> How come there has been no mention of Michael Moore
> and Barbara
> Ehrenreich in this thread? Both have had bestsellers
> the past year in the
> US -- or is this east/west coast folk buying copies
> for each other?
>
> Say what you like about Moore -- he is a lefty and
> he is not boring...
One can add Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Gary Wills, Robert Scheer -- there are any number of nonboring lefties of the journalistic persuasion. The issue isn't individual examples, it's a matter of a tendency involving an overall tone and style exemplified by Z mag and its contributors who emulate the worst in Chomsky but not the best. The best is hard to emulate, it depends on his his brilliance and encyclopaedic knowledge. The worst -- the flat moralism, the theoretical shallowness, the humorless monotone -- is all too easy to mimic. Herman really sets the benchmark for this. I don't denigrate C's achievements, and like many of here, his writing have been an essential inspiration and a vital part of my education. But let's not deny that there's a problem, despite C's better aspects and the existence of a number of good leftist writers.
1. A lot of left thinking, journalism, scholarship is deadly dull, grim, uninviting, tediously PC and in-groupy. This is mainly what we've been talking around. The right has a lot of this too, of course; but they also have a lot that isn't; Z mag (sorry to keep harping on this) is reading more and more like like a new left version of the National Review of the early-mid 1960s, but without the good writing. The right has almost cornered the market in stuff that's sexy and cool, and that's a damn shame.
2. There's a paucity of populist appeal, which the right has in spades. It's not absolute -- Moore, Ivins, Hightower, certainly have some fair amount. But they're all over us on this one.
3. There's a shortage of interesting theory or scholarship in a broad sense. You don't necessary need a brilliant new overarching idea to have this,a nd indeed the right has made a lot of hay with a handful of old and simple ideas (less government regulation, more guns, etc.). This wasn't so until the last 10-15 years, but our guys have been falling down, lapsing into incomprehensible pomism. And our hopefully interesting, fun, cool, sexy, populist writers and media people (as well as our activists) need ideas to translate for our potential audiences.
That's how I see it anyway.
jks
>
> In <5EB4135E.68821CF0.346F2FA5 at netscape.net>, on
> 02/18/03
> at 09:09 PM, MurdochLance at netscape.net (Lance
> Murdoch) said:
>
> [...]
>
> > 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.
>
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