ordinary folk" to understand right off the bat) to be taken seriously. As far as being of no concern to anyone who doesn't already agree, of course that's the case, that's axiomatic, and the right is no different in that respect. I know many people who Chomsky translated meaningfully to, whereas Michael Kinsley and company did not. Also, while all of these people are running around to Socialist Scholar's Conferences talking about whatever, Chomsky spends a large amount of time talking to small groups out in the heartland, and answering in a considerate and thoughtful manner virtually every letter and e-mail he gets.
> We need more Henwoods and indeed more Kellys doing this sort of thing,
> more spikes and odd unpredictable angles and a bettah sensahuma. That's
> partly why Hitchens is such a loss, he brought a sort of class and
> elegance to left wing polemics that few others here can; Cockburn used to
> be able to do this too, but not lately.
I find Doug's articles and books on economics interesting, if I didn't, I wouldn't be on this list. But Doug as some kind of outreach to Middle America? What's going to set them on fire, this response "philosopher and psychoanalyst, Slavoj Zizek" gave to a question from Doug during an interview?
Zizek: "Martin Heidegger said that philosophy doesn't make things easier, it makes them harder and more complicated. What they can learn is the ambiguity of so many situations, in the sense that whenever we are presented by the big media with a simple opposition, like multicultural tolerance vs. ethnic fundamentalism, the opposition is never so clear-cut. The idea is that things are always more complex. For example, multiculturalist tolerance, or at least a certain type of it, generates or involves a much deeper racism. As a rule, this type of tolerance relies on the distinction between us multiculturalists, and intolerant ethnic others, with the paradoxical result that anti-racism itself is used to dismiss IN A RACIST WAY the other as a racist."
Yes, this just might get Joe Sixpack interested enough in Zizek to run out and buy Zizek's "Looking Awry : An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture". Once enough people in Wyoming get their hands on that, it won't be long before red flags are flying over Cheyenne.
I don't think Doug is going to be the Pat Buchanan of the left, I think he's a resource on the left for those interested in economic matters, just like FAIR is a resource for those interested in corporate media matters - and good at what he does. His radio show and articles for stuff like the Nation might widen exposure of his existence to those within the left camp already, but not much beyond that. I think a window for populism opened up from the late 1980's to early 1990's which could be observed, from Buchanan's switch of economic thinking, to the popularity of H. Ross Perot, or Michael Moore's documentary about Flint, Michigan. But that closed up and I think it still is closed, and I think it still is closed, even considering the large anti-war demonstrations and the number of small town paleoconservatives who are not eager for war with Iraq.
And as far as Christopher Hitchens - please. He has populist appeal? Hell, even Brian Lamb who is usually unflappable looked like he was going to have a heart attack when Hitchens went on a ten minute diatribe about Mother Teresa of all people in his upper class British accent. What the left needs is less Hitchens's, less Kinsely's, and more people who can take on the Buchanan's, and O'Reilly's, people like Walter Reuther, Norman Thomas and John Lewis. Those guys spoke well, or on a level that got through to workers which is the important part, and they had strength behind them as well.
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