"And the moralism of cultural feminism makes it just as radical as MacKinnon's (power) theory, though in a very different way. MacKinnon would like to get them by the balls because she doesn't believe their minds and hearts *can* follow; whereas cultural feminism has detailed plans for their hearts and minds. It is a fighting faith seeking the moral conversion of a little less than half the human race. The emphasis on values in cultural feminism has led it to have reform aspirations that are at once minute and diffuse; it knows things like "lesbians should not wear strap-ons" and "people having sex should be required to ask permission for every new intimate touch" and "a husband who introduces his penis into the vagina of his sleeping wife has raped her and should be prosecuted." It can't stand to listen to Randy Newman's "You Can Leave Your Hat On." It thinks that a man who would joke to a female subordinate at work about pubic hairs appearing on his Coke can has shown himself unfit for high office. It's easily offended; it is schoolmarmish, judgmental, self-righteous. And here it begins to look not like a species of liberal feminism but like an alien infiltrator in it; we have seen it seeking to clear the airwaves of all endorsements of values it thinks are bad; we have seen it thinking that *referring* to a value is *endorsing* it. It can insist that people not only do the right thing but do it with the right spirit. In short, cultural-feminist moralism can trend toward totalitarian regulatory projects. Opposing it makes one sound like a libertarian."
-- pp 78-9 in Split Decisions: How and why to take a break from feminism.
I think what makes Chomsky a moralizer when he decides to veer off into questions of culture is this:
First, since he's largely a vulgar marxist, he tends to see questions of culture as subordinate to and frivilous as related to questions of manly man politics and economics. Thus, he simply doesn't give it much thought. This is why he so easily falls into the trap of seeing something that is "popular" such as sports and making the assumption that it can only be a bad thing, an opiate-like distraction that, were people not cheering for sports teams, they'd be feeding all their energy into demands for political and economic change.
Second, all of which take us back to the earlier discussion of chomsky who's entire oeuvre is undergirded by the premise that people have, within them, a capacity to know the truth, to know the real -- they have the capacity for unmediated access to these things. Which is why Chomsky's convinced that, if you just give people the correct explanations for why they are unfree, the scales will fall from their eyes and they will know the truth. Thus, *one* enemy, for Chomsky, is that anything that keeps people from seeing and hearing the truth, keeps them from grasping, in an unmediated fashion, reality and truth directly, is an enemy. Culture as produced in class society is a veil that keeps people from directly grasping the truth of their situation.
As Eric correctly points out though, Chomsky goes for the easy target, the kind of issue that lefties take for granted: sports is just one of those bad cultural products created in capitalist class society that is obviously only around for the purpose of distraction. Why not go after religion the same way? Or music? Hip hop? Harry Potter? Michael Crichton? Realty TV? Living with Ed? Gospel music? Lady Gaga? Ballet? Opera? Tour de France?
somebody said something about DIY and music, something about playing vs spectating. I thought it was pretty apt. I think about sports consumption and play in my family. I can't remember, once, anyone ever going to a sports stadium. Dad loved to watch ball. Dad was drafted to play on the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dad wished he'd had a boy instead of three girls. We were wicked, ball playing, fort building, tree climbing tomboys. I remember going to my son's ball games at high school (none of this went on in little league) and realizing, to my shock, that we had to stand for the anthem. IOW, in all the watching of sports on the telly and playing sports in the yards and streets, the anthem? never once the fuck thought of the anthem. i'd imagine that, as an avid armchair spectator, you could live a lifetime and pay zero attention to the national anthem, or the flyovers at games, or whatever.
not that it matters, really. just a thought.
i can safely say though that my actually DIY enjoyment of sports and desire to get things changed in my town so i can enjoy them more definitely takes me away from doing other political things. i would much rather do a critical mass ride than attend a workers justice center meeting, and i'm going to go play tennis and then lift weights because the gym and court is preferable to me than fucking working on a web site for said political organization.