> What wonderful news! Our ability to wallow in "excess and vulgarity"
> remains untrammeled despite the left's catastrophic failure to inhibit
> America's global war making or the ever more inequitable distribution of
> wealth. I myself find US mass culture disgusting for the most part -- an
> unrelenting assault on human dignity and an appeal to what is most base in
> people. MTV in particular is a prime example of what Thomas Frank has
> called the "commodification of dissent" -- for all its Woodstockian
> stylistic flourishes, MTV is mere money machine that is about as dionysian
> as the Financial Accounting Standards Board. I see nothing to celebrate
> here at all.
>
> Carl
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Rich isn't "celebrating" bourgeois decadence; as you note, he thinks, with
you, that much of the popular culture is "excessive and vulgar". But that's
not what the article is about. Rich is trying to allay a building liberal
panic about a pending assault on political and cultural expression by a
triumphant religious right. Politically, this is reflected in increasingly
urgent calls by parts of the secular left and some Democratic politicians to
head off an emergent American Taliban by embracing -- or, at least, adapting
to -- the "moral values" proclaimed by the right, and blurring the party's
identification with gays and single women, in particular.
Rich rightly points out, IMO, that 1) the popular appeal of religious fundamentalism is actually quite limited, and 2) the Republican media and political apparatus, for both economic and political reasons, have no interest beyond the electoral to promote its agenda. Consequently, Rich's conclusion echoes what many on this list have been saying: if the Democrats want to shake the Republicans' hold on the most oppressed white American workers, they should not (unconvincingly) be sounding the same nationalist and religious themes, but advancing their own economic program. I see nothing especially offensive or controversial in this.
MG