That said, Ross is owed an apology--conflating the two changes the meaning. There is more here. But I want to think on it some more.
I need to quote at length from Ross's column today:
Palin's popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal -- that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.There is in this critique, a kind of Al Sharpton analysis--Sarah Palin as a stand-in for all of her social class. Ross contends that her failures are not her own, but somehow the failures that would afflict anyone else presumably from her "social class." But this only works if you think that most of working class America is as fucking inept as Sarah Palin.This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It's been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she's botched an essential democratic role -- the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.
But it's also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.
Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)
Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You'll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You'll endure gibes about your "slutty" looks and your "white trash concupiscence," while a prominent female academic declares that your "greatest hypocrisy" is the "pretense" that you're a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.
All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin's gender and her social class.
Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.
But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don't even think about it.
There is more to be said about that, but I'd like to move to something more important--that being Ross's definition of "Anyone."
In the last ten months, we've seen the son of a single mother, son of an immigrant, roots in Kansas, roots in the quintessentially American South Side of Chicago, standing for the "traditional values" of family, and the lesson we take from this is is that American meritocracy is broken.
Conservative condescension toward working class America, works in tandem with racial blindness. I have tried, through a few re-readings, to avoid seeing that in Ross's column. But it's very difficult to process the notion that Sarah Palin is a better model of the all-American meritocratic ideal than Barack Obama, without believing that that judgment hinges on race.
My black readers are laughing at me. Again.
I would like to see Ross's point another way. But I can't escape the fact that, at this
very moment, there are two young girls living in the White House. In
their veins, they have the blood of men who fought in World War II.
They have the blood of women who fled the Aparthied South, made something of themselves, and helped build one of the country's great neighborhoods.
Yet, in these times, having come this far, at this moment, we are told that the meritocratic ideal is broken. And,
seemingly, it would be fixed by offering a candidate, who can't name
a single newspaper she reads, access to the nuclear launch codes. In
that context, one wonders at what precise point, meritocracy worked? And
then I recoil at the answer...
I don't know what to say here. There's a direct line from this
sort of thinking, to the idea that Sotomayor isn't qualified to the risible notion that whites (of a certain "social class") are being herded into Jim Crow. Race is
all around us. I'm actually shocked when it crops up. And
then I'm shocked that I'm shocked. And then I'm fearful that a day is
coming when I won't be shocked at all, when I'll just expect it.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Actually, I think that Douthat's point with the Obama-Palin comparison is even more invidious than you suggest. What he seems to be promoting here is the idea that meritocracy is itself elitist. Palin is the paradigm for "Anyone" because she managed to succeed (and nearly got a heartbeat away from the most important job in the country) despite not having the sort of ability, training, or work ethic required. Sure, Barack came from humble and unlikely origins, but he was actually incredibly smart and an extremely hard worker. Palin was neither of those things, and somehow that very lack of outstanding characteristics has consistently been promoted as one of her most outstanding characteristics.
OMG, it just hit me: that is TOTALLY what I was thinking but I just couldn't figure out how to vocalize it. Thanks!
Though I did also think a large part of it is latent, MAYBE unrecognized racism on Douthat's part (meaning he doesn't recognize it but it's there).
There's also Douthat now bringing up social classes in general, despite the fact that conservatives never tire of claiming America is a "classless society."
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/07/douthat-gets-palin-half-right.html
I have to say Im surprised to see Douhat jump on the hackneyed, creaky, termite-ridden and rusty 300 year old bandwagon of American anti-intellectualism.
I thought Dubya had shattered it, or at least knocked a wheel off.
But here come the Teabaggers pulling it thru the muck, with Douhat cheering it on.
Yes, right on - the way he opposes "the meritocratic ideal" to "the democratic ideal" basically equates democracy w/idiocracy.
Since when could meritocracy not be considered as essentially elitist? By construction, "meritocracy" means that the meritorious elite have κρατειν and the δῆμος do not.
I think you can make a carefully considered distinction between meritocracy and democracy, but I don't think that is what Douthat's doing. First, adding the word "elite," which carries connotations of a self-sustaining in-group, muddies the waters some. Focusing just on meritocracy for the moment, I think we usually think of a meritocracy as a system which rewards merit rather than a system in which those with merit rule per se. I'm talking usage rather than etymology.
The larger point here is that "elitism" tends to be used in contentious and not entirely honest ways. Pundits (esp. on the right) conflate the idea that it's wise to hire or elect people with demonstrated knowledge of and aptitude for the task they're being asked to perform with the idea that only those who've gone to the right schools and know the right people can govern.
First off, meritocracy obviously does necessarily suppose a contestable standard of merit and an even more contestable means of measuring the same, thus leading to both real and reasonable differences on those matters and rhetorical tricks meant to resemble real and reasonable differences. The standards of public reason, however, are that we must challenge the later in the same manner as the former.
If you want to talk about κρατειν meaning "rewards", then you are free to do so, and I do note that many people are sufficiently ignorant of its prima facie and historical meaning to think of it primarily in that way, but it is poor style to do so without noting or otherwise making clear that your definition differs from the one that is commonly documented.
Regardless, κρατειν-as-reward in the context of "meritocracy" is still essentially elitist, in that it asserts that rewards should accumulate to the meritorious elite rather than the people (δῆμος), and this directly relates to your elite-as-self-sustaining-power-group as power and the things that breed and support it are among those things commonly awarded.
Even if we agreed that that merit "obviously does necessarily suppose" (self-evidence PLUS metaphysical certitude- sweet!) a contestable standard of merit, that still does not settle the question of its relation to democracy. You might as well say that white power COULDN'T co-exist with male power, because after all it's either got to be white or male not both. Meritocracy and democracy are not identical, but there are more and less concordant ways for them to work. It might be that the demos is the most effective decider of meritocratic representation, and indeed that meritocracy (insofar as ruling power is held by such representatives) requires, if there is not to be arbitrary stagnation of power by blood, race, etc., democratic institutions that open opportunities to anyone in the demos to prove themselves worthy of representing people). And unless we are talking about a pure plebiscite, the question of merit and representation ineluctably (though not obviously) creeps into the articulation of why democracy is the most preferable form of government. J.S. Mill covers this quite well in "Considerations on Representative Government." It is a good reminder of the difference between etymology and political philosophy, and why this whole Palin/Douthat point is actually about differing views of republicanism.
(replying to Gramsci @7:19 here as comments only nest finitely)
Yes, I am known for my metaphysical certitude as regards the existence of uncertainty.
Anyway, even given that res publica will be conducted by People of Merit where merit is decided by popular vote, you still end up with an elite -- the aristocracy of electability -- and one that is going to, in practice, differ greatly from that produced by the gold standard of democratic representation: sortition. So, the Palin/Douthat point might be about shades of republicanism, but it's still about more-or-less elitist shades.
I'm not laughing at you, I'm shaking my head in agreement. I too went right there when I read that ridiculous statement about Obama v. Palin in his column. It hurts my head to even think about the hours of mental gymnastics he must go through to come to the conclusion that Barack Obama is not a uniquely American success story of pulling yourself up by your boot straps.
Race is definitely an element here but I think most of his "argument" can be summed up by what you said in your last post. The real Americans, according to Harvard educated elites like Douthat, are those who lovingly embrace the ignorance which keeps them from voting their own economic interests in favor of candidates who they believe will restore the old order of racism, sexism and homophobia.
I think you might be reading too much into it - you've put more thought into reading it then he did in writing it.
Then again, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the difference between a "meritocratic ideal" vs. a "democratic ideal" - I've convinced myself that it's just gibberish.
What I gathered from reading Douthat's column is that meritocratic means earning something based on your demonstrated ability whereas democratic means getting something based on being just folks.
It's really interesting that Douthat repeated many of the complaints and criticisms about Gov. Palin but neglected to say anything about the slurs and outright lies that the President or Secretary Clinton had to contend with during the campaign. It's almost as if excess melanin or a "D" behind your name is some super-duper deflecting shield that magically fights off distortions and lies. On the other hand, ordinary everyday Americans like Sarah can unfairly get bruised up in the rough-and-tumble world of politics.
With Ross, it's race and political affiliation that stirs his heart strings.
Speaking of Clinton, he boasted of an even more rural 'just folks' background than Palin--poor, promiscuous single mom, no real family connections to speak of--but then of course he worked his butt off and got into Oxford.
I wonder how that fits Douthat's silly reductionism?
I guess I "get" that is what he meant between meritocratic vs. democratic, but he completely contorts what both words mean in order to make the same pre-fabricated point that the right always makes... that they are victims. That's why Clintons & black folks can't be related to - they just have it too good.
It's particularly nonsensical to hold Palin up as a representative of a "democratic ideal" given that she, uh, lost the election.
If we had a case where a hardworking American bootstrap success-story lost an election to the everyman (or everywoman) then his distinction would at least resemble reality. But it doesn't!
Douthat is left arguing that Palin appeals to "millions of Americans." But this is a pretty low bar in a nation of 300 million. The American people just disagreed with Douthat. The clear winner on the 'democratic ideal' standard, both electorally and in opinion polls, is Barack Obama, not Sarah Palin.
And for Douthat to say that her resignation is evidence that people like Sarah Palin (on any metric--gender, class, ideology, ignorance) can't succeed in politics is belied by the fact that Palin came pretty close to being sent to the White House. Not that many people end up on the Presidential ticket of a major party. She made it there, and it only seems inevitable that they lost because we have the benefit of hindsight.
And up until Friday, I would have said that she had a pretty decent shot at getting on the Republican ticket again. If she chooses, she can continue to be a major figure in the Republican Party. Her "unhappy sojourn on the national stage" was in fact a meteoric rise to fame and power.
Nobody forced her to resign. She's taking herself out of the game. Maybe she just got bored with her job and quit. Maybe she got caught doing something really illegal. Either way, she's no victim in this.
Ditto. I always thought the essence of a true democracy was that it was essentially a meritocracy, if you worked hard and had what it takes then you could pretty much choose your own destiny. (Of course until fairly recently, even on paper, the USA was not a true democracy.) I used to be a republican but these days, I just don't know WTF they are talking about. Everytime I read something like Douthat's column, I just want to scream "I am not Margaret Dumont!" (h/t to Groucho Marx.)
I think you're reading more into this than is there, because I'm having trouble squaring your reading with what Douthat actually wrote. It seems to me he's contrasting a meritocracy with a democracy -- in the former the hardest working and most able rule, in the latter, "anyone" can rule -- even someone as inept as Sarah Palin.
Douthat sets up this contrast in the first paragraph you quote. He writes: "Our president represents the meritocratic ideal" -- in direct contradiction to your assertion than he wrote that "that American meritocracy is broken." It can't be broken if the meritocratic ideal won.
As I read him, Douthat's point isn't that Palin deserved to be president, or that her presence in the White House would confirm America's meritocratic credentials -- quite the opposite. His point is that she is beloved by millions because she represents the hope that anyone -- even the inept, or, as SNL's Hillary put it, "anyone... ANYONE!" -- can become president. Her failure, as Douthat explicitly states, proves that's not true -- we're still a meritocracy.
I find Douthat's point to me an interesting insight -- it helps explain why Palin's repeated demonstrations of unfitness only seemed to reinforce her supporter's determination to get her elected. It proved that she was one of them -- statements of her ineptitude were attacks on THEM. When someone said "she's not fit for the White House" her supporters (rightly) interpreted this to mean that THEY weren't fit for the White House -- and got mad.
I could go with this--but half the column is about how social class and how it hindered Sarah Palin. In other words, its not her ineptitude that ultimately doomed her, it's her "social class." Perhaps the race analysis is off. But it's worth considering the conclusion:
Very, very, very, very few people of color would watch the last ten months, and conclude from Sarah Palin's failure, that the "old American aphorism" has been disproved.
Moreover, I don't find the notion that a minority of Americans believe literally ANYONE can be president to be that insightful, mostly because it's not true. By "ANYONE" they almost certainly mean "ANYONE WHITE."
Perhaps I am wrong. But my humble acquaintance with race and history in this country leads me to think that I'm probably not. I simply can't imagine a black Sarah Palin on a national ticket.
I simply can't imagine a black Sarah Palin on a national ticket.
I really don't see that. Unlikely? Sure, especially given the paucity of black Republican officeholders. But unimaginable? I wouldn't surprise me to see some ultra-conservative black Republican run for governor (think Alan Keyes) of some small state and win when a scandal broke out. And it wouldn't be inconceivable to see a losing national candidate throw a hail mary and nominate that person as running mate.
And the Republican base would be distrustful initially, but assuming there was a long enough record of conservative rhetoric from the candidate, I think the overwhelming majority would get over that. The right-wing base loves Clarence Thomas. Or is it that you think the press reaction would be different? If so, then in what way? Palin didn't exactly get wonderful press. I'm really not understanding why exactly this is so unimaginable.
It wasn't too long ago when many people said they couldn't imagine a female Dan Quayle, or a female George Bush for that matter.
Alan Keyes, as crazy as he is, is a Harvard PhD.
Unca Clarence, Slave Catcher though he may be, has degrees from Holy Cross and Yale.
try again.
find me a Black Republican with the resume of a Sarah Palin.
find me a Black Republican
Well, let's admit, you can stop right there and I'd have a hard time following up. And if that's the point, then sure. I'm really just trying to understand exactly where you think the issue would be.
But by "qualifications" are we talking "college degrees"? Do you really think the Republican base cares about college degrees? Or that Keyes was in the position he was because of his impeccable qualifications? Blackwell just has a non-Ivy BS, throw a Dem scandal into the 2006 campaign and I don't really doubt he would have gotten the full Jindal build-up. (Although I don't know how full-throated pure conservative he is, which I think would matter significantly.)
So is this unimaginable because it's so difficult for blacks rise to mid-level political positions in the Republican party? OK, I don't really disagree with that. Or is it impossible to imagine the Republicans nominating a black mid-level politician with few credentials? I don't see why, history suggests they don't really care about credentials and qualifications (of course, Palin was a bit extreme here, but there's no real precedents for Palin either). Or do you think the base would respond differently to a Palin who was black?
It's not simply that there are no black Republicans, it's that no black politico--of either party--could perform, as Palin has, and be on a national ticket. That Katie Couric interview would have sunk a black Palin.
Dude, I have my beefs with Clarence Thomas--but he is, by no means, a black Sarah Palin. This is a candidate who couldn't name a newspaper that she'd read. A black person doing that "proud of being ignorant" number isn't a governor, they're a gangsta rapper.
@ rikyrah
find me a Black Republican with the resume of a Sarah Palin
Michael Steele.
"@ rikyrah
find me a Black Republican with the resume of a Sarah Palin
Michael Steele."
wendy,
while i think steele is an idiot, he still graduated from law school and passed someone's bar exam.
palin doesn't even come close to those accomplishments.
TNC is right on target as far as this is concerned.
if she was a sister - or god, forbid, a brother - conducting herself in the fashion she's conducting herself, it is hard to imagine how quickly she would have been tossed overboard.
Michael Steele has a B.A. from Johns Hopkins and a Law Degree from Georgetown.
try again.
Coates is right; anyone Black who is that ignorant and proclaims to be PROUD to be that ignorants, is part of the Modern Day Minstrel Show known as Hip Hop.
That Katie Couric interview would have sunk a black Palin.
That Katie Couric interview pretty much sunk Palin. I'm not really arguing here, but rather just trying to understand what the thinking is. What does "sunk" mean in that sentence, precisely?
Do you think the leading Republicans would have forced an Eagleton-type withdrawal? Or do you think the Republican base would have pulled their support? Or that the press would have been harsher (although Palin probably received more ridicule than any candidate in my lifetime)? Do you think the Republicans' racism would have overwhelmed their sheer joy at being able to call the Democrats racist? Would democrats have acted differently? Or all of the above?
These aren't rhetorical questions, I seriously want to know what people are thinking. I honestly just don't see it, and a number of people think it's obvious.
BTW, I agree about Thomas, Steele, et.al., of course they are more accomplished than Palin. But Thomas was definitely underqualified for his position, and that made the right-wing base love him even more (and that was a generation ago). Is there really a bottom floor to that? It's true there are no black Republicans who compare to Palin, but there really aren't any other politicians period who compare to Palin (although there's a few house members who come very close).
sunk in the sense of being removed from the ticket. if she'd been black they would have found a convenient excuse for her to slink off, never to be heard from again. at least on the campaign trail.
sunk in the sense of never, ever being mentioned in the same sentence with other national candidates for any office. it is amazing that supposedly serious observers still consider her, in any fashion at all, a possible contender for any future office.
the dems would never nominate someone as unqualified as palin. they would be especially sensitive to the possibility of nominating someone black, who was so obviously unqualified.
only a white female, someone who could use the cry of gender bias and not have it challenged, would be able to get away with what palin gets away with, to this very day.
if palin was black, she would be treated like marion barry, the former d.c. mayor. and like barry, she could carve out a niche on a local level, if she was willing to deal with the ridicule, but only if she had thick skin. which does not appear to be the case.
It means not being a frontrunner for 2012. Rik's comment says a lot--Michael Steele, who has never ran and one any elected office, has a degrees from Hopkins and Georgetown. The mind reels at what it would take to actually win an office.
In all honesty, I don't have the energy to argue this.
Having watched last years campaign, if you truly believe that a black person could assert that being a neighbor of Russia was "foreign policy" experience, could have a teen mother for a daughter and feud with the father, could be the focal point of several ethics probes, and then still be bandied about as the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of a major political party, than I leave you to your conclusions.
There really isn't much to be said.
Like I said, I wasn't arguing it. I just wanted to know how you thought the racism would function, exactly. Who would do what. Also, if "sunk" means not a front-runner for 2012, then I misunderstood your statement; I had thought you were referring to how the the campaign itself would play out (as did others, apparently).
Before Palin, I really couldn't imagine Palin. After Palin, I don't really consider any theoretical Republican candidate unimaginable.
That Katie Couric interview pretty much sunk Palin. What does "sunk" mean in that sentence, precisely?
Sunk as in, they would have found an excuse to remove them from the ticket IMMEDIATELY afterwards.
Sunk as in, not only would they NEVER, under ANY circumstances, be considered for a NATIONAL position, if they breathed wrong, they'd lose the job they already had.
I only asked for folks to be honest in the answer to this question:
What if Sarah Palin were Black?
The honest answer to that is so obvious to me as to what would have happened to her...the resistance to admit to the brutality of what the honest answer is to that question is part of the problem here.
Be honest...once a Black Sarah Palin's teenaged unmarried daughter was found out to be pregnant by high school dropout Tequan....that would be all she wrote. We never would have gotten to the Katie Couric interview.
If Black Sarah Palin's husband had been a 7 year member of the Nation of Islam (they're not a secessionist group, but this is about as close a Black equivalent as I can get)....we never would have gotten to the Katie Couric interview.
There would be no money for speaking engagements. There would be no book deal. There would be no possible tv show. Come on..be honest.
And collectively, Black folk would be giving her the side eye for 'letting the race down'.
There are two interesting things going on: Ross's assertion that Palin's appeal was due to her social class, and Ross's seeming preference towards 'just folks' democracy over meritocracy.
If one takes the social class remark by itself, it's not difficult to agree: I find it fairly obvious that the conservative base likes Palin partly because she's in the same social class as they are. College educated, but not at well-known institutions, working mom from small town, unschooled accent and unpracticed at public speaking; it's easy to identify with such a person because they're far more like most of us than an Obama or Kennedy will ever be. So as far as pure popularity goes, I follow Ross so far.
But then he gets to the part where Palin represents the 'democratic ideal' that anyone can achieve high office regardless of previous accomplishments, and contrasts her against the 'meritocratic ideal' that someone with great intelligence and a whole list of prior accomplishments can achieve high office. And that's where he loses me. Aren't conservatives supposed to be pro-meritocracy (hence their opposition to affirmative action and their support of laissez faire hiring policies)? Why is it a positive thing that Palin jumped around between colleges and achieved an undistinguished degree, and a negative thing that Obama went to Ivy schools and graduated Harvard Law? Ross seems to be saying that working hard and being successful automatically makes one part of the hated 'elite', and run-of-the-mill accomplishments automatically make one more democratic (and presumably more election-worthy). That's the part I don't understand, and I have a feeling that if I did, conservatism would make a lot more sense to me.
That is the difference between the old conservatism and the new conservatism, and what happened in-between is new democracy, pure and simple.
I generally agree with Ross' crude analysis but disagree with his valuation of it; I am an elitist when it comes to competence and achievement, I think we should be led by the more educated, the more able, the clearer-thinking, and those of better taste. 50 years ago, this would have put me in the middle of the Republican party (or it would have, if I weren't anti-capitalist); now, it puts me in the Obama camp. The fact that "merit" and ability aren't fair - that usually, upper-class and privileged families produce more than their share of it - troubled me less than the idea of social-promotion. (As far as affirmative action goes, i support it for education and other "entry level" opportunities, but not for the upper echelons; I will chose as close to pure meritocracy as possible, and I don't care about other types of fairness.)
The democratic ideal from a populist perspective will always privilege people who resemble the majority the most, in both race and class. Obama did not win by convincing us that he was like all of America, that he was some kind of everyman; his was not a populist campaign. He convinced voters of his intelligence, his poise, his presence as a unique figure, not a typical or representative one. He inspired confidence and admiration, not a sense of familiarity. I think it is right to say that we will never be so post-racial (or, for that matter, post-ethnic) that a non-white non-Christian non-lower-middle-class candidate will win by populist appeal.
Palin represented the worst of the anti-intellectual, anti-elitist instinct in American politics. That tendency is now at the root of the Republican party. What troubles me most is that her constituency is the constituency of fascism: ethnic majorities of the (relatively well-off) working and (not-well-off and anxious about slipping into chaos) lower-middle classes, The ideology of American cultural elites is now represented by the Democratic party, who are generally not that interested in the economic well-being of people below the upper-middle classes. This is a formula for disaster, I think, because democratic populism tends to bat last.
One small rebuttal Lemmy--if by "non-white non-Christian non-lower-middle-class candidate" you meant Obama, he's stated repeatedly that he is in fact a Christian. Maybe not a hardcore, kiss Robertson's ring-style evangelist, but a Christian nonetheless.
Granted, he has an Arabic middle name, but there are millions of Arabic Christians in the world, something I doubt the Palins of Americas know.
Juba, I'm listing the required qualifications for winning the populist/democratic angle. Departure from typicality on any of those quals would foil that tactic. It wasn't meant to describe BHO, who, just for being black, needs to appeal to meritocratic, rather than democratic, sensibilities.
TNC, what they mean by "anyone" is "someone as mediocre and average as me." With the "me" standing in for all the pluralities: race, gender, educational attainment, socioeconomic class, orientation, religious affiliation, etc. She is the statistical mean - or rather, the mode - of the American demographic. She is the fulfillment of the fantasy that all politics needs is "good old-fashioned common sense," with the word "common" rich with various entailments.
Race is part of it, but it's incomplete. It's about complete typicality. And, personally, I find it horrifying.
Lemmy--we should be led by people with "better taste?" In what, pray tell. That is scary.
Anna, taste is funny, isn't it? Think of the tackiest thing in the world - the lamest music, kitchiest art, stupidest films, etc. Do you really want your leaders to be into those things? Wouldn't you consider it a sign of other problems, if your president couldn't appreciate literature other than Danielle Steele novels?
If you can judge "downstream," don't you think we should be able to appreciate "upstream" as well?
A person's tastes reveal a lot about their sensibilities. I definitely take them into account.
Lemmy,
So far I've found your comments the most insightful regarding Palin's populism. I also have much appreciation for your unapologetic elitism in terms of taste.
One thing that must be understood about the Neo Know Nothing branch of Palin's base. They do not see Obama as being meritorious or exceptional. Every charge that can be laid upon Palin's door is turned back by comparing Obama, and Obama is found wanting. The difference in achievement in education is ascribed to affirmative action. Palin comes out ahead on experience because she was a Mayor and Governor, while Obama was merely a community organizer ( a very fluffy sounding job title), (and Obama's experience in the Illinois legislature is conveniently forgotten). Even her resignation compares favorably to Obama's resigning as senator (nevermind that he was elected President) or even running for office while sitting as a senator. Obama's speaking skills are explained away by his use of a teleprompter, i.e., his skills aren't real, while Palin speaks naturally, like a regular person.
I could go on and on, but the point is, in the mind of her base, Palin is the meritorious one who shlould be sitting in the Oval Office, not Barrack Obama. One might marvel at the seeming mental gymnastics it would take to arrive at this conclusion, but the truth is that not much mental effort goes into it. Rather, it's an avoidance of mental effort (which lies at the heart of anti-intellectualism).
(To be fair, there certainly are many among Obama's supporters and the left in general that engage in their own distortions of reality to buttress their world view, and who are no more willing to examine that world view or accept analysis or criticism of it.)
The argument being made is that Obama and the Elites are no better than Palin and the Common Folk. And if they are no better, then really they are worse because Palin and the Common Folk are more honest, natively smarter (as opposed to overeducated), more patriotic, etc. (They love puppies and hate mean people and oppose Socialism.)
sunk in the sense of being removed from the ticket.
Thanks for that. Seriously. Personally, I don't that that would happen these days (I think there's way too much money flying around to throw an election like that), but that's exactly the difference in perception I was trying to figure out. What wasn't I seeing that others found completely obvious? Who would act differently and how, what would be the assumed result, and whether it was the nomination itself that was so unimaginable rather than the response?
I think perhaps you are right.
This is very very wrong. Defenders of Palin NEVER admit to her ineptness -- every real error by her is ignored or explained away by media bias or the liberal elite.
Their support for her increased with each misstep because it reinforced their explanation of the event (always pushed by Limbaugh et al) that the media is always on the attack.
It's impossible to refute this kind of attack (in their minds) because any bad reporting on her will be ascribed to bias.
Final point, this kind of bias in producing causal explanations occurs on all political sides, but the extent to which Palin supporters will go is the real story. Also, this bogey-man (e.g. the liberal media elite that wants to tell the real americans what they should be doing -- hell no!) creation has been a major part of the success for republicans for a very long time until they royally screwed up in terms of actually governing.
People love to feel persecuted so they can proudly stand against the forces of perceived injustice...
@Ralph: You are giving him way, way too much credit. Douthat's column is a lament for the lost potential of Sarah Palin. He writes, "she’s only 45, young enough (and, yes, talented enough) to have a second act"--and "her 10 months on the national stage have been a dispiriting period for American democracy." The fact that he would seriously consider the idea that Palin might've intentionally given a "bizarre, rambling resignation speech" to take herself out of speculation about 2012 shows how starry-eyed Douthat is about the Gov.
I'd also say that if meritocracy is (as Douthat seems to believe) inherently un- or anti-democratic, then yes, the American meritocracy is broken. His implication is that it's because Obama went to Ivy League schools, not because he's more capable, that he was elected; in other words, I think he means us to see "meritocracy" in scare quotes.
Doesn't this signify something still disturbing though, that conservatives today now have to square with a kind of meritocracy that doesn't square with old expectations and cultural standards? I mean, meritocracy is a cornerstone of conservative thought in this country. The shift in appeal (and thus necessarily ideology) from meritocracy to a far less capable standard, that Obama's success and Palin's failure signifies, is something that Douthat still can't square coherently. Now, it's like conservatism is trying desperately not to throw the baby out with the bath water - trying to hold on to its old ideals, while seeing that a huge part of their support comes from people who reject the embodiment (Obama) of the total success of those old ideals.
At least this was my reading. At the end of the day, this was still an apologist's stand for what Palin represents.
Isn't this kind of par for the course, though? Seeing Obama and Sotomayor succeed despite their backgrounds means that there's obviously something else going on, thus, the parsing into a "meritocratic" and "democratic" ideal. It's specious because Ross surely knows its a difference without a distinction. It's just now that a black man won the game within the rules as written by people like Ross (and to a lesser extent, Palin), that we now have reason to more critically examine the situation, so that those folks can construct a narrative in which they're somehow disadvantaged.
It's funny, but somehow people Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who didn't come from the best of backgrounds and rose to their stations the "old fashioned way", are somehow not the embodiment of the American dream, but Palin is. Give me a break.
Ross is contrasting meritocracy and democracy. Judging from the paragraph you bolded, he is using meritocracy to mean that the most hardworking, intelligent people succeed -- and he acknowledges that this describes Obama. So I think you are misreading him when he says that meritocracy is broken.
What he seems to be saying is that meritocracy is working, and that is a problem. I can think of reasons that I might agree with that. You could say that it is not healthy for the country if people of average intelligence and ambition are cut out of the corridors of power; and that our future rulers attend the same small group of schools from age 18 on. But I would think this would lead Ross to support a large welfare state and affirmative action.
If Ross really believes in the distinction he made today, he would have been better off reading Walter Kirn in the Times Sunday magazine before penning his column.
Walter Kirn is a hypocrite, whining about the alleged unfairness of an education system that he benefited from while continuing to cash in on it, as I noted elsewhere yesterday. He claims to feel guilty that he might have taken a spot at Princeton from a more deserving minority. Too late to do anything about that, but what's stopping him from giving up his recurring gig at the NY Times to a more deserving minority journalist? Let him quit and recommend to the NYT that they hire Ta-Nehisi in his place; let him donate all the proceeds from his book about being "Lost in the Meritocracy" to a scholarship fund for prospective Latina students at Princeton if he feels guilty. Otherwise, he's just full of crap, and wants to have it both ways: keep profiting from his ability (along with other advantages he didn't mention in that column, such as being a legacy) while scoring P.C. points by saying how guilty he feels about being an "aptocrat".
I know little about Walter Kirn, but I thought the article was excellent. This paragraph spells out what I, who went from an urban public high school to an Ivy League university, remember experiencing when I started college:
Yes, I had a large vocabulary, and yes, I knew how to deploy it to good effect in classroom discussions and during professors’ office hours, but suddenly my prowess felt slightly fraudulent. Called upon to read whole books, many of them old, obscure and difficult, I discovered that I lacked stamina and insight. The little word puzzles I cut my teeth on were irrelevant to the daunting task of digesting Chaucer and Milton. My solution? I didn’t have one.
His point is an indictment of public education in the U.S., which often doesn't teach students critical thinking, but rather the tools they need to "pass the test." If you're good at the latter, your failures at the former often don't appear until you reach college.
This, too, I agree with: A system of advancement by aptitude, by statistical measurements of mental acuity, doesn’t concern itself with determination and courage, but if the world were truly fair, it would.
Daughter,
"His point is an indictment of public education in the U.S., which often doesn't teach students critical thinking, but rather the tools they need to "pass the test." If you're good at the latter, your failures at the former often don't appear until you reach college."
That's not the case at all, if you take AP or honors humanities classes: you learn fairly quickly how read criticism and regurgitate it in an English paper. Kirn's recollection of his Princeton education is more an indictment of the hollowness of subjects such as English at the university level. If he feels guilty for bullshitting his way through a bullshit course, he shouldn't. It's not like he majored in chemistry.
"This, too, I agree with: A system of advancement by aptitude, by statistical measurements of mental acuity, doesn’t concern itself with determination and courage, but if the world were truly fair, it would. "
That's disingenuous. Kirn knows that admissions committees consider attributes such as determination and courage all the time. The problem is that there's no standardized, objective test for determination and courage -- you can't throw every high school junior in a cage with a lion and see how he does. But if you have an applicant who has an extraordinary life history -- some sort of triumph over adversity, or, perhaps an applicant who served in combat in the military before applying for college -- admissions departments can and do take that sort of thing into account. That's where personal essays and interviews come in. Kirn, of course, knows this. He's just trying to score cheap P.C. points.
Dave, I'm replying here because there's no reply button after your answer to me. On your first point, I'm not entirely sure that's true, just speaking for myself again. I took five AP courses in high school (English, American History, European History, AB Calculus, and Biology) and took the exams in the first four, scoring 5, 5, 5, and 4, respectively. I attended a midwestern urban high school in which half my class didn't graduate on time. I was an African-American daughter of a single mother, and had excellent credentials, on paper. I was valedictorian and aced my SATs the first time, without ever taking a practice course. And I still was ill-prepared for college, ending up on academic probation. I finally got the hang of studying and critical thinking by my junior year, but it took a lot of sweat and struggle to get there.
Your second point is a good one, though.
Actually I think Ross does support the government doing more for the working class. I think he would answer that the welfare state and affirmative action are left wing policies and he wants right wing policies. Specifically he has advocated a style of affirmative action based on economic class, not race. To me it seems he is trying to meld the traditional Catholic church view of charity with right wing ideology.
Fixed. Kinda illustrates just how blind Douthat is.
This is 100% awesome.
Ditto!
Win!
bingo.
Yeah, everything in that paragraph could be applied to just about any politician. Is there some particularly nasty BS that gets thrown at women and people of color? Yes. But any politician (or for that matter any public figure at all) will be put through the tabloid wringer, be mocked and parodied, insulted, etc. Sarah Palin is not a special and unique snowflake for having late night talk show hosts make mean jokes about her.
damn, that was right on the money, loneoak.
Get a blog. Stop outshining me on on mine.
Seriously. Pretty awesome
The Sarah Palin phenomena would be entirely different if she'd taken Obama's tactic of not responding to absurd attacks to heart instead of amplifying them to try and gin up sympathy from people like Douthat.
This comment reminds me of a piece PJ O'Rourke did in the 80's where he went through an article in the WaPo or NY Times about the dmage crack was wreaking on the cities and changed "crack is" to "niggers are".
Beautiful.
Pure genius! Hope Douthat sees this!
Isn't this why Plato disapproved of democracy? Because it becomes possible for someone who has not contemplated the issues to make decisions for the "good" of the nation? He may have even mentioned Sarah Palin, but I don't read greek.
Maybe it's because I'm a white guy, but I didn't really pick up on the racial angle, though I can see where you're coming from TNC. As someone with a similar socioeconomic background to Sarah Palin (middle class white family with roots in Wyoming, Tennessee, and southwest Virginia, educated in public universities), I was more annoyed with Ross' implication that those of us who did not go to Colombia and Harvard, need him, as a Harvard grad, to legitimize those of us hapless enough to not attend the Ivy Leagues, and that Sarah Palin serves as a cautionary tale to us. Maybe the first point is entrenched in the same class resentments that Palin herself traffics in, but fuck it, that's how I feel. On the latter point, as a cum laude graduate of a public university in Newport News, VA, now getting my PhD in International Studies at a university in Norfolk, VA, the only lesson I draw from Palin's educational and political experiences is that you get out of it what you put in, and she did not put hardly anything in. She's a cautionary tale for emptyheaded ambition and self-righeous entitlement, not for the democratic ideal. My ass is going places and Ross Douthat and Sarah Palin aren't going to discourage me from doing so.
Right on brother! (In the Cornell West sense.)
Right on brother! (In the Cornell West sense.)
"a university in Norfolk, VA"
William and Mary? Good school...
William and Mary is in Williamsburg, Va.
But, I know which one it is!
the only lesson I draw from Palin's educational and political experiences is that you get out of it what you put in, and she did not put hardly anything in. She's a cautionary tale for emptyheaded ambition and self-righeous entitlement, not for the democratic ideal. My ass is going places and Ross Douthat and Sarah Palin aren't going to discourage me from doing so.
Great points. I remember an article in the Boston Globe a few years ago, printed the first week in April, in which the columnist addressed high school seniors who might not have gotten into their top choice colleges and their parents. He listed a number of different local and state leaders in government and the private sector, and where they went to school. A significant percentage of them attended state universities and relatively no-name colleges. His final point? "In general, most people who are accepted to top-tier colleges are smart. But if you're smart and you work hard, you can succeed no matter where you go to school."
I will admit, I was already thinking 'of course' when I got to this part. In sports, there's an unwritten rule that commentators constantly avoid comparing a black player to a white player - in the current era or in history. It's why you heard Ricky Rubio compared to Pistol Pete during the NBA draft instead of Magic Johnson (when the kid doesn't score anything like Maravich and has Magic's size & court vision). While the black community takes extra pride in outstanding members of its own community, I think we also take some pride and have recognition of the accomplishments of other underrepresented minorities - people who have had similar struggles.
We pull for our own - when Venus, Serena, or Tiger got going we went crazy. It shouldn't (and often doesn't) happen solely because of their race or culture, but their identity is often the spark of our interest, or at least our attention. But when whites pull for their own, we act all surprised that they're looking for someone to root for that looks like them. I just keep rollin'.
Unfortunately, that logic is broken by two points - one, that the vast majority of American history was written with white males as the protagonists, and two, that white people could just claim Obama too; if we stopped acting like we were still on the one drop rule, and he has plenty in common with white America. :sigh:
I don't think Ross is saying that meritocracy is broken. He seems to be arguing that criticism of Palin is an assault on the democratic ideal. Which, from reading his column, Ross seems to define as any asshole, qualifications and competency be damned, can one day have their finger on the button if they want it bad enough. Maybe that's an unfair reading. Maybe not.
Ross screwed up bringing meritocracy into the mix when discussing elective offices. The role of merit traditionally has been in filling appointed offices -- e.g., we want the Secretary of the Treasury to have impressive credentials and experience in finance. Elective offices are filled by elections. If we filled those roles through meritocracy instead of democracy, a goodly number of Congressmen and other politicians would never have made the cut.
We're not truly a democracy until we elevate people without merit, like Jackson and Truman, to the Presidency.
I think that's the point, anyway. Either that or Obama doesn't fit the by-your-bootstraps criterion because he benefited from his race.
not laughing...
just shaking my head.
wondering when you'll finally comprehend some basic facts about american life. and also comprehend that understanding those facts doesn't incapacitate you, but instead, allows you to comprehend a more complete picture of what this country is all about.
Care to illuminate said "basic facts about American life"? Color me confused.
TNC,
You definetly read it wrong. Nowhere does he say that the Election of Obama means the meritocratic ideal is broken. He saying the democratic ideal in which Jon or Jane Q Public, with their average education and background and ability can be elected is broken. Which is probably a good thing. Who want's average leading us? But if Palin had proven herself to be hyper competent, intelligent, and had a command of the issues, then she could have survived the attacks. But because she didn't show any of those traits, she was savaged by the attacks because she couldn't stand up to them.
He is saying her appeal is that to the guy/girl in the dead end job with no real potential, she represented the dream of hey maybe even I could do this. Of course they couldn't and she couldn't, but some people only have dreams, and want to cling on to them.
I'll admit to having some sympathy to Douthat's lament for this notion of democratic ideal, even if I find Palin a repugnant and inaccurate example of it. As someone who teaches at a large public research university, I would like to have some non-Ivy League national leaders. Clearly, Obama's success at Harvard Law is something to be proud of and I really appreciate his intellect. Yet much of the meritocratic boosters would simply use 'Ivy League' as a shorthand for merit, which simply isn't true. That meritocracy produced W. just as much as it produced Obama.
Actually, your W example is not really meritocracy at all, but rather just 'ivy league'. W going to yale had to do with legacy and privilege not merit. A better conservative example would be a Roberts type.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough—there's meritocracy as an ideal, which did not produce W., and there's meritocracy as an institutional preference for the 'best people' as indicated by which school they attended, which definitely produced W. and many like him. Meritocracy as an institution often stands in the way of meritocracy as an ideal. I think we would be better off if meritocracy as an ideal had a touch more democracy in it because it would resist the institutionalization of merit.
I value Obama's success at Harvard Law because of it's evocation of the meritocratic ideal, but I also have no doubt that even if he had the same intellect at an excellent state school he would not have gotten as far as he has in national politics, which is unfortunate. If Obama had gone to U Michigan Law, one of the top legal schools in the world, would he be President? That its even a question proves my point.
As one of TNC's colleagues point out today, Joe Biden went to non-ivy league schools, is decidedly not from the moneyed class, and absolutely represents this "democratic ideal" that Douthat is championing. Of course, embracing him would go against the entire point of his incoherent column, so we'll just all pretend he doesn't exist.
But it's very difficult to process the notion that Sarah Palin is a better model of the all-American meritocratic ideal than Barack Obama, without believing that that judgment hinges on race.
TNC- Did you intend to say "democratic ideal" instead of "meritocratic ideal" here?
What the right means when they say "America" is what's right for white people. This is no different than when they extolled the virtues of "real America", i.e. rural towns, deep south, etc.
Douthat's column disgusted me because he's just another conservative attempting to move the goal posts after the game is in play. And when someone finally scores a touchdown playing by their skewed rules, there must mean there is something wrong with the system.
For years they told us that to get ahead you had to "pull yourself up by your boot straps." No longer! Now you have to be dumber than a box of rocks, wink, and tow the ideological line to the right. No more merit or substance is needed - just be pretty and excite the base. No need for educating yourself on the issues and learning that sometimes things are nuanced and require contemplation - now it's just important to spout ignorant bullsh!t and platitudes when someone asks you a question. Don't know the answer to a question in the debate? Tell the moderator that you aren't going to answer and wink. Is the only time you pick up a newspaper is to wrap fish in it? Well tell your interviewer that you read "all of 'em" and then complain about "gotcha" journalism.
His column and other supporters of Palin aren't just intending to support/apologize for Sarah Palin. Indeed, it's just another way for them to say "I'm not/wasn't wrong about her because..."
Methinks some of you are reading too much into the Rossters stupid column.
If Barack Obama were a Douthian conservative Ross would sing his praises. If Sarah Palin were a liberal Ross would attack her.
This isn't necessarily about "conviction" as much as winning.
If a conservative meritocrat with a story similar to Obama rose to power, Ross would be down on bended knee singing his praises. If this bizarro Conservative Obama was opposed by bizarro liberal Palin Ross would scatologically attack her.
Sometimes a "ceegar" is just a cigar.
And you all would defending liberal Palin and attacking conservative Obama. Much like liberals seem to have no appreciation for minority governor and meritocratic example, Bobby Jindal.
Ah yes, Bobby Jindal. The great brown hope of American Conservatism. The man who once participated in an exorcism. If meritocracy involves believing in Dark Ages-era superstitions, then meritocracy truly is broken. (Of course it doesn't, and Jindal's position is due at least as much to his bear hug embrace of Jesus as it does to any intellectual weight he carries. Which is not inconsiderable, but is completely beside the point in the modern Republican Party.)
Politics in the United States requires a hug of Jesus of kind (bear or otherwise). Obama has his own embrace of JC, a point he makes often. You are not likely to get an Aethist , agnostic, Muslim or Hindu elected to many offices in this country. For the record, I don't find Jindal's Catholic side particularly appealing either.
no, we disagree with his policies and think he gave a horrible response to Obama, that is about it. Oh and there is the crazy exorcism thing.
Why are we supposed to appreciate a guy who we disagee with? I don't think about Jindal any differently than other Southern Republican anti government types.
I'm neither a liberal or conservative.
As for Bobby Jindal he does have a compelling personal story.
He is also sort of creepy. That whole Catholic exorcism thing.....weird.
Jindal should probably not be in elective politics, but should be a technocrat put in charge of some screwed up agency. My own guess is that getting elected as a black man in America is easier than getting elected as an Catholic convert whose parents came from India and you grew up in Lousiana and love run on sentences.
What I like about President Obama is not only his intellect, but all his "comfort" in his own skin. Pardon the pun.
There is just no "drama" with the man. With former Presidents Bush 2 or Clinton one always had to try to figure out the psychological scars that motivated them.
Obama should be called "no drama Obama". Although the man clearly has a raging ego. Not exactly unknown among politicians of any color or party.
It's a refreshing change.
The point is, Jindal's position in the Republican hierarchy has a lot less to do with his intellectual heft and his ideas, and a lot more to do with his religious convictions. If Jindal, a man who championed efforts to teach Creationism in Louisiana public schools, represents the height of conservative intellectualism, then conservatives have essentially admitted that they've given up on that front.
Bingo
The more I see from supposed fresh, new, young, intellecutal conservatives Douhat and Seilam the mroe I find they are just paritsan hacks like the rest of them
I've always thought Douthat was nonsensical on his best of days, an inferior intellect trying to prove he belongs with the big boys. I couldn't understand all the accolades the other Atlantic bloggers threw at him when he was hired by the Times, unless they were happy to see him leave.
This column did nothing to dispel the notion that he generally has little idea what he's talking about. He struck me as trying very very hard to make a point with the weakest of supporting evidence. But most of his Times columns that I have read have done the exact same thing.
WORD. I just dropped two comments on your "Resignation" post that, had I refreshed your page, would have been a lot more apt here. I'm laughing at my bad timing.
But you get at my fear with this. Meritocracy was once the conservative ideal. Why is it broken today? It's not because Obama doesn't fit the definition of meritocratic achievement. He absolutely does. I have to agree with the race analysis. The reason he's not representative is because of who he is. The fact that he doesn't represent "anyone" in the American aphorism says everything about the racial implications needed to support the conservative interpretation, and nothing about why Sarah Palin fails.
So to fix this awful ideological incongruity, Republicans have to suck it up and accept the kind of hyperbolic appeal that Sarah Palin has, and turn that into the pinnacle of conservatism. It's a stretch, and the flaws betray more than weak arguments. It's a level of self-delusion that requires a very dead-and-gone world to make sense.
All I can say is, stay shocked TNC.
True that. As one of our greatest political commentators--Chris Rock--said, "they are going to change the rules on his Black ass."
The thought of any guy/girl anywhere, sitting there in a dead-end job with no potential and no chance of going anywhere, makes me very sad. Is that actually how we think about the majority of the American population? If it is, we are utterly doomed.
Regardless of how many super-geniuses and Ivy League grads we elect. They're only supposed to do what we tell them. Or should we just start calling them kings and be done with it?
The Republicans did launch Palin prematurely and without sufficient training. She wasn't brilliant enough to figure it all out on her own, in just a few months with the spotlight on her. Few people could -- even Obama, rapid as his rise was, plotted his course over roughly the same number of years as Palin got weeks. She might have turned into something worthwhile over the next decade or so if McCain hadn't picked her up and decided to play with her for a while. But now she's broken, and nobody knows how her career would have developed if it had followed its natural course.
Truman doesn't look so bad in retrospect. Sometimes ordinary does get the job done.
"The thought of any guy/girl anywhere, sitting there in a dead-end job with no potential and no chance of going anywhere, makes me very sad."
Are you referring to the office of Governor of Alaska as a dead end job?
Obama is less than three years older than Palin. They've had roughly the same amount of time on earth to "plot their courses". Each comes from a state isolated from the Continental U.S. One of them got the hell out, the other preferred being a big fish in a small pond.
That said, anything is still possible. Palin might still mature and develop as a political figure. She might heed the advice of Jonah Goldberg and Charles Krauthammer. Stranger things have happened. However, I wouldn't get my hopes up of Sarah Palin staying home and doing her homework, as Goldberg recommended. In "Dead Fish" portion of her resignation speech she said, "it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out." That's a pretty clear indication that she does NOT want to do her homework.
(1) I think other commenters are correct when they suggest that Coates may be reading a little too much into the column, because Douthat is indeed trying to contrast the meritocratic ideal with the democratic ideal. (Whatever the fuck that means -- one would think the democratic ideal would be to pick whichever candidate made the best case that made the most sense, regardless of sex, race, or class. But I digress.)
(2) I think Coates is correct that Douthat's reasoning here, however kindly you look at it, leads inevitably to conclusions most kindly termed ignorant and quite arguably termed offensive.
(3) And I think everyone who's saying that Douthat just didn't put too much thought or work into the column is most correct. Not only does the whole meritocratic-vs.-democratic-ideal premise not make any fucking sense, but then there's this sentence:
But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
How is she a success story? Except, of course, to conservative commentators for whom this is all a tautology -- no matter how much she's failed at, those things don't matter because she's a success story, and therefore she's a success story. She wasn't elected vice president; she's quitting before completing a single term in national office; and her supporters can't seem to attach even one tangible major accomplishment to her name, except that she's attracted a band of rabidly loyal and mostly stupid followers. I guess I just thought Douthat's bar for "success story" was a little higher than the one set by Perez Hilton.
To clarify: I don't think Douthat's "meritocratic vs. democratic" bit makes a whit of sense, but I think Douthat thought it did and was not intentionally trying to imply the ignorant/offensive conclusions that are indeed implied by the column.
Or to put it more simply: I don't think he's being a bigot; I just think he's sucking at thinking and writing here.
"My black readers are laughing at me. Again."
Well maybe just a little, but this sister is just enjoying a bit of gallows humor.
My two cents:
I will go a step further than TNC and argue that what is underlying this argument is a belief that the Obamas and Sotomayor are affirmative action babies. Hence, they cannot really be exemplars of the American ideal because they "cheated" their way out of poverty. Ms. Palin, on the other hand, is truly representative of the American ideal because she "played by the rules" and did not use affirmative action to jump ahead in the line.
This argument ignores a few inconvenient facts: (1) that white women, like Palin, are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action; (2) President and Mrs. Obama and Judge Sotomayor graduated from their Ivy League schools with racially neutral indicia of academic distinction, i.e. they worked their asses off once they got into college/ professional school; and (3) there are recent examples of other successful politicians from the white working class, e.g. Clinton, Edwards, Carter (o.k., I concede that they are all male) who have overcome serious class boundaries on their paths to success.
Precisely. And the same folks who would immolate Sotomayor for her (frankly problematic) "wise Latina" comments would have no problem with Sarah Palin's even more egregious use of essentializing rhetoric to justify the imposition of her views (if you can call them that, although it might attribute too much coherence...) on everything from abortion to taxation. This is how Ross, and everyone else who plays the "class card," gets away with papering SP's own classist/racist remarks, and conveniently ignoring that their damsel in distress is, as her T-shirt in the infamous photograph reads, "PROUD TO BE VALLEY TRASH."
If as I believe I read that Judge Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comments were about discrimination cases, then I don't think they are problematic at all. During the Brown v. Board Supreme Court deliberations, a young White, male law clerk advised his Justice to vote for continuing segration in public schools, in part because the young clerk could see nothing morally wrong or illegal with the practice. That clerk later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rhinequist. I do not think it is likely (Justice Thomas notwithstanding) that a young Black law clerk would have been of the same opinion.
As a clueless white guy I’m reading this less about race than class.
We now have a Columbia/Yale grad in the White House who was preceded by a Harvard/Yale grad who in turn was preceded by a Georgetown/Rhode Scholar who in turn was preceded by a Yale Grad. At the same time over the past couple decades we increasingly have a society where the elites have outpaced the rest of the pack in terms of education, income, etc. At the same time we have become an increasingly segregated society by monied class - when I grew up in the burb’s in the 70’s my grammar school classmates parents were doctors, lawyers, cops and factory workers. Today there is far less diversity.
So there is a class of voters who have a background that looks a lot more like a Sarah Palin (mediocre student, multiple colleges, pregnant kids, etc etc.) than Obama (ie two Yale law grads, etc.). This class of voters feels increasingly estranged from a society that increasingly rewards higher education and that have a clear degree of condescension toward others not of their class. This class increasingly feels – not entirely incorrectly – that their kids are going to have a harder time catching up than they did and are more likely to fall down.
In short she reminds these people a lot more like people in their neighborhoods, while the highly education elite remind them a lot more of their bosses, their bosses neighborhood, and they resent those people who have advantages that they and their kids will not have. (and yes there is probably some racial resentment in this mix as well that you see particularly with Sontomeyer – that said I don’t think these loyalists to her would switch to Obama if he had been white). Thus, a lot of the criticism of her at times is seen as a criticism of her class (a lot of criticism of her was fair, but some was quite ugly) and this builds loyalty.
Even if we will no longer have Sarah Palin to kick around any longer, there is some real resentment in this country and that isn’t going away because she is.
Another way to look at it is that we have a president who was raised by a poor single mother, preceded by an obscenely wealthy trust fund baby, preceded by a man raised by a poor single mother, preceded by an obscenely wealthy trust fund baby.
Why should we think that educational history is the only relevant marker of class?
Describing Obama's mother as a "poor single mother" isn't quite accurate. Although Obama's biological father bailed, his mother later remarried, to an Indonesian professional, and Obama had a step-father for that time. Obama was also partly raised by his grandmother, who was a bank executive in Hawaii. To the extent that Obama's mother didn't earn a lot of money, that seems to have been largely by choice: she spent years doing academic research in the third world.
True enough. Probably should have said "middle class single mother."
From reading his book I get the impression that the family bounced around a little bit between "poor" and "middle-class". In a way it is fairly typical family experience in that way where they start off poor, have a few good years, suffer a setback, recover.
For the record....
Obama: Columbia / Harvard Law
Bush 43: Yale / Harvard Business
Clinton: Georgetown / Yale Law
Bush 41: Yale
Reagan: Eureka College
Carter: US Naval Academy (Annapolis)
Ford: Michigan / Yale Law
Nixon: Whittier College / Duke Law
Johnson: Southwest Texas State
Kennedy: Harvard
Ike: US Military Academy (West Point)
Truman: No college degree
I just wanted to note that Obama attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California before transferring to Columbia.
Nice Nixon reference.
Douthat's assumption that Palin's relatively low social class status was a liability that made her a target is laughable. The entire primary campaign seemed at times to dissolve into a contest to determine which candidate was the most folksy or had the most proletarian taste. Are we really supposed to believe that Palin's humble origins (relative to most national politicians) is what made her a target?
On the other hand I don't see anything that suggests to me that this tortured analysis is motivated by race rather than, say, party loyalty, and I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt in that limited regard.
On the other other hand I haven't heard him disown those in his party who claim that any person of color who is a success got where they are because of preferential treatment due to their race, so I don't really feel too much like defending him since he hasn't really defended himself.
less about race, and more about class?
well, that is always the excuse that folks like pat buchanan will toss out in order to justify the distinctions they draw, but make no mistake: when all the nice words, large and small, are reduced to their ultimate meaning, it's all about race.
for some folks like douthat, it is always about race.
it is simply difficult to acknowledge that fact publically, so they go through all sorts of contortions to hide that fact.
hasn't this country's 200-plus years taught us anything?
Race is about class. About over a century of free labor, and then another century as the backbone of industrial labor. It's about generational aspirations of a path into the middle class confronting an economic reality in which the industrial sector is shrinking.
Ethnicity is always at play in modern societies, and race is the main way ethnicity plays out in the USA and a number of other societies, But the canvas over which they play out is socioeconomic striation.
The white upper-middle liberal fantasy is that non-whites resemble them in every way - economically, educationally, in tastes and manners. This kind of inclusion legitimates their privileges. Non-white members of the upper-middle and above classes are obviously keen on playing into this: if it's always "about race," then other forms of economic inequality are simply part of the natural moral system.
Meritocratic ideal = even talented, motivated and gifted people can be successful if they work hard?
Democratic ideal = even stupid and ignorant people can be successful and become your leaders if you vote for them?
W Bush represents both ideals simultaneously? Even stupid and ignorant people can get into Ivy Leagues and become your leaders.
When the South didn't allow her blacks to vote and elected one racist after another - it was the democratic ideal at work. When Islamic Turkey under Ata Turk allowed women to vote long before say Christian France - we had the meritocratic ideal at work. When inter-marriage and female voting first became legal it was against popular opinion and the meritocratic ideal winning over the democratic.
When Harvard finally allowed females to study law in the 60s - the meritocratic ideal won. Before the 60s it was the democratic ideal?
Help - the democratic ideal comes across as fascist unless one builds in equality from the start? In fact - unless the democratic ideal builds on the foundation of the meritocratic - it is not worth the paper it is written on or the tongue it is spoken by.
As democracy itself - America was formed by the meritocratic ideal first and foremost. When you claim to have democracy - you don't need the democratic ideal anyways - it there. But we can never and should never forget or become blind to the meritocratic ideal - it is the root of all social progress.
Coates, this is superb, and yes, for a minute, I laughed at you.
Douthat just takes over from where his fellow conservative pointed out a month or so ago: you know, if you ignore Black folks, then Obama's popularity ratings aren't that high at all.
we go back to that 'REAL ' America ' meme'.
it is because you're Black, Coates. Coming from a people that, in their history, were KILLED because they tried to learn how to READ, despite 'White folks stereotypes', you and I both know about the importance of education to the general Black community (excluding the Underclass).
being from a population with no inherited wealth, the only way Black folks knew how to ' pull themselves up by their bootstraps', was to get themselves a pair of boots, which has always meant EDUCATION, for those of us who knew we'd never make it in entertainment or sports.
THAT is why Palin's ignorance is so offensive to you, Coates. She stands against what your father taught you.
For my grandmother and her daughters, an education meant that the only children they'd have to take care of were THEIR OWN.
For my father, it meant no sharecropping.
My family isn't odd or extraordinary, it's what millions of Black folks saw as their path in America.
Because you know your history, and you know Black folks' history, Palin's ignorance punches you in the gut, and anyone pushing forth this woman as someone to admire, you have to give the side eye.
. . . and let's not pretend that 'but for' Obama's high-priced, "elitist", ivy league education, that 2008 American voters would have elected him President of the United States. How many times during the campaign did we hear "former editor of the Harvard Law Review." That is because someone like Obama (and Sotomayor) have to wear their credentials on their damn foreheads and verbally repeat them out loud to no one in particular at least thrice daily in order to even be considered for such lofty positions to which non-college educated (or graduates of Southwest Texas State, for example) previously were rightfully entitled. Most folks know, regardless of race or skin color, that the Ivy League confers legitimacy and credibility to those who otherwise did not already have those attributes by birth and cirmcumstance (i.e., W. or 41). Why do you think so many people vie to attend these institutions - a love of Northeast winters? No, they desire the legitimacy a degree from such an institution offers. Michelle, Barack and Sonia are no dopes. Sarah, on the other hand, well, to paraphrase TNC "is in tenacious possession of a small mind."
Rik, you know I love you, but don't you mean "some of the underclass?" Otherwise, you are so right, your folks sound like some of my folks.
You are talking about a racial dimension of class that is simply not under the scope of Ross's commentary. Ross is talking about the class dimension that is largely cultural (basically David Brooks'point from a decade ago)where the elite is selected through scholastic achievement, and belief in traditional appeals to the role-giving authority of religion, sex, and country are regarded as backwards and a sign of intellectual inferiority by secular liberals. In this case, where there might be legitimate critiques of Palin's competence separate from the social context of her person, Ross's focus is on the sort of attacks against her competence that is linked to her religion, family, and educational attainment. All this forms the implication that the characterization of Palin by liberals is not simply an evaluation of her as an individual but the whole class of people she represents.
I also don't see how many of the commenters' point that conservatives have their own set of invidious caricatures directed at Obama in any way refutes Ross's critique of the white trash hillbilly attacks directed by liberals at Palin. Is the point that attacks of this kind are just part of the package that all sides must stomach without complaint? But liberals are hardly taking them lying down. This sort of objection might prove hypocrisy but doesn't really address the central validity of Ross's complaint.
"Is the point that attacks of this kind are just part of the package that all sides must stomach without complaint? But liberals are hardly taking them lying down. This sort of objection might prove hypocrisy but doesn't really address the central validity of Ross's complaint."
But pointing out the hypocrisy *does* invalidate Ross's complaint. He suggests she alone was singled out for such treatment because of her specific class and culture. Obama faced attacks that were just as bad, in fact probably worse, as anything Palin dealt with, but he was actually qualified to be president and so ended up being elected.
I agree with Morgan. Palin provoked most of her attacks with polarization in contrast to Obama who provoked them more with his name and skin color.
Anyway - can't wait for the first female black president without any education or brains but who is really hot and can do this sexy eye thingy...
I didn't quite read the whole thread, so I hope I'm not duplicating anyone, but I think you may be giving Ross a bit too much credit here by assuming he actually has a coherent point in his article. It read to me a bit like he knew he needed to write about Palin so he tried to come up with something insightful-sounding, failed miserably, and then tried to shoehorn the whole thing into this BS about "the democratic ideal".
He pretty much acknowledges that she had absolutely no business being anywhere near the presidency, but then suggests that that's just secondary to the fact that the media was mean to her. I think bringing race into this may be reading too much into something that's accounted for very well by intellectual laziness and conservative water-carrying.
I don't ascribe racist motivations to Douthat's column, but when you're being given a plum spot at the New York Times, you have to expect that people are going to dissect the implications of what you write. When you engage in this transparent of an attempt at goalpost-moving, and when the goalposts are being moved away from a President who, you know, just happens to be black, then you should expect that people are going to question your motives from a racial point of view. Sure, Douthat's a water-carrier, but he's smart enough to come up with an argument that doesn't say, in effect, that our black President still doesn't really count as a fulfillment of the American dream because his schools are just too cotdamned fancy.
After reading his column, I suspect Ross believes that 'Being There' has a happy, uplifting ending.
It his vision of meritocracy, perfected.
I found Ross's separation of the "meritocratic ideal" and the "democratic ideal,” to be indicative of a much more fundamental problem with current conservatism: namely the rejection of the liberal in the term "liberal democracy". This liberal isn’t the same as liberalism, the American political ideology. Before there was a Republican Party this used to be called Republicanism and it’s supposed to be our system of government or at least is its philosophic underpinnings.
We aren't today nor have we ever been a pure democracy. The founders were wary of absolute democracy. Their model wasn’t the Athenian democracy, but rather the Roman Republic. After all, the Athenian democracy was communistic in its function there was no modern notion of property rights and producing what Enlightenment thinkers thought of as the tyranny of the majority. The founders, steeped in Enlightenment philosophy, wanted no part in a system that could be as tyrannical as the king they just overthrew, so they built in constraints on power. We know these as constitutionalism, rule of law, minority and property rights, individualism etc, which make up the liberal part of liberal democracy.
All of these things were about creating a system of government that gave voice to the people, while also giving them solid leadership. This means that there isn't any separating the democratic ideal and the meritocratic ideal, we can’t have one with out the other. Meritocracy is how we do democracy. To split them up would be to essentially split liberal from democratic. In doing so, Ross and other conservatives like him argue for a type of democratic egalitarianism that sounds more like Marx and Engels than Jefferson or Lincoln. Its starting to sound less like “anyone can achieve anything” to “anyone should be able to achieve anything.” This of course clashes with the lassiez-faire economics favored by many conservatives, which dictates that there has to be winners and losers, elites and masses. This democratic egalitarianism stems from something else. To these conservatives we all have to be the same or we would have to acknowledge not only our differences, but also what contributes to them and that is something no conservative currently wants a part of.
Exactly. THANK YOU. The distinction in the column is entirely specious. The idea of democracy is that everyone has equal opportunity. Meritocracy comes in regarding what is MADE of that opportunity.
Out of Obama and Palin, who made the most of their opportunities?
Some people made fun of Palin for going to many colleges and being a "hick." Some people made fun of Obama for being an elitist. Most of us just watched and listened and judged... on the merits.
The column makes no sense: either Obama is an example of people from the Ivy leagues just having it easy, which completely ignores his background and what it took for him to get there and succeed there, or he only got there because of affirmative action. I agree with TNC: somehow Ross can't see a black person as a living example of the democratic cum meritocratic ideal that is the heart of our system, even though it is as plain as day.
"But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard."
It shouldn't take Columbia or Harvard, but it's supposed to take long, hard, serious work. Major time with the books, major time asking folks who know stuff to explain in more detail, and major time on the job figuring out what policies matter and how to make them work in practice.
Douthat is relaying the thoughts of a bunch of people who really don't see how that kind of effort works. They think all the references to the credentials AND the effort are just a way of blowing smoke and hiding the "real" reasons some people win and others lose.
It seems important to remember that sometimes, folks who talk about credentials really are blowing smoke. They really are defending privilege and locking out talent, and lying through their teeth about how the world works. That's obvious to black people listening to white explanations of some key gaps, and it's also obvious to white people whose grandmothers didn't all go to college. There's a version about class as well as one about race.
That is, the fury has some basis in fact.
And yet, the thinking keeps taking this twisted turn, where it insists that Palin has done the work, when there's no reason to say that. And the other twist, where it says Sotomayor hasn't done the work, when she plainly has. That sort of blindness feels to me like it's mainly rage, and rage that sweeps wider and further than racism alone.
That is, the fury that started with facts has metastasized in a way that keeps folks who talk this way from taking in additional facts.
I don't share this way of thinking, like it, or defend it. I do think it's important to try to understand how it works, and I do think Douthat's description is helpful for that.
Bravo!
Great post. Great comments. As always.
I can sum up all my feelings about Ross' piece in a single sentence.
I just lost a lot of the respect I had for Ross.
Of course, the notion of anything approaching a functioning meritocracy is belied by the fact that Ross Douthat has a twice-weekly national column in one of the two most important newspapers in the country despite having produced no ideas of import in his brief writing career.
Sarah Palin's appeal is to the middle school mentality in a certain portion of America. Both her personality and her looks, her behavior is like those young women who are middle school ringleaders. The deal is the United States is not in middle school.
The kind of appeal Douthat says she has is like that of George Bush--he appeals to the God fearing know nothing in our national personality. It suggests just as Ms. Palin suggested that only white, poor, and rural Americans are true blue, an idea that is so elitist in its lack of understanding of the complexity of that part of our populace, not to mention everyone else, that it perforce should stick in everyone's craw whatever race, ethnicity, gender, or economic class.
My problem with Mrs Palin was never that she was stupid.It was that she was intellectually incurious .People can sometimes not help it if they are smart or stupid.But they can always be curious about the world around them regardless of their income.A library card costs nothing.
I do not expect my leaders to go to Harvard or Yale.But when they are asked about the Iraq war i do not expect to hear them say "I've been so focused on state government ,i have'nt really focussed on the war in Iraq" {an actual Palin qoute ].
I literaly know Salvadorian immigrants who can barely speak english who have followed the news in Iraq and have told me about their opinions about Iraq.How can she not pay attention to a war we are in !
This has nothing to do with class.I shovel dirt for a living, but that does not stop me from reading a book or a newspaper.There is no excuse for her lack of knowledge.
The people who think of her as the embodiment of blue collar America always seem to be rich journalists or are rich republicans who live in wealthy suburbes in order to keep away from blue collar Americans.
Personally I think that she is a cartoon version of white blue collar America. It is an insult to white blue collar Americans to call her a symbol of blue collar America. And it is an insult to black people to pretend that only white people are blue collar.
Great point, nicely put. I agree that she, and many others like her who came before, are an insult to real blue-collar people, who aren't stupid or ignorant and most importantly, don't take pride in ignorance. She is a cartoon - that's so exactly it.
I keep thinking of that famous line from Bush's speech about No Child Left Behind: "the soft bigotry of low expectations." To me, this is what the Republican Party, including its media personalities (Limbaugh, Beck), are constantly engaging in with regard to their own people.
Yes, indeed.
maybe i'm too late to say anything here... but i think Douthat is mostly just reacting to some of the more viscerally negative reactions to Palin that have come from "The Left". I mean the personal attacks, and yes, some of these have come from Andrew Sullivan. Douthat is extrapolating this phenomenon beyond where he needs to. Victimology.
I think Palin is the embodiement of the modern American get rich quick, American Idol, Reality TV, win the lottery mentality.
Obama, and Bill Clinton before him, are the classic American Horatio Alger story, lower middle class kids you get into the elite schools and outdo the blue bloods. That used to be what Americans idealized and then somewhere along the way it changed.
Honestly, this doesn't ring true to me. I think the American myth is more like: poor kid (full of pluck, determination, etc.) beats the blue bloods without going to the elite schools at all. The joining the elite comes after the success, not before.
I won’t try and say that I think race has nothing to do with this. I’m a 30-year old white man. I went into the 2008 Presidential race, as an Obama supporter, thinking that his race wouldn’t make as much difference as it did. If I was naive then, largely a result of being raised by very decent parents, I won’t be now.
Racism may have a hold on some of those who will agree with the column, subconsciously or consciously. Still I don’t think race is the major factor traveling through Douthat's argument. Douthat’s argument is horsesh*t but it can be educational in its illustrative qualities.
Douthat's orientation is almost political Manichaeism. Basically those who ascribe to his ideology are good; those who do not are bad. Of course, this political Manichaeism differs than the normal religious version. I doubt Douthat literally thinks Obama and the Democrats and liberals who think like him are morally evil. It more like they are unwise and horribly misguided and it’s only that their polices will have effect on American society that could be construed as evil.
But I use the term Manichaeism because there is no nuance, mitigating factors count for nothing. Sarah Palin is better than Barack Obama because she is a conservative. Conservatives are better than liberals because conservatives are restrained in their cultural morality, sober in their judgments of foreign policy and rational in their thinking on economics. Where as liberals advocate hedonism in place of any morality, weak naïveté in foreign policy and are bleeding heart pseudo-socialists in matters of economics. Conservatives, no matter of rich or influential, can never be elitists. Yet liberals, no matter how many poor and downtrodden they can count among their ranks, are never “Real Americans”. So the fact that Obama is obviously brilliant and Palin is less than brilliant, the fact that Obama is temperate and Palin is juvenile and oddly so, none of it matters. All that matters to Douthat is that Palin plays for the right ideological team.
Of course, Douthat can’t actually make an argument on these grounds, most of the time. Most people aren't as entrenched into an ideological camp as he is. So he cooks up meritocratic ideal vs. democratic ideal. Even he probably knows its horesh*t. But it’s the best he could do without putting a lot of work into it.
Notice how at light speed, he focuses his column into the victimhood of Sarah Palin. “All of you who criticized her, are you happy now?!? Villains, hang you heads! All she wanted to do is live out the American Dream and you destroyed her. For shame!!!”
He needs to turn her into a victim, in order to distract from her actual attributes as a political figure. As you so rightly point out Mr. Coates, according to Douthat, her failure is not hers. No, her failure is the failure of America. People didn’t accuse her of being incoherent and ignorant because she spoke incoherently and seemed too ignorant to answer the simplest of questions. No, she could have been as eloquent as Barak Obama but because she graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in sports journalism, she would never be truly respected. As if her father had been some wealthy Alaskan construction baron and was able to send Sarah to an Ivy League school, that her critics would somehow have found her more acceptable. Never mind the previous 8 years, where a wealthy graduate of Yale and Harvard has been constantly criticized for being incoherent and ignorant…because he was incoherent and ignorant. No, “you liberals should feel so guilty and ashamed of yourselves”.
He does tie everything together with the use an old right-wing standby; working-class resentment. I don’t understand the appeal of the working-class resentment tropes that the right-wing traffic in. I am someone who is working class, or at least a million-miles close to it than Douthat is, was or ever will be. But then again, I’m relatively young, raised free of any type of prejudice that I can think of and have lived in urban settings my entire life. Perhaps that has something to do with it, I don’t know.
Make no mistake though; Douthat doesn’t actually believe in the shoddily-reasoned populism that he offers up. He doesn’t care if people look down on hunters anymore than Bill Kristol cares about gun rights…anymore than the crew at NRO follows NASCAR. The reason why Sarah Palin is so popular among conservative elites is that she is so popular among conservative non-elites. She can spew those right-wing resentment tropes better than almost anyone today, the ones that the conservative non-elites seem to love. That’s the toxic brew of sh*t; a mix of holier-than-though religiosity, blind hyper-nationalism, vague xenophobia, old-school anti-intellectualism and a fading but still sizable touch of new-school racism. All of it leaves millions of Americans with a hateful chip on their shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar. These Americans can vote for someone like Sarah Palin. Decent, sane conservatives and political independents, of all social classes can decide she or someone like her is the lesser of two evils.
Then once such an empty shell is elected, or at least nominated, such “serious” people as Douthat can help to instruct her on the proper positions to take on issue of actual importance. That is if they haven’t tainted the wells of conservative thought to the point that their views are considered to be orthodoxy and thus the rightness of them need not be discussed. I would wager that its Douthat’s social conservatism that he’s hoping would find favor in a Palin Administration, albeit a milder form than some of her other supporters. The supporters who don’t write columns for the New York Times. To put it somewhat vulgarly; he’s more high-church and they are low-church.
Now it’s up to you to decide who is worse; those who traffic in such right-wing hyperbole for political purposes or those who are influenced by it to such a degree. Still, the two are distinct and separate. It is conservative condescension towards working-class Americans, as you said Mr. Coates. But it works, that’s the only reason why it’s used.
Damn, Nuada, you make the soon to be ex-gov. Palin sound like a superficially talented but beloved by enough viewers to keep her on the scene, "American Idol" contestant, as Eric K. noted in the comment just above. So does that make me Simon Cowell? I hope so. And Nuada, it only "works" with some of the people, some of the time, including working class people.
I'd argue that it works all of the time with some of the people. We're talking about people for whom the political realm is an extension of the religious in many ways. People who operate on faith, even and especially in the face of facts and evidence. Nuada says that their political Manichaeism doesn't go so far as to really think that Obama and liberals are really evil, but I don't think that's always the case. Some really do believe that the opposition is Evil. (Remember, the opposition wants to kill babies and harvest them for stem cells.)
I was a registered Republican but I had to quit that affiliation earlier this year. It was a long time coming, mostly due to the dissonance of valuing liberty while being surrounded those who wished to curtail it on religious grounds or for reasons of national security. The straw that broke the camel's back was the issue of torture.
It's hard for me not to see the pro-torture faction that dominates the GOP as being evil. I have to settle on thinking of most of them as moral idiots. They've been blinded by fear or partisanship. Those that were agents of torture, such as Cheney or Yoo are more easily classified as evil. But what of someone like Charles Krauthammer, who tries to provide validation for evil acts? Is he evil? Or merely a (useful) moral idiot?
So, you see, I myself engage in assigning moral values of good and evil to the political realm. My basic political beliefs haven't changed, I've just discovered that the dominant factions on my "side" are the gravest threat.
"Nuada says that their political Manichaeism doesn't go so far as to really think that Obama and liberals are really evil, but I don't think that's always the case. Some really do believe that the opposition is Evil. (Remember, the opposition wants to kill babies and harvest them for stem cells.)"
I was speaking solely of Douthat in this particular case. I didn't say "their" political Manichaeism in that paragraph, I said "his". Others definitely do think of Obama as morally evil simply because of his being a liberal or a Democrat. But I don’t think Douthat and his ilk do.
“So, you see, I myself engage in assigning moral values of good and evil to the political realm. My basic political beliefs haven't changed, I've just discovered that the dominant factions on my "side" are the gravest threat.”
To the extent that you felt forced to a political reckoning based on such moral grounds as you outlined, I applaud you.
I also think of torture as evil and some proponents of torture as being evil as well. However, I strive mightily to find decent conservatives and Republicans, so as not to view all of them as evil. Once I got to that point, I fear that I might begin to lose the ability to see evil on my own side as well. Almost as if I might begin to substitute the evil beliefs and positions for Republicans and conservatives themselves.
"And Nuada, it only "works" with some of the people, some of the time, including working class people."
Well of course, only those working-class types who like her. As I said, I consider myself working-class and you summed up what I think of her well enough.
I love how Mr. "I went to a private New England High School and Harvard" suddenly is an expert on the democratic and social ambitions of the white working class in the Pacific Northwest.
If you're looking for a Pacific Northwesterner with strong ties to Alaska, working class parents, deep roots in a frontier family, first in his family to finish college, who went to public high school, then a public university, doing well to get funded for grad school, then that would be me. If you want someone whose father worked at his business for 20 plus years to make enough to pay for that public university, which was regarded as an indulgence at 200 bucks per quarter, then that would be me, not Ross Douthat.
The thing is, this is exactly what TNC has been saying for all these months. I don't know much if anything about the struggles of most middle class blacks. But this kind of thing is a touchstone. Some guy, who is a fine wordsmith, I'll give him that, tells the world what your life is like, and what can be expected of someone like you. My gut reaction is STFU. That's a feeling I think y'all have had before.
Sarah somehow didn't learn the right lessons, the lessons of working hard and watching your mouth. I begin to regard her blaze as a Greek tragedy, with baked beans and salmon on the side. The upside is that she dared to fly. That's not a small thing.
But she didn't actually learn to use her wings, instead she was carried by those who told her, "oh don't worry about that flying stuff, let me do that for you" while they lined their pockets. They let her think that they were her friends, and they aren't. Ultimately, I think from beginning to end this was about money, which Sarah Palin seems obsessed with, frankly. Not exactly a big surprise there either.
Ta-Nehisi, I recently read Democracy in America's comment on the whole Douthat discussion, and I *think* that is captures the point you were making about the false opposition between Palin and Obama.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/07/palin_and_the_democratic_ideal.cfm
Douthat apparently thinks it is undemocratic to consider things like integrity, demonstrated intelligence, a solid grasp of issues, and a record of leadership in office when choosing a leader. Intelligence and competence you see, are elitist qualities, and why should people like Sarah Palin have to do things like work hard and get an education in order to be taken seriously as a national candidate? But seriously, does Ross understand why it is that the office of the vice president of the most powerful nation on earth should be a very hard position to reach rather than a very easy one?
Well, in a genuine democracy, a candidate's credentials reside not only on their past achievements, but also on their ideas for the future of the nation. While one could argue about the relative merits of ideas that emanated from the likes of McCain, Obama, Clinton and Biden till kingdom come, one would be hard-pressed to cite one single idea that Palin articulated during her long campaign.
In other words, to counter Douhat's point, one can assume that a person from an unknown state college can be president, if they have the ability to articulate solutions, and the communication skills to convince sufficient numbers of people that they were better than the rest of the field.
Palin's popularity did not rest on the merits of her ideas. She had none. So she lost. Whatever support she carried from her far-right base was mainly due to the abilities of the engines of the right (religious fundamentalism, radio/Faux News) to create the Sarah Palin myth.
There is a simple, unspoken rule of white supremacy since the South's defeat that still exists in so many of us, and it explains a lot of the Palin love through thick (head) and thin (answers). It is never stated because it only makes sense hidden in the gut-- only the uncouth and uneducated actually hint at it but it sits in almost all our bodies:
White trash goes before black treasure.
And the message of Obama's election to self-styled "white trash" is-- you better start thinking about it.
"a treasure"
after these conversations about the blacks and the jews, i ventured off into the internets, and found a yiddish dictionary online. i read a usage of the word i'd never thought about before. looking it up today, I found this reference in an article on boing boing.
now i think twice about this word when i hear it, and try testing the double meaning. it makes an interesting interpretation in this case, (though one not necessarily intended)
Patriotically speaking, he's POTUS, she's not.
Cocolamala, I meant to reply to Gramsci, please forgive.
"But this only works if you think that most of working class America is as fucking inept as Sarah Palin."
This is the best sentence I've read in a month.
There's also Douthat now bringing up social classes in general, despite the fact that conservatives never tire of claiming America is a "classless society."
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/07/douthat-gets-palin-half-right.html
Right on, TNC. The democratic and meritocratic ideals are different, but they go hand in hand.
The democratic ideal means getting a fair shot at "positional goods" like the presidency. That means everyone gets a hearing and is judged only according to relevant qualities. But when it's a fair competition, it's still a competition. So at that point the meritocratic ideal kicks in: the person with the best relevant qualities should get the position.
Obama and Palin are evidence of these ideals being in good working order. They were both given a shot; the one with the demonstrable skills got the job, the one without (by Ross' own admission) did not.
In the mid 90's, I was a debater at a public high school in Iowa. I argued at many tournaments, most often at public high schools in small communities.
A year or two ago, I was a volunteer debate coach and judge for the Urban Debate League in Chicago -- a league for public high school students.
The Sarah Palin of 2008-2009 would have been slaughtered at a JV-level or higher tournament in Iowa or in the Urban Debate League. And I do mean slaughtered. She would have been a benchwarmer in the freshman division. If she were a high school debater and I was her coach, I wouldn't even let her compete without doing some serious remedial work. This has nothing to do with Columbia or Harvard. It has everything to do with reading, thinking, and articulating one's opinions in a comprehensible way.
Winking isn't something you actually coach debaters to do?
"Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.
But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don't even think about it."
This is the most absurd comment in the column,in my opinion. I actually doubt that there are in reality the 'millions' Douthat envisions, but they do not love her because she represents that anyone can grow up to be president--they love her because she tells them, winks at them, and lets them know that those who are smart, knowledgeable, curious and intelligent are stopping the 'real' or 'normal' Americans from gaining the 'truth.' She's the 'proof' anti-government believers have longed for. She is the embodiment of mediocrity, the new way of doing business in America. In other words, it is okay if you really don't know what you are doing, because most of it is 'bullshit' or 'worthless' anyway. She is the example of all that I see as I teach college students--taking the easy way out. After all, we haven't celebrated innovation, intelligence or curiosity for along time--remember, smart people are 'geeks,' nerds or dorks.
The notion of Douthat and others who have allowed the nonsense of Sarah Palin to flourish is that she has been mistreated, mishandled and if we just give her some time, she will show us how talented, politically and intellectually she is. But, she could care less, folks. She has had EVERY chance since November 4 to educate herself. If she really saw the embarrassment, the handicap that she brought to the McCain campaign, the ineptitude for any kind of political office (even as AK governor), she would have hired an experienced consultant, a tutor, a mentor, signed up for an online civics class, bought some textbooks, SOMETHING--but she didn't. She gave simpering interviews with her new best pal, Greta from Fox and allowed the most prestigious publication of Runner's World to do a profile--the whole time complaining how she was mistreated. She could changed her direction, but she didn't. She, instead, like those who don't want to work hard, who don't want to better themselves, who don't want to take responsibility for their own knowledge, education or awareness, blame everyone ELSE. This is the culture we have--if it doesn't come easy, it is not worth it. And as she was adored by all those people at those rallies, you could see the calculating light in her eyes grow brighter and brighter as the weeks counted down to the election, she thought, 'why not? I'm obviously the main draw and obviously they love me. I will complain about how the elites and liberals do not like me and that will keep their support.' Unfortunately, she is right.
Sure, anyone *can* become a software millionaire like Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniac, and have dropped out of college. But if they really had the interest, either of them could have gotten in to MIT or CalTech or Harvard and graduated.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, isn't bright enough to have made it into Harvard. Obama is just *smarter* than Palin. It's not classism that makes people hate him for that, it's Republican anti-intellectualism.
how dare you suggest that intelligence has anything to do with college admissions? It's all about privilege!
In all seriousness, Douthat's problem with the "elites" at Ivy League colleges is the fact that they laughed at his religious beliefs and he couldn't get any play. Read his unbelievably self-serving and meandering memoir, watch him try to do an impression of Omar in the Atlantic's video discussion about The Wire, you will know you all you need to know.
I'm pretty sure this is the sort of thing Douthat was trying to describe:
http://www.nplusonemag.com/obama
I don't know why you're apologizing. The way Ross defines the mertitocratic ideal is narrow to the point of meaningless. His sole distinction between the supposed "meritocratic" and "democratic" ideals is the class of school one attends. He makes no effort to distinguish them further. If there are no further distinctions, and I can't see as there are, we should admit that to attend or desire to attend a particular university is not sufficient basis for the creation of a separate ideal or ideology.
The ideal (call it mertitocratic, democratic or American) is simply that one might, by one's own innate ability and effort, succeed. It has nothing to do with going to any particular school or class of schools.
Where I'm from (Virginia) we don't tell our children, "If you work hard, one day you can go to Harvard and be anything you want to be." No, we tell them, "If you work hard you can be anything you want to be." Period.
Conflating the "meritocratic" and "democratic" ideals was wholly appropriate on your part, for the simply reason there is only one ideal.
Perhaps, as an Ivy grad himself, Ross would like to believe he resides in a separate class, but he does not. The revulsion many Americans feel towards the Harvard-educated class and their ilk stems from what they (and, I'll confess, I) see as an effort amongst them to make just this type of distinction, to raise themselves into a higher class, at least in their own minds. Ironically, I see Ross doing more to perpetuate this mindset in his writing than nearly anyone else.
Unfortunately, Mr. Douthat has only begun a David Brooks-esque maturation process, and he himself may be a victim of the too-rapid promotion he laments in Ms. Palin.
To clarify, there are, in my experience, broadly two classes of conservative commentary (or liberal): insightful and original thought-provoking analysis, versus unreflective tribal, partisan hackery. The latter can usually be swiftly discerned because it chooses it's conclusions first and then tries to shoehorn in supporting logic to fit. The worth, to me, of a political writer is in how they balance the two and hopefully improve with time.
Among conservative Times columnists, Kristol was transparent and cynical hackery without pause. Safire was thoughtful if the topic wasn't one of his pet causes (Kurdistan, Saddam). Brooks was a weird admixture ... He could write profoundly insightful and pathbreaking work (for instance, about Bobos (bohemian bourgeoisie) in Paradise) ... yet then turn around and tirelessly shill for neocon democracy-by-invasion. He's gotten better, but only because he has had his nose repeatedly and painfully rubbed in reality these last six years. He still occasionally shills reflexively, but it is a vastly rarer sin.
All that said, Douthat reads very much like early Brooks, with a Catholic rather than Jewish moral slant. If anything, though, Douthat isn't giving himself the space to deeply think out new thought, so he's writing more off-the-cuff non-reflective reactions. Early Brooks always descended into hackery at those points, and Douthat is unfortunately doing likewise ... a lot (Kansas abortionist murder reax, Angels and Demons reax, Palin reax).
Even though he's writing a column, not a blog, he seems caught in the blogger trap of needing to comment on everything, with only one or two columns a week to do so ... But also lacking the blogger's constant feedback pressure to reevaluate half-baked ideas and unearthed biases. I'd be interested in watching Douthat blog out (or huge-book out) his thoughts on meritocratic and democratic ideals. Instead, he's thrown out half-baked hackery and won't have time to revisit it before the next deadline demands that he crank out something new ... And equally half-baked.
On the bright side, if Brooks is a model, Douthat should be much more nuanced and aware by 2016.
I admire your insights and appreciate your directness. I hope we hear a lot from you in the coming years. But sometimes less is more.
Don't get sucked into a dead-end exchange like the one about who represents the real America or whether class is a factor in America. No one represents America and a lot of people represent parts of America. And class, like race and other ways we misjudge each other, has always been a big deal. Which is MOST important? Who knows? Who cares?
I read the Ross column when it came out, thought it was nothing but a reflex, a kneejerk, like most of columns about Palin and Sanford. Most were unreadable. They exposed the vast mental wastelands that inhabit the media. Too much was said about that here also. A few words would have been plenty...there's a lot less in the situation than meets the eye.
Palin, an icon of the right, cracked under pressure. Was it fatal, politically? Too early to tell, of course. There aren’t many possibilities so a lot of blind guesses will be right. Ross was no better or worse than most, but he touched on one thing, clumsily, to be sure, that we usually ignore in this country -- class. Though he had little of interest to say about it, Ross is right that class is also a factor in the amazing paths of both Palin and Obama (not to equate those paths).
The US may lack the full crippling Classism disease of Europe, but we are infected, and getting sicker all the time. There have always been family dynasties in American politics...two presidents named Adams long ago, for example. But look around now at how many officeholders at so many levels treat their positions as 'inherited by right'. The Bush family is just the tip of the turdberg. Inherited wealth is even more obvious. And more destructive.
Among the many things that make Obama startling is that his color and his class contradict each other in the American hierarchy. Palin, on the other hand, is 'low class' in an ordinary sense, and I believe that her appeal is rooted in that. It's admirable to rise high from a low start, but not that rare. We have had aristocratic presidents, but we also had Truman, Carter, Reagan and Clinton, all without pedigrees.
Don't overdo the disdain for Palin. Her political thinking can be written on the back of a postage stamp, but it's ignorance, not stupidity -- something that can't be said about a startling number Members of Congress -- and the genuine vitality and force of her personality is obvious to anyone not blinded by partisan myopia. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of her electricity in a candidate on my team.
A lot of the contempt she has received from 'her betters' is pure middle class venom. No wonder blue collar types love her. They are on the receiving end of that same contempt every day. With your race sensitivity, you certainly know in your guts what that feels like.
Obama is upper middle class in his behavior and solidly middle class in his family roots. (This is an honorable place to be, but not the only one, in my book.) Even his absent father was a man of achievement and status – above that, in fact, in Kenya of his day, and probably today also. But to be an African-American and from a highly respectable class at the same time? This makes a hash of the expected relationship between class and status in this country.
How is this possible? Well, that's the mystery of the US. As Dickens might have said, "It is the best of countries, it is the worst of countries".
Class and merit are interconnected in ever more complicated and unpredictable ways. There are no easy judgments or obvious policy or judicial implications in their interactions. Add democracy to the mix and the confusion grows. Democracy, for example, allows passage of affirmative action laws that can be defended but still have innocent victims. In the days of our sainted Founders, democracy was feared as a form of mob rule. The Bill of Rights was the compromise. Were they smart, or what?
Painful and difficult choices have to be made all the time, by presidents, legislators, judges, cops and elementary school teachers, to name a few. Life would be awfully dull if that wasn’t the case.
Don't trivialize class -- it remains a major fault line in every society I know of. It's a dirty little secret that our media don't want to write about -- they may not even know since they read each other’s blogs too much -- but Karl Marx is being read again with interest by the imaginative fraction of the species. He can now be safely detached from the catastrophe of Communism, for which he and Engels had no responsibility. Working stiffs are still getting screwed as they were in his time, and the rich are still walking away with bucketsful of the wealth the workers create. And to tell the truth, our wonderful president (I mean that) has been eaten alive by the banks and insurance companies.