content analysis

Tonight, the honors program and the residence hall organization co-sponsored a debate analysis event, in which clips from last night’s Presidential debate were shown and a faculty member from Communications (also campus debate coach) and I served as “expert” commentators.  We also encouraged discussion with the very smart and energetic group of students.

At the end of the debate, the Comm. Prof. — an old 60s radical — went on a little rant about how upset he is that both candidates support nuclear power, which he claimed is incredibly dangerous.  Though progressive and enthusiastic Obamaniacs to a person, the students were having none of it.  Several of them work in the campus’ nuclear research facility and touted the virtues and safety of new nuclear technology (particularly nuclear waste recycling).  Comm. Prof. held his ground and said that he’s most concerned about the transportation of nuclear waste, but he was clearly outmatched on the science.  To head off an embarrassing situation, I noted that while most of my engineer friends insist that nuclear is the only way, all of my liberals friends (including my own 60s radical parents) are scared to death of it.  I added two other notes:

1. Perhaps most troubling is that energy is not treated as a public resource in this country; it’s part of private enterprise.  As such, the nuclear power companies’ first interest is in profit.  Perhaps, if it were publicly-held, we could emphasize the safety first, making sure we protect people before we make a buck.

2. I simply do not have the knowledge to know who is right.  In the realm of science education,  I am a distinctly average American and do not know enough to evaluate claims about nuclear power (despite reading coverage of it in the Times, The New Yorker, and Mother Jones).  Many times when we talk about reforming K-12 curricula to produce more informed citizens, we emphasize improving social studies.  But I would argue that the citizen of today needs a very different science education.  Forget memorizing the periodic table — that has helped me never.  Americans like me would benefit greatly from an education on nuclear power, climate change research, and other areas of science that are genuinely relevant to our lives.

From this experience, I came away with the social goal of encouraging reform of science curricula and the personal goal of learning enough to have a position on nuclear power.  Any resources you might recommend?

I’m an Obama guy and have been since I read a New Yorker profile of him back in 2004.  Given any one of my demographic characteristics, it’s pretty predictable (like everything in my happy, but  in-lock-step-with-a-fitted-regression-line life).   But after last night’s victory, I wanted to say a word about Senator Clinton.

Consider this: today is the 89th anniversary of Congress proposing the 19th amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote.  Imagine if Hillary Clinton had won the primary process and stood today as the victor on the anniversary of a great leap in the women’s suffrage movement.  What a beautiful, serendipitous moment it would have been to see the first female presidential nominee on such an important date on the feminist calendar.  Of course, Hillary’s campaign as is has been important and historic.  Clearly, it has inspired many women and girls across the country.

I hope and expect to see a female president in my lifetime.  I just hope it’s a woman with more political conviction and a truly progressive agenda.  Barbara Boxer, maybe?

slow news – May 13, 2008

Clinton’s Universal Bargaining Chip

By Katharine Q. Seelye (NYT Web Only)

I try to steer clear of pure political posts on slow news, but, sweet jesus, I hope this is true.  Healthcare has been an issue where I felt great ambivalence over Senator Obama.

slow news – May 8, 2008

The Aria of Chris Matthews

By Mark Leibovich (New York Times)

This article came out almost a month ago and I have been talking about it constantly ever since.  But since nobody else I know has read it, I thought I’d feature it here.  This is an incredible profile of MSNBC enthusiastic political superfan and host of “Hardball,” Chris Matthews.  Now, most people I know didn’t read this because they have no interest in pundits.  However, this story not only blasts the hell out of Matthews and reveals that most of the NBC news staff can’t stand him, it also exposes the growing divide between those old-style politicians and pundits who embrace politics for its maneuvering, strategy, and give-and-take (think Matthews, the Clintons, Bushies, Machiavelli) and those who are cynical about politics and simply care about progress and social transformation (Keith Olbermann, Stewart/Colbert, Obama).  This philosophical difference, which appears to break along generational lines, seems to be one of the great
political changes occurring in American society right now.  We all been more cynical about politics than TV pundits for a while, but maybe people (especially young people) are becoming more interested in policy and progress than pundits, too.

In the inaugural edition of america for europeans, we celebrate tomorrow’s political showdown in the Keystone State (and the possible end of this nightmarishly annoying Democratic primary process) by focusing on a political issue.

One unusual trait of contemporary Americans is a reluctance to discuss their political beliefs. In Europe and Latin America, discussion of political issues and open support for political parties is common and even celebrated. I have never met an old, drunken Englishman in a pub with any reluctance to tell why he’s Labour. Or an Italian not eager to have an hours long debate about politics. Or a Mexican who wouldn’t put her family’s experience in terms of political economy.

For Americans (particular white ones, I suppose), talking about politics is rude. People who do discuss politics in public are seen as crass (think Michael Moore or Ann Coulter). When I volunteered for the Kerry 04 campaign, I would call people and just ask them if we had their support or not. Many, if not most people told me that they didn’t like to talk about politics. “It’s personal,” they’d tell me. Some went as far as to say that it was rude of me to ask. Dave Chappelle makes a similar point in For What It’s Worth, noting that white people are all too eager to describe personal sexual exploits, but shy away from political discussion. The other day, I was chatting with a relative stranger, when he cautiously said, “Well, I don’t know what your politics are, but I kind of like Barack Obama …” He paused, waiting for me to confirm that I, too, heart B-rock. So assured, he went on to positively gush about Obama.

Beyond the relatively simple question of who someone’s voting for in a given election (which could come down to a matter of personality), discussing actual political issues is virtually forbidden unless one is certain that s/he is in like-minded company. Nation readers chat about politics together, avoiding such a conversation with the National Review subscriber down the hall. An essential part of the mythology of American holidays (particularly Christmas and Thanksgiving) is the classic dinner table fight between the snot-nosed, liberal college kid and the right-wing uncle or father.

I suspect it boils down to the capitalist, individualist culture. Unlike our founding fathers or Europeans, who see democracies as providing an excellent open forum for debating what our societies should be like, Americans view politics through a consumer lens, seeing Kerry and Bush like the choice between Tide or Ivory Snow (as Arundhati Roy once said).

A good article in The Times today about the travails of Silda Wall Spitzer and a brilliant commentary on the same topic by by Samantha Bee of The Daily Show last night.

While I’m not going to dive whole-heartedly into the Spitzer scandal, I will say that it once again brings issues of gender and politics into the spotlight. Of course, we’d expect that they’d already be in the spotlight, what with a female presidential candidate and all. But there seem to be a different set of rules for Hillary Clinton. Yes, she has suffered innumerable unfair criticisms because of her gender (e.g., nasty jibes about her appearance or framing her emotional reactions as gendered behavior). Nonetheless, before Hillary became a candidate, I would have guessed that the American public would have doubted a female candidate on security issues (buying into the stereotype that women aren’t tough or decisive enough). That has not been the case. Of the two Dems, she’s clearly regarded as the tougher one. Together with Bill Clinton, she is a member of a take-no-prisoners political team. The Clintons have always succeeded with a two-for-the-price-of-one sales pitch. Perhaps that kind of framing diffuses concerns about her gender.  Or not (see NewSocProf on this).

For whatever reason, HRC is an anomaly. To better understand the way women linked to politics are normally treated, we need to look to Silda Spitzer and Michelle Obama. Both Spitzer and Obama are highly intelligent women and Harvard Law grads (Michelle was a sociology major!). While both have frequently been forced into the role of the attractive and supportive arm piece, they have also gotten into trouble for being independently-minded and making the occasional sarcastic comment, qualities that are often prized in male politicians by the press. It seems the media (and the public?) wants a political wife to be: a strong supporter of her husband, a caring mother to her children, self-deprecating and kindly; outspoken on a singular political issue that affects the hearth and home (say, education); faithful and supportive, if hurt when her husband betrays her. It is important that she be attractive, but not distractingly so. It is better if she looks like a Mom (friendly, a little overweight, a bit wrinkled, knowing). If she’s too attractive, too skinny, or too smart, it suggests an independence that is worrisome in a female political companion. In many ways, Elizabeth Edwards was the ideal political wife; she was often described as “a real woman” who suburban moms could relate to. The press seems less willing to accept a glamorous, independent woman who was also a successful lawyer (and who continued working while having kids).

So, Silda Spitzer had to stand there beside a man who she may still love, but certainly loathes at the moment (and she had to stand next to him again today). She stood there because that is the role that has been carved out for political wives and one played by many others (e.g., Dina Matos McGreevey). While it may be better than the way Rudy Guiliani treated Donna Hanover (the surprise press conference), it is still a humiliating ritual which grants her no opportunity to publicly express her anger and upset, or the legitimate choice to keep the entire situation private. I’m not sure what it will take to change it, except for a generation of political husbands who almost certainly would not accept being pushed into the same position.

***
Somewhat related update: Seriously. This is what it took for New York to get its first black governor? In the midst of these unfortunate circumstances, it is worth recognizing this achievement by David Paterson (who also legally blind).

In the past year, I have read three books and seen a movie that deal with overlapping themes of tribalism in England. Two of the books — Paul Theroux’s The Kingdom by the Sea and Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs — and the film, the near-perfect This is England, are set in 1980s England and address the severe issues of poverty, nationalism, racism during that time. The third book, Bill Bryson’s cheerful romp through the UK, Notes from a Small Island, depicts England in the mid-1990s, a period of increasing prosperity. At the heart of all four items was a struggle for the meaning of Englishness in a time of growing diversity and a shifting economy.

This is England begins in the early 80s. Unemployment is high, England is involved in a war in the Falkland Islands, and PM Margaret Thatcher is denying that society exists. A young boy, whose father recently died in the Falkland Islands, is picked on in school and joins a group of friendly, harmless punks. However, when an older punk is released from prison, he introduces the boys to a brand of racist, white nationalism. What is presented as standing up for England is thinly veiled racism against blacks, South Asian immigrants, and Jews. In a similar vein, Among the Thugs notes the recruiting of football hooligans to the white nationalist organization, the National Front. Theroux notes that much of the language of economic downturn is couched in racist language. He writes,

“It’s the blacks, see,” a respectable-looking man named Strawby told me. “We whites are the original inhabitants of this country, but they make all the laws in favor of the blacks. That’s why it’s all gone bad.” Mr. Strawby saw me making notes. He was not alarmed. He gave me a little lecture on racial characteristics and offered me tea.

All three sources tend to suggest that faced with the dual threats of massive unemployment and increasing immigrant populations, many white British people began to formulate a brand of reactionary white nationalism and tribalism. These feelings were acted out in several ways. Theroux notices grafittied swastikas on walls throughout the country. TIE depicts a National Front rally in which feelings of patriotism are quickly turned into anti-immigrant language. Buford describes how white people who feel little sense of a unique ethnic identity turn to country and football club to develop a identity. Some supporters of various football clubs — Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United — develop tribal identities and engage in often horrific violence toward other supporters*. In sum, England of the 80s and early 90s was a place of bigotry, violence, and incredible inequality.

By the mid-90s when Bryson toured England, things sound a bit better. With dramatic interventions by FIFA and FA, football violent was significantly reduced. New economic prosperity was developing with the high-tech and service industries replacing many of the manufacturing jobs that disappeared in the late 1970s and 1980s. Whereas Theroux complained about historical buildings being neglected and falling into disrepair, Bryson’s gripe is about how new (ugly) construction was quickly replacing historic buildings. In 1994, Tony Blair, then regarded as the “British JFK,” was elected as Prime Minister.

Today, the outlook in the British Isles continues to be fairly good. The pound sterling is worth over $2. Building on tourism, the “Celtic Tiger” economy of Ireland has been one of the great economic success stories in recent years. Similarly, England has moved three quarters of the labor force into the service industry and Britain, as a whole, has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe. While there are certainly major issues of inequality (especially for immigrant populations), they are nowhere near the levels of American stratification**.

I mention all of this for a reason. Last week, I was discussing Juliet Schor’s The Overspent American with a friend who studies global inequalities. My friend claimed that on most social, political, and economic measures, the U.S. is on the same trajectory as Europe, but lagging about 15 years behind. I am aware that several members of the pundit class have claimed that “the European social and political model” will ultimately prevail. This social and political model, I suppose would include an expanded social safety net, a more reasonable balance between life and work, a consumption model that emphasizes quality over quantity, etc. While I wish this would happen, I remain skeptical given America’s stubbornly individualist, free-market, materialist culture.

Nonetheless, spinning this idea around in my head, I was struck by the similarities between 1980s England and 2000s U.S. of A.: the reactionary anti-immigration attitudes, the economic difficulties (and disappearance of manufacturing), a war that the public doesn’t know how to react to, a right-wing administration trying to dismantle the social safety net, and so on. Of course, there are big differences (e.g., Iraq ≠ Falkland Islands). But the idea that in a relatively short amount of time, we could genuinely improve this country is encouraging. Naivete? You decide.

*Buford rejects the idea that the violence of football supporters is rooted in economics, noting that hooligans come from a variety of class backgrounds. He claims that rather than passionately being pulled into a crowd by dramatic circumstances, football fans rationally seek out the violent encounters for the adrenaline rush it provides. These claims would tend to be supported by recent rational choice, social movements literature (e.g., resource mobilization), which reject older LeBonian theories of crowd behavior.

**I don’t doubt that there are any number of problems I’ve neglected. I’m simply making to key contentions here: a) things have gotten a bit better, and b) economic disparities in the UK are not as bad as the US.

I love politics. If my cable provider offered a Politics All-League Pass, I’d surely be the first to sign up. The amount of time I can spend watching Chris Matthews, Wolf Blizter, and the rest of the mindless media gang, while reading endless blogs and articles about politics far surpasses that of any of my friends or families. Given this interest, it has been difficult not to mention politics here, but I don’t see this blog as being about whether I like Obama or Hillary. So, I’ve been avoiding it.

However, there is an genuinely sociological issue raised by the campaign that I’d like to discuss. In the past several weeks, the Clinton campaign has been very successful in selling the storyline that the press has been harder on her and, perhaps, even want to see Obama win. Though this idea has gained substantial currency (thanks a lot, SNL), I’m not buying it for two seconds. Here’s why: plenty of research has shown that the American press corps is a highly professionalized group committed to the idea of objectivity, something that is heavily emphasized in J-schools (see Michael Schudson on the American objectivity norm). As Schudson writes in “The objectivity norm in American journalism,”

Journalists grew self-conscious about the manipulability of information in the propaganda age. They felt a need to close ranks and assert their collective integrity in the face of their close encounter with the publicity agents’ unembarrassed effort to use information (or misinformation) to promote special interests.

Many sociologists and former journalists, among them Herb Gans, Mark Fishman, and Leon Sigal, have documented journalists’ almost ideological commitment to objectivity and “common sense” thinking. No insult is greater in a newsroom than to insinuate that a journalist has a political preference. As NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams often says with great pride, “I don’t do opinions.”

That said, journalists are under great pressure to produce new “news pegs.” For example, when one has a primary race where nothing new is happening for weeks at a time, the slightest development can be overblown into a major event. Thus, during a spell in the campaign when little was happening, the Clinton campaign (masters of media manipulation, see The War Room (1993)) was able to provide reporters with a new and interesting storyline: that the press is in love with Obama. The story also offered the added bonus of being able to engage in self-criticism (as anyone who reads The Times‘ public editor’s column knows the press loves to do).

In the past week, the press has fancied the idea that Clinton’s negative attacks against Obama have won her some much-needed momentum (whatever that means). And while it seems likely that he came out of last night’s Ohio-Texas Two-Step with more delegates, the storyline that Obama is winning has grown stale. So, the press will begin to run with the classic Clinton “comeback kid” story.

It’s just important to remember that these stories have far less to do with reality and far more with the nature of news routines.