[lbo-talk] Dispiriting Suburbs?

Jesse Lemisch utopia1 at attglobal.net
Wed Oct 18 15:56:42 PDT 2006


Yes, it's Daly City. But of course it was sung again and again throughout the sixties without regard to a specific place, and I think heightened movement condescension towards a possible left constituency.

Jesse Lemisch

----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Perelman" <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 6:26 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Dispiriting Suburbs?


>
> She was making fun of a specific development south of San Francisco. At
the time,
> that suburb was not typical.
>
> On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 06:12:04PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > On Oct 18, 2006, at 6:03 PM, Jesse Lemisch wrote:
> >
> > > I always disliked Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes.... all made out of
> > > ticky-tacky," etc., as contemptuous of people, including
> > > suburbanites, who
> > > live in those little boxes. I was therefore quite surprised in reading
> > > Bettina Aptheker's excellent new memoir, Intimate Politics, to hear
> > > that
> > > Reynolds was a Communist. It had been my experience that Communists,
> > > regardless of their other problems, did not insult potential
> > > constituencies.
> > > But there's no doubt that contempt for suburbia was very much a
> > > part of the
> > > New Left.
> >
> > Pete Seeger sang it too, and he was a Communist in some sense, no?
> >
> > I thought that part of the point of encouraging suburbanization was
> > to break up the urban working class, and make it more atomized and
> > conservative. Is that not true?
> >
> > Doug
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> michaelperelman.wordpress.com
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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