>A lot of this talk about Michael Moore reminded me today of what
>Tony Kushner said in an interview with Political Affiars: that some
>people on the left are "in love" with marginalization. His Angel in
>America HBO movie might have actually outdone Moore's, but I haven't
>really looked up the stats on that.
>
>http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/194/1/17/
An excerpt worth chewing over:
>PA: Setting aside the problem of funding, at one point there was a
>broad left movement in theater, literature and Hollywood. Wouldn't
>you say that if the organized left wants to have influence it must
>engage in the arena of broad popular culture?
>
>TK: Yes, and that still goes on. For instance, with the gay and
>lesbian struggles, we've triumphed on a cultural level primarily
>through the medium of popular entertainment. When the Christian
>right accuses Hollywood of peddling a homosexual agenda, they are
>completely correct. This is, in fact, the only thing that we've
>triumphed in. We've failed totally legislatively. Every time we try
>to pass a lesbian or gay rights or an anti-discrimination bill and
>certainly in the struggle to get married, we've endured terrible
>defeats. We are going to continue enduring them until we get a
>federal government that rises to its historical role, as the
>protector of minority rights.
>
>But on a political level we have failed to make common cause with
>other groups. On a cultural level, you can't turn on television
>without running into lesbians and gay men. There's an enormous
>amount of progress that is changing this country and the world. But
>it's not of the organized left.
>
>When you talk about the organized left, it's hard to know exactly
>what that means. I think the most activist people on the left, the
>people with the most radical disenchantment with capitalism, with
>the deepest belief there must be another way of organizing human
>relationships, people with a really deep understanding, a lived
>understanding, have fallen in love with a marginalization and a
>powerlessness.
>
>PA: They've fallen in love with marginalization?
>
>TK: I think so. People on the left constantly decry the lack of
>identifiable left voices on television, and in some mainstream
>discourse. We have been shoved to the side, and it's really a debate
>between the center and the far right.
>
>That certainly is the case in legislative bodies. I don't believe
>that's simply a conspiracy of giant corporations. We also have lost
>the ability to speak in a way most people understand. There has been
>a drifting apart of left intelligentsia and "the people," the middle
>class and the working class. We've become irrelevant and in a
>certain sense become comfortable with that. It allows us to spin
>fantasies that have no need to be reconciled with reality, which is
>an easier thing than to have to actually take responsibility for
>changing the world. To be a critic of the world is an easier thing
>than to be an activist. In a way, we have gone back before Marx and
>abrogated the fundamental tenet: philosophers are felt to understand
>the world, the point is to change it. I worry we have drifted away.
>Because of the crisis of theory, because of various other kinds of
>crises, we have become less capable, and more and more used to being
>not capable.