HASTA LA VISTA, BABY
Do the voters of California care that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a 'serial groper'? The possibility that they do not has scandalised liberal commentators, as the surprise candidate and Hollywood actor continued to outperform his Democrat rivals in the polls. This week mounting allegations forced a partial admission from Schwarzenegger that had his critics scenting blood - but to their dismay, Schwarzenegger's supporters appear unmoved by the allegations.
It is a misreading of the Schwarzenegger bandwagon to think that it can be de-railed by allegations of sexual misconduct. Supporters know that they are getting a film-star, not a politician, and that is what they want. The driving force behind the campaign is not typically right-wing, so much as a dissatisfaction with mainstream politics. California voters did not punish sitting president Bill Clinton for sexual behaviour, because they sensed that the charges against him were a manufactured scandal, of the kind that the media and politicians revel in. It is pointed that the sitting Governor, Gray Davies, has had to deny initiating the charges, because the opprobrium attached to political chicanery is greater than that of groping.
What is most disappointing is that the anti-Schwarzenegger camp has failed to make a more compelling political case against the actor. Davis' last-minute appeals to Hispanic voters seem crass, and driven by expediency rather than principle. Schwarzenegger's fame as a movie star puts him in another dimension altogether. Hoping that his personal conduct will defeat him is to go along with the transformation of a political contest into a Hollywood drama, only hoping that scandal, not success is the outcome.
POOR LITTLE BLAIR
The performance of the Labour Party front bench at their annual conference revealed a deep sense of unease with the public. Chancellor Gordon Brown made the one attempt to rally the troops, only to be cast as a careerist. For the rest, health secretary John Reid and the Prime Minister adopted the curious strategy of pleading with the conference to understand how difficult it was for them to govern. The net effect is to judge the party's performance in terms of the personal trials of leadership, rather than questions of policy.
What is marked is that the party has lost its most crucial relationship - with the intelligentsia. New Labour's real honeymoon was with the chattering classes, who have been its most vocal, but up till now loyal, critics. The accumulated wrangling over the war means that Labour can be tolerated but not embraced by its middle class fellow travellers. In another age Labour could have counted on a bedrock of working class support as a counterweight to the chattering classes, but it has made a virtue of reducing their links to the party. Like John Major's administration, its sole purpose now is to stay in government.
THERAPY CULTURE
Sociologist Frank Furedi's book Therapy Culture exposes the often-bizarre thinking behind the growing practice of counselling. Following James Nolan's Therapeutic State (New York UP, 1998), and the work of the late Christopher Lasch, Furedi questions assumptions like the 'emotional determinism' that reduces people to puppets of their inner drives, and the value of unearned 'self-esteem'. On the other hand, Furedi argues, therapists tend to be hostile to strong emotions that imply commitment to others, such as love. The case for therapy, he shows, is dependent upon rendering all personal relations potentially dangerous, while the formal relation of counsellor to client takes precedence.
Furedi illustrates the way that therapeutic values have come to inform political debate, taking the example of Bill Clinton's claim 'I feel your pain' as emblematic of the substitution of counselling for political representation. Like Nolan, Furedi argues that therapeutic language is not merely an idiom, more an invasion of the personal into the public realm. At the same time, he shows, the sanctity of personal life is shattered by the intrusion of professionals who assume privacy must be a cloak for abuse.
Rather than dealing with the intellectual discipline that gave rise to therapeutic ideas, Furedi's criticism is focused on the impact of their popularisation through measures like Edinburgh Council's aromatherapy course for the homeless or California's 'Self-esteem task-force'. The danger of this ubiquitous development, he shows, is the tendency for the state and the prevailing culture to reinforce dependency in individuals by encouraging claims-making behaviour. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, Routledge, GBP 16.99pbk -- James Heartfield