When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.Part of this is Brooks critique of the past half-century, or rather half-critique. From Brooks' perspective, the problem is that Sonia Sotomayor didn't go to school in 50s or early 60s, not that her chosen school didn't admit women in the 50s and 60s. Likewise Brooks doesn't cite the immodesty of George Wallace declaring eternal segregation "in the name of the greatest people to trod this earth," he cites the immodesty of Muhammad Ali. The response offends Brooks. The conditions that produce the response, less so.But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call "expressive individualism." Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.
Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine. Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention. Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time. Norman Mailer wrote a book called "Advertisements for Myself."
Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private "Crossfire"; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan's egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don't even notice it anymore.
This isn't the death of civilization. It's just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day "Command Performance," comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It's funny how the nation's mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
That's because the conditions are, themselves, built on American immodesty. I'm thinking of Jack Johnson winning the championship, and modest Americans launching pogroms against their fellow immodest Americans. I'm thinking about Birth of a Nation's defense of treason, and a sitting president offering his immodest endorsement. I'm thinking about a country, circa 1850, whose politicians lorded over one of the last slave societies in the known world, and immodestly argued that it was a gift from God.
Even Brooks view of the "Greatest Generation" is myopic. In 1948 Strom Thurmond authored the segregationist Dixiecrat charter, while immodestly fathering a daughter with a black women. In 1946, Isaac Woodward, a veteran of World War II, was beaten and blinded--while in uniform--by South Carolina police. The police were prosecuted, but the jury acquitted them, and a court-room full of Americans broke out in immodest applause.
This is history through the veil, again. It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. Our very existence springs from an act of immodesty. I can't even begin to imagine the Native American read on this one.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
dope
Well I definitely agree with your take, but I did love this line: "Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine."
That is a good line. You might like Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool.
"Amazon.com Review
In his book-length essay The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank explores the ways in which Madison Avenue co-opted the language of youthful '60s rebellion. It is "the story," Frank writes, "of the bohemian cultural style's trajectory from adversarial to hegemonic; the story of hip's mutation from native language of the alienated to that of advertising." This appropriation had wide-ranging consequences that deeply transformed our culture--consequences that linger in the form of '90s "hip consumerism." (Think of Nike using the song "Revolution" to sell sneakers, or Coca-Cola using replicas of Ken Kesey's bus to peddle Fruitopia.)"
Joseph Heath's Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture is an excellent read, published more recently. Basically it too takes on the issue of Madison Avenue using rebellion to sell products but goes on to point out that being a rebel in the mold American culture has created in the past 40 years or so matches up poorly with being the kind of person who actually changes the things that are unjust or undesirable in our society.
Thanks. I teach a class on Youth Cultures, and this works perfectly. And the prose is accessible.
Thanks, I've read some Thomas Frank before but not that one
It also made me think about how by his own reasoning "self-effacement" must have also been a "capitalist routine." It reminded me of one of the things my mom said about Mad Men -- that she remembers all of the hairstyles the women are wearing, and that they were all about that time, but they were not worn at the same time. All women wore the same hairstyle, and then all women wore the next hairstyle, etc. That was sort of shocking to me, the incredible conformity, and by extension the necessary monitoring of changing fashion, and the expenditures to maintain that conformity.
Brooks wants to say that "self-effacement" was about modesty, and only retrospectively do we see it as "conformity and self-repression." I don't think you can honestly say that the demand that everyone adopt each new trend is more about self-effacement than conformity.
I always think about the expenditure burden with regard to the way they dressed. Men in suits and ties, with overcoats, women in all those layers of undergarments. And gloves and hats for women, though the glove standard must have been pre-Mad Men, I don't really recall it on the show. But you couldn't go without these things. They were necessary.
It must have made for such an apparent divide between middle class and working class. A working class man probably did have one suit for church and funerals and whatnot, but keeping up with the standards looks like it was expensive.
And my mom makes the point (she is exactly the Mad Men generation) that while there were kids in her high school who dressed in the way Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and "Grease" immortalized, they were roundly condemned as juvenile delinquents, and yes, thugs. Or for girls, sluts.
If you want to champion some past era as the supposed heyday of modesty and deference and self effacement, Post WW2 America really wasn't it.
And Jerry Lee was the Kanye of his day.
Nah, R. Kelly was Jerry Lee.
Every great cause, begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket~Eric Hoffer
that's some true believer knowledge right there
"Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within."
I'm not an English or Art major, but wasn't this sort of thing already going on with the Humanists and certain schools of poets, writers, and artists in the 18th and 19th centuries after them?
Yes. Essentialism, and the inherent nobility of humanity in it's unsullied natural state (exemplified by our children) have been a staple of certain philosophers for quite some time.
Their beliefs bear little resemblance to the post-hippy bs I'm Ok, You're OK school of thought IMO. One was an actual school of thought, the other was a way to encourage people to become consumers- we're all ok as long as we enjoy the right clothes/car/house/whatever.
Do you think Brooks ever stops for a moment and really ponders what he's about to write? I mean, he's good at projecting the thoughtful tone, but what comes out is so often crap that it just makes you wonder if he's just gotten the moves down, if he's doing a "moderate conservative Mad Libs" or something.
This line——"the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then"——is just insanely inaccurate. Brooks should be fired for this column alone.
A fucking world war that was all about nationalism and racial supremacy (Aryans and Japanese spirit warriors uber alles!) had just ended, segregation was alive and well in America, urban and rural neighborhoods were divided racial, class, and religious lines...
But yeah, nobody thought they were different from anyone else.
Unbelievable. It's as though Brooks bases his entire sense of history on reruns of Andy Griffith and "Leave it to Beaver."
This is such a misrepresentation of 1960s subcultures as well. One animating feature of the New Left in particular was the idea that America had not lived up to its gloating as the greatest country in the history of the world. After World War II, the nation did quite a bit of "high-fiving" while there were monumental injustices occurring every day at home and abroad on behalf of our government and in our name. This overwhelming hypocrisy was a key motivator of those kids who looked at Vietnam and the racial turmoil of the '60s and recoiled at the country's "high-fiving."
But asking Brooks to have a basic understanding of the movement his career can be seen as a reaction against is--in a rough Spanish translation--like asking for pears from an elm tree.
I did not want to go Godwin, but I didn't make it past the 2nd sentence without the thought.
Well one thing's for sure, white kids people never cheered while they beat up a black kid on a bus. Nope. No siree.
dammit typos.
What can I say but I agree with everything you just said. I wonder how Brooks would respond to this.
Excellent takedown, TNC. This reminds me of those bogus trend stories Slate's Jack Shafer is always talking about.
I really despise this brand of non-complicit revisionism. Brooks hints at an innocence that has never really existed and uses it as a buffer, one that allows him and so many other fellow Americans to deploy the narrative of civility and morality to make their point while keeping the full truth and responsibility of how and why we are what we are at arms length. We see it again and again on immigration, health care, you name it.
Agreed. Everything was great back then, really! Just don't look over there, or there, or at those people. As much as I cringe when people trot out discrimination against the Irish and Germans in this country in attempt to compare it to racism, I think it's appropriate to bring up here. There were really very few people we were 'civil' to in most of the alleged glory days of our history.
"It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. Our very exists springs from an act of immodesty. I can't even begin to imagine the Native American read on this one."
I can say this: for me as a brown person, it's virtually impossible too. And for many other brown people as well.
If you, or at least I, look at this on a micro instead of macro level I think Brooks does have a point.
If you're talking racism,capitalism etc the U.S. has never been particularly "modest". That's the macro.
If you're talking Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, Kanye West, etc etc etc and for a wide variety of "celebrities" "modesty" doesn't play a role in how they publicly act. That's the micro.
It may just be a function of more and more varied media attention. Maybe the micro has always been as "immodest", but we never really noticed.
I won't even use the terms I think of when I see Hilton or Trump in the media. It's similar to what I think of Sarah Palin.
True, but I think the main issue is that Brooks article doesn't address what I see to be a glaring truth. The macro informs the micro. Our current state of immodesty is a direct outgrowth of the larger values that have brought us to where we are not the creeping rise of influential individualist. They are products of it!
I looked at on that level too. It's still wrong--check out Ragtime. There was nothing modest about Henry Clay Thaw, Charley Chaplin or Harry Houdini. For every Kanye West there's an India Arie. For every Donald Trump there's a Warren Buffet. You simply can't prove that--even on a micro-level--the country is less modest. There are definitely more cameras. But that's about it.
As the author of Ragtime often noted in the book "and there were no Negroes."
As the author of Ragtime often noted in the book "and there were no Negroes."
As the author of Ragtime often noted in the book "and there were no Negroes."
This may fall under "distinction without a difference", but Brooks seems to be calling those out who are individually immodest and arrogant about what they are vs. some type of group superiority. I wasn't around during the time frame referenced, but I have always had the impression that the culture norm was that boasting and showboating about oneself was more looked down upon, but boasting about the superiority of one's race (if one was white) or one's country or its manifest destiny was seen as ok.
Both types of boasting are obnoxious, the group boasting is moreso in my opinion. However, they are two different things in my mind. I'm not sure Harry Truman celebrated WWII by wearing a uniform and sporting a "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Patton might have, though.
well, this is just standard-issue brooks: he's a hard-right reactionary who has mastered easy-listening prose. he has the rhetoric of reasonableness, but the content is always that day's republican spin.
if there is a single kernel of truth in this piece, it is that different cultures display monomaniacal, assertive individualism in different ways. two arrogant egoists will behave differently if one is french and one is british, or one is italian and one is russian. the englishman may be outraged by the italian's flamboyance and volubility; the italian may be irritated by the englishman's haughtiness and air of superiority.
they're both narcissists. neither is more humble than the other. but they look different. it's a matter of comportment, demeanour, how they carry themselves.
douglas macarthur was one of the most self-obsessed, arrogant, narcissistic bastards you'd ever like to meet. but it was expressed in his pipe, in his salute, in his letters. he never did high-fives. so brooks is fine with that.
all brooks is saying, when you get down to it, is "arrogant americans used to comport themselves like *white* people. now arrogant americans comport themselves like *black* people. damn, i *hate* that!"
Nice. Brooks continuously conflates differences in style with supposedly deeper moral differences. The example of MacArthur is perfect.
kidbitzer:
I think that's inaccurate--Brooks is conservative, but not reactionarily so. Brooks sometimes gets lazy with his columns and writes the standard republican line, but more often he churns out stuff like this. It's simply a very bad piece of pop sociology. Anyone discussing cultural trends, who doesn't start by acknowledging their own biases, is simply not worth paying attention to. Brooks has written multiple books and hundreds of columns on the subject without paying the slightest bit of attention to his own biases and privileges. He's not a reactionary, he's just an incompetent.
kid bitzer:
"all brooks is saying, when you get down to it, is "arrogant americans used to comport themselves like *white* people. now arrogant americans comport themselves like *black* people. damn, i *hate* that!"
That pretty much nails it. Now if only TNC could see things that way, it might spare us from all the hand-wringing that goes on in trying to be polite to these kinds of reactionaries.
Meh, no one's making you do anything. Plenty of blogs out there that aren't handwringing at all. If you want to be spared read something else. And comment there. Otherwise, you're angry at Burger King for not serving sushi.
TNC:
It's a fantastic post, which makes a wonderful point about the varied cultural valences of 'modesty,' a word all too often deployed to signify the acceptance of one's proper station within an implicit hierarchy. Thus when a southern senator says that our president must show humility, he doesn't mean that he should behave a little more like Eisenhower.
But I think there's a far more fundamental flaw with Brooks' argument. He takes two fixed moments in time - V-E Day and the present - plots them on a scale of modesty, and draws a sharply declining line to connect them. But that assumes that the end of the war in Europe brought out the characteristic spirit of that age, and of the decades that preceded it and followed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What Brooks documents is the absence, at the end of that war, of triumphalism, which is hardly the same thing as immodesty. People were exhausted. Veterans, in particular, were more relieved than exhilarated - a decade of depression, followed by a devastating war, and it was all over. But would anyone characterize the Roaring '20s as the Age of Modesty? How about the 1950s, when American ambitions were never more expansive, households never more prosperous, and ambition never more naked? Think about it. Mad Men begins in 1960 - does it strike anyone as a portrayal consistent with a decade of humility and individual self-abnegation?
It turns out that 1945 was the aberration, more than the present day. War films that came out over the next couple of years were dark and moody. But by the end of the decade, the triumphalism had arrived - and let's not forget the happy embrace by the 'Greatest Generation' of that title, reminding the rest of us just how great they were.
Brooks' error, in other words, isn't simply that he mistakes challenges to the social hierarchy for pure egoism, it's that he imagines a golden age where there was just a fleeting moment.
TNC:
It's a fantastic post, which makes a wonderful point about the varied cultural valences of 'modesty,' a word all too often deployed to signify the acceptance of one's proper station within an implicit hierarchy. Thus when a southern senator says that our president must show humility, he doesn't mean that he should behave a little more like Eisenhower.
But I think there's a far more fundamental flaw with Brooks' argument. He takes two fixed moments in time - V-E Day and the present - plots them on a scale of modesty, and draws a sharply declining line to connect them. But that assumes that the end of the war in Europe brought out the characteristic spirit of that age, and of the decades that preceded it and followed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What Brooks documents is the absence, at the end of that war, of triumphalism, which is hardly the same thing as immodesty. People were exhausted. Veterans, in particular, were more relieved than exhilarated - a decade of depression, followed by a devastating war, and it was all over. But would anyone characterize the Roaring '20s as the Age of Modesty? How about the 1950s, when American ambitions were never more expansive, households never more prosperous, and ambition never more naked? Think about it. Mad Men begins in 1960 - does it strike anyone as a portrayal consistent with a decade of humility and individual self-abnegation?
It turns out that 1945 was the aberration, more than the present day. War films that came out over the next couple of years were dark and moody. But by the end of the decade, the triumphalism had arrived - and let's not forget the happy embrace by the 'Greatest Generation' of that title, reminding the rest of us just how great they were.
Brooks' error, in other words, isn't simply that he mistakes challenges to the social hierarchy for pure egoism, it's that he imagines a golden age where there was just a fleeting moment.
TNC:
It's a fantastic post, which makes a wonderful point about the varied cultural valences of 'modesty,' a word all too often deployed to signify the acceptance of one's proper station within an implicit hierarchy. Thus when a southern senator says that our president must show humility, he doesn't mean that he should behave a little more like Eisenhower.
But I think there's a far more fundamental flaw with Brooks' argument. He takes two fixed moments in time - V-E Day and the present - plots them on a scale of modesty, and draws a sharply declining line to connect them. But that assumes that the end of the war in Europe brought out the characteristic spirit of that age, and of the decades that preceded it and followed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What Brooks documents is the absence, at the end of that war, of triumphalism, which is hardly the same thing as immodesty. People were exhausted. Veterans, in particular, were more relieved than exhilarated - a decade of depression, followed by a devastating war, and it was all over. But would anyone characterize the Roaring '20s as the Age of Modesty? How about the 1950s, when American ambitions were never more expansive, households never more prosperous, and ambition never more naked? Think about it. Mad Men begins in 1960 - does it strike anyone as a portrayal consistent with a decade of humility and individual self-abnegation?
It turns out that 1945 was the aberration, more than the present day. War films that came out over the next couple of years were dark and moody. But by the end of the decade, the triumphalism had arrived - and let's not forget the happy embrace by the 'Greatest Generation' of that title, reminding the rest of us just how great they were.
Brooks' error, in other words, isn't simply that he mistakes challenges to the social hierarchy for pure egoism, it's that he imagines a golden age where there was just a fleeting moment.
Ouch. I get five 'no server' errors, and then three posts go through at once. Apologies to all who have to scroll through them. Any chance you can delete the extraneous posts, TNC?
It's wise to copy your post's text and then, if it really doesn't go through, submit it again.
On most servers I am okay reloading the page-- apparently when you do that on the Atlantic, it resubmits.
TNC:
It's a fantastic post, which makes a wonderful point about the varied cultural valences of 'modesty,' a word all too often deployed to signify the acceptance of one's proper station within an implicit hierarchy. Thus when a southern senator says that our president must show humility, he doesn't mean that he should behave a little more like Eisenhower.
But I think there's a far more fundamental flaw with Brooks' argument. He takes two fixed moments in time - V-E Day and the present - plots them on a scale of modesty, and draws a sharply declining line to connect them. But that assumes that the end of the war in Europe brought out the characteristic spirit of that age, and of the decades that preceded it and followed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What Brooks documents is the absence, at the end of that war, of triumphalism, which is hardly the same thing as immodesty. People were exhausted. Veterans, in particular, were more relieved than exhilarated - a decade of depression, followed by a devastating war, and it was all over. But would anyone characterize the Roaring '20s as the Age of Modesty? How about the 1950s, when American ambitions were never more expansive, households never more prosperous, and ambition never more naked? Think about it. Mad Men begins in 1960 - does it strike anyone as a portrayal consistent with a decade of humility and individual self-abnegation?
It turns out that 1945 was the aberration, more than the present day. War films that came out over the next couple of years were dark and moody. But by the end of the decade, the triumphalism had arrived - and let's not forget the happy embrace by the 'Greatest Generation' of that title, reminding the rest of us just how great they were.
Brooks' error, in other words, isn't simply that he mistakes challenges to the social hierarchy for pure egoism, it's that he imagines a golden age where there was just a fleeting moment.
Is anyone else a little troubled by the fact that in this paean to an era of widespread racism, Brooks' examples of contemporary arrogance and immodestly are so tilted toward black men?
Yeah, that hit me too. And I can't write it off as an unfortunate coincidence as I might have before living through the past ten months. The absolute vitriol and the "he needs to show some humility" crap leveled at the president makes Brooks' examples suspect.
What would David Brooks (and that writer from The Root) have done without Joe Wilson?
I think it was a disservice of both authors to lump Wilson's "You lie" in with Kayne's VMA and Serena's USO moments. First, there's the issue of precedent: there have been plenty of entertainers and athletes of all races who have behaved less than politely in public. Then, there are the different goals and stakes: entertainers are paid to be the center of attention, and athletes are paid to win. Unfortunately, politics has become a game and a farce, so the Joe Wilsons of the world look no different. But the stakes are so much higher when loud mouths use the political realm for the sake of their own egos. No offense to Taylor Swift, but not getting to give your VMA acceptance speech isn't quite the same thing as dying because you don't have access to quality health care.
What exactly is the difference (or distinction) between Brooks' subliminally racist revisionism and Pat Buchanan's overtly racist (only White men died at Normandy) revisionism? As far as I can see, no difference at all.
One practical difference is that people who aren't TNC readers won't see Brook's version and will identify Buchanan's version.
Rereading my own post, I realized it may sound different from what I meant - I think not everyone can recognize Brooks' revisionism and it's great that TNC is there to point it out. I read the article and just went "hmm" because I'm always a bit skeptical of those who are nostalgic for the past (especially because I'm concerned about women's rights), but didn't put my finger on what TNC was able to point out so clearly.
This gauzy, we're-all-in-this-together attitude is the America people ache for when they shout, "I want my country back!" Truthfully, we were never all in this together.
I've been thinking about the issue of race since I watched the last Mad Men episode. It seemed race as a topic was shoehorned into some of the characters' lives. Maybe that's how they felt as well - that the heretofore invisible lives of their cooks, chauffeurs, housekeepers, elevator men, etc were suddenly ramrodded into their consciousness. When you have a god that looks like you, how necessary is it to consider deeply the existence of others? No wonder some people long for those uncomplicated days when they and America were God's favorites.
I blame all this unseemly societal degradation on Beethoven:
History makes fools of us all. Not least among us, those who act as if they were born in the dawn of the world.
@TNC: Perhaps it is too early in the day and that I need to come back and reread this post. For now I will say that you missed the target with this post and totally misread Brooks.
Please show me where Brook so much as implies that our cultural decline is the fault of Kayne West and his ilk?
Brooks said, in part, that tacky, ill-mannered, egomaniacs like Kayne West are a symptom of our narcissistic culture.
I mean, is this point even open for debate?
Does anyone on here really want to defend the behavior of a dumbass like Kayne West? Really?
And yes, props to Beyonce for her self-respect and manners.
Horrible choice of a headline, man. Horrible.
You are smarter and better than this kind of oversimplification.
As a long time TNC reader, I'm going to guess that the headline was sarcasm, a joke like so many others our host has made. As such, I thought it was pretty funny.
Please show me where Brook so much as implies that our cultural decline is the fault of Kayne West and his ilk?
Brooks said, in part, that tacky, ill-mannered, egomaniacs like Kayne West are a symptom of our narcissistic culture.
I mean, is this point even open for debate?
Well, yes. That Kanye is a symptom of our cultural decline I think is very much open to debate, and for as much as you say TNC misread Brooks, it rather seems like you misread TNC here.
Sorry, guess I misplaced a tag there.
Outside of 'Echos of a Crack Age,' you pretty much reject all forms of nostalgia. I love that. And agree with you.
Yeah, I generally reject that too--in a categorical sense. Of course I believe the music was better--it's my music. But I don't think of that as "fact." It just proves I'm human.
Yeah, I generally reject that too--in a categorical sense. Of course I believe the music was better--it's my music. But I don't think of that as "fact." It just proves I'm human.
"When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then."
This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever read.
In 1945, segregation was still legal. Interracial marriage was still illegal in a number of states. Jackie Robinson was still playing in the Negro Leagues. Women, gays, minorities were still second class citizens, if that.
"The West" was engaged in a World War - while individual soldiers may have humility, it takes a great deal of hubris to wage a war of that magnitude. The US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atrocities of the Holocaust were coming to an end. Man's inhumanity to man was on full display.
It seems to me there were a lot of people who thought they were better than others and who had no problem taking actions to codify and reinforce their supposed superiority in ways that ranged from subtle and brutal.
Hmmm, .... what is the sound of one trap clapping?
Apples to oranges, TNC. Brooks is talking about individual self-aggrandizement and you're countering with group conflicts. You're not addressing Brooks' point; you're dodging it.
In the age of blogging, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, reality tv, self-help bestsellers, Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, My Super Sweet 16, etc., I don't see how anyone can seriously argue that our culture isn't more self-obsessed and self-publicizing than it used to be. And I certainly don't see how references to slavery, segregation, and WWII are even relevant.
Well, groups are comprised of individuals, and individuals look to groups to define and bolster their identity. So I'm not sure how you can regard eras of institutionalized racial supremacy as anything but individual self-aggrandizement via the proxy of group politics.
Anaïs Nin comes to mind, if you need some individual exaples. Also Beethoven above.
I'm guessing that this line pissed you off -- "Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then" -- and you read the rest of the piece with that line still stinging. The only way Brooks could be right with that line would be by defining "nobody" and "anybody" as a particular sub-group of white people. And all those examples you cite are direct refutations of that sentiment, for sure. So, point taken.
But let's help Brooks out a bit and specify and narrow the rest of his argument. I see two implicit but unstated qualifiers to his argument based on the words he uses and the examples he gives: "public" and "individual". I think he's objecting to a specific, public form of immodesty, one in which someone proclaims publicly, to anyone within earshot, their terrific awesomeness. Juxtapose this with private immodesty, in which one does immodest things behind closed doors when most people aren't watching. Secondly, I think he's objecting to a specific, individual form of immodesty, one in which a person proclaims their own individual awesomeness. Juxtapose this with immodest claims of someone's particular tribe, group, race, state, nation, whatever.
Anyway, that's the difference I see in the immodesty you describe and the immodesty cited by Brooks: -- Wallace, Wilson, the Confederates, Thurmond and the SC police vs. Mailer, Ali, Jordan, Wilson and West. The former's immodesty pertained to their group or tribe or was hidden from public view, or both; the latter's immodesty was very public and pertained to themselves.
This could be true, but you're basically doing his job for him. That's the job of the writer--to take a complicated situation and render a verdict that respects nuance. When you need commenter to "help out a bit" or offer "implicit unstated qualifiers" you've failed.
I'm debating with the piece as it's written.
Well not only that, but even if you take everything Troy says, you're still left w/ the fact that Brooks' apparent preference is for public immodesty in the form of segregation, etc.
Agree.
It's also the job of the reader not to "read in" his or her own biases and sensitivities and thus misconstrue the author's argument. Due respect, but I think that's what you did here, TNC. I read Brooks' piece and understood exactly what he was saying (i.e. what Troy just laid out). So, I suspect, did most of his readers.
You're just unusually steeped in the history of race-relations in this country, the group-identity critiques of American culture and foreign policy, etc. I suspect that as a result, you missed the point of what was really a pretty banal, curmudgeonly column complaining about showboating and rudeness.
I think you're letting the banality of his point obscure the absurdity of what undergirds it. It's one thing to say that you think Americans today are too cocky and impolite. That's fine--I'd probably agree. It's something quite different, though, to say that Americans of the pre-civil rights era were humble and uniformly discarded any notions of individual superiority. That, frankly, is fucking nuts.
Apologies in advance if my comment shows up a million times. Seem to be server issues today?
TNC, that's fair. I know writers want to avoid being tedious and in print have space limitations, but it's the writer's job to think through which caveats and qualifiers are necessary for precision, and Brooks failed here. But I'm curious to know what you think about my note to R. Dave below.
Matt D., agree with you also. Makes you think about dudes like Chad Ochocinco differently, doesn't it? Like him or not, he's genuinely who he is.
R. Dave, you gotta admit, though, that line about humility and nobody thinking they were better than anybody else is a pretty big miss on Brooks' part. I have to admit, I didn't notice it. Checked it, without really thinking about it too much, against my own experience -- is it true for my grandparents, my wife's grandparents, etc.? Yep, absolutely, that generation is more self-effacing than my own. So I moved on and read the rest of the piece, saw some of the implicit ideas in there, and moved on.
But try reading that line as a black or brown person though. It's self-evidently false for all the people in your family and most of the people you know. Moreover, it's stated like it's obviously true, like it's a given. It's eye opening. I grew up on a farm in a rural area, and can tell you that when urban liberals make statements about the rural Midwest that are both self-evidently false, and worse yet they smugly assert them as some kind of given on their way to making a larger point, it pisses me off like few other things do. I don't give those people the benefit of the doubt in whatever subsequent argument they're making, I can tell you that.
So, that's not willful misreading, it's just one person's experience and another's. It's illustrative of one other thing I'm coming to realize the more time I spend reading this blog: just as I would have never thought about reading that line as a black person, a black person can't read that line as a white person. So Brooks' implicit ideas about the public and the individual may seem obvious to me and to you, but they're honestly not obvious to everyone. They need to be pointed out. And people who don't see that stuff right off are not willfully misreading, any more than you or I are willfully ignoring this country's history of racism by not noticing that a line like "people in this country used to think nobody was better than anybody else" is obviously false. We just honestly missed it.
TNC, that's fair. I know writers want to avoid being tedious and in print have space limitations, but it's the writer's job to think through which caveats and qualifiers are necessary for precision, and Brooks failed here. But I'm curious to know what you think about my note to R. Dave below.
Matt D., agree with you also. Makes you think about dudes like Chad Ochocinco differently, doesn't it? Like him or not, he's genuinely who he is.
R. Dave, you gotta admit, though, that line about humility and nobody thinking they were better than anybody else is a pretty big miss on Brooks' part. I have to admit, I didn't notice it. Checked it, without really thinking about it too much, against my own experience -- is it true for my grandparents, my wife's grandparents, etc.? Yep, absolutely, that generation is more self-effacing than my own. So I moved on and read the rest of the piece, saw some of the implicit ideas in there, and moved on.
But try reading that line as a black or brown person though. It's self-evidently false for all the people in your family and most of the people you know. Moreover, it's stated like it's obviously true, like it's a given. It's eye opening. I grew up on a farm in a rural area, and can tell you that when urban liberals make statements about the rural Midwest that are both self-evidently false, and worse yet they smugly assert them as some kind of given on their way to making a larger point, it pisses me off like few other things do. I don't give those people the benefit of the doubt in whatever subsequent argument they're making, I can tell you that.
So, that's not willful misreading, it's just one person's experience and another's. It's illustrative of one other thing I'm coming to realize the more time I spend reading this blog: just as I would have never thought about reading that line as a black person, a black person can't read that line as a white person. So Brooks' implicit ideas about the public and the individual may seem obvious to me and to you, but they're honestly not obvious to everyone. They need to be pointed out. And people who don't see that stuff right off are not willfully misreading, any more than you or I are willfully ignoring this country's history of racism by not noticing that a line like "people in this country used to think nobody was better than anybody else" is obviously false. We just honestly missed it.
I don't know. I think we ARE more exhibitionist than we used to be, and more receptive to exhibitionism. Chaplin et al. were pretty remarkable, and modern, figures, and they expressed talent at some level. So much of today's celebrity culture doesn't celebrate talent at all -- look at the amount of coverage nonentities like Spencer and Heidi receive. And even the talented are covered not for their talent but for their breaches of public decency. Kanye's outburst (and history of similar outbursts) is the only thing a lot of white people know about the guy; and what gets Britney in the news -- her music, or her shaven-headed histrionics? We have a culture today of standing around gawping while freaks destroy themselves in public.
But maybe that's just familiarity. The celebrities of an earlier American age, your Ben Franklins and Tom Jeffersons, even up to Teddy Roosevelt, were known almost entirely through their (mostly bullshit) public biographies, hagiographies.
When I was a kid in the sixties I was given a lot of "hero" books, books with potted biographies of Great Men and Women From All Walks Of Life, who Overcame The Odds, Worked Hard, and Made Something of Themselves. Many of these were from sports, so I'd read about Vince Lombardi, Babe Didrikson Zaharias (huh?), Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays. Also Amelia Earhart, Will Rogers, Geroge Washington Carver, etc. I think Brooks comes from this same worldview. I'll bet you a million bucks he IDOLIZES Vince Lombardi.
This kind of hero creation goes back at least as far as Washington Irving inventing the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. It's unimaginably cheesy today. But guys like Brooks miss the certainties of a simpler, more dishonest age. And you gotta admit, watching pig-ignorant jackasses like Joe Wilson shout inanities at the President in the Capitol Building, or Kanye West attacking that poor befuddled white girl at the Idiot Music Awards, or whatever whores are drunkenly falling about the Rock of Love bus this week, you can be nostalgic for the olden days a little.
But remember: in the 50s and 60s you had Elizabeth Taylor's marriage-go-round, and Sammy Davis did-he-or-didn't-he with Kim Novak, blah-de-blah-de blah. And going back, Fatty Arbuckle and the Coke bottle. Guys like Brooks never mention Hollywood Babylon.
I think Brooks comes from this same worldview. I'll bet you a million bucks he IDOLIZES Vince Lombardi.
That is the exact vibe I got from reading this article, yearning for the days when coaches would tell their players "when you get into the end zone, act like you've been there before". Very Hank Hill-ish where one worships the Johnny Unitas brush cut rather than the flowing locks of Broadway Joe Namath.
I think Brooks is confusing the way media represents culture, now and then, with what people and culture actually were/are like. I think it can be argued (see the quote below) that a lot of the way Leave It To Beaver and all the "educational films" shown to kids in the 50s were an attempt to fabricate an expectation that society behave that way, rather than coming from a true representation of what most people experienced. I mean, I'd certainly never heard of the "Victory Girls" in all the glowing hagiography of America in WWII...
I also think Brooks is forgetting hubris. For about as long as we've had stories about humans, we've had stories of individual arrogance that lead them into trouble. And it looks like it's still alive and kicking.
Good point. I also think about another thing: the GI bill. As far as I know, post WWI, there was no such deliberate attempt to help returning vets to prosperity. There had been no New Deal that changed the social/economic contract of the country.
My point here, which admittedly is not very historically well-informed, is that perhaps economic prosperity and the birth of a large middle class had a lot do with the 1950s not being like the 1920s, at least, on the face of it, and in our collective memory.
I do recall, though, that the economic boom did not really take off immediately after the war - I'm curious about that particular couple of years. What was public life like before "the Fifties"?
There are a lot of answers to that, of course. You're right that the economic boom didn't occur right away. The mid 1940s saw strikes, debates about price controls, inflation worries, and a general sense of anxiety that the economy would plunge back into the Depression now that the war was over. This anxiety, in turn, created a great deal of fear - not just aimed at African Americans who seemed to be threatening the segregation system but also at anyone who might appear Communist. The Second Red Scare has to be tied to the economy anxiety, as well as the real fears of Soviet expansionism. (There was a Red Scare after WWI, too, which suggests that calling someone Communist is a real popular activity in times of great economic and social upheaval.)
One of my favorite examples of how this anti-Communism impacted speech and civility is the 1950 senate campaign between Nixon and Helen Gahagan Douglas. PBS has an interesting clip about it here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/nixon_05_qt.html#v300. Nixon said that Douglas was pink right down to her underwear ... perhaps not quite the same as calling the president a liar in the halls of Congress but certainly an attack that exploited the fear mongering and "otherness" of running against a woman who was brave enough to recognize the Red Scare for what it was.
"I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust." - Congressman David Crockett
Brooks's conclusion is clear:
Davy Crockett was a gangster rapper.
There is a doctor in the house. That was funny.
But isn't the job of the reader to try to do more than read the literal text? Hopefully one can read between the lines to the intent. I'd argue both you and Brooks write stuff that's it worth grappling with, not just skimming through, as I did with Brooks this morning.
As an old geezer I mostly agreed with Brooks when I read him this morning. Of course that's because he was feeding my prejudices: the "me" generation versus the olden times, you spoiled youngsters versus my generation which walked up hill to school both ways. A nice thing about your posts is they can get one out of the rut of easy agreement.
But going back to Brooks: I don't remember Jack Johnson, but I do remember Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Ingmar Johanson(sp?). When Cassius Clay burst onto the scene he definitely challenged the recent tradition of heavyweight boxer behavior. And Mailer was similar, though Papa Hemingway was not a retiring person.
Remember when people went to a baseball game to watch Jackie Robinson, they wore suits and hats, that was true whether they booed or cheered.
I think that's an interesting comment, but I'm always a bit suspicious of any claim that's along the lines of "the kids today are different from my day." I tend to doubt that human nature changes very much at a basic level even over long periods of time, and even more that it changes significantly in the course of a generation or two. How we express that human nature can change, of course. If you are trying to express your youth and establish your identity as separate from your parents, obviously you can't use the same slang and same fashions as your parents did. But that need to differentiate is always present in each generation. There's also a portion of each generation that wants continuity.
I have a theory that a lot of the perceived differences between generations comes from viewpoint, or a selection effect. When you're in high school, your knowledge of high school students comes from your friends and your school. Later, it comes more from secondary sources such as news stories. The news stories tend to be about the problems or the extremes, while personal experience is more of the norms, of the unexceptional.
Take me for instance. I went to a highly diverse school outside DC. I was part of a magnet program within the school, though, which was far less diverse, and definitely came from wealthier and more educated families than the average. Few of my friends really dated much, let alone got pregnant (well, that any of us knew about, anyway). None of us got into fights or vandalized things. I did hear about other people in the school who had babies, or fights out in the courtyard, but I never saw those things. My high school experience didn't feel like those were issues. But if I were looking at it from the outside, that school would have sounded like a war zone, with people from another school showing up with a gun and ending up shooting the pavement in a parking lot, and two girls leaving class the first day of school to go out fight each other.
Even thinking back now, it sounds like a scary place. But that wasn't my experience of it at all. (Obviously, for some it was, but those people are probably less likely to grow up to be David Brooks, or one example.) In 50 years, I fully expect to feel like 16 year olds are alien monsters. But I also fully expect to be wrong about that in any objective sense.
Okay, that was kind of rambling and highly speculative, but hopefully there was at least something interesting in there, even if you don't agree.
You must know how they greeted Jackie Robinson at those stadiums, no? It's worth researching Jack Johnson. He is the first black heavyweight champ. Ali patterned himself after Johnson.
Not being helpful, but I have to point out that Jack Johnson is the inspiration for Miles Davis' best record.
Just sayin.'
"I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust." - Congressman David Crockett
Brooks's conclusion is clear:
Davy Crockett was a gangster rapper.
Brooks' irony detector seems to be broken w/regards to Mailer and Ali, methinks.
When people argue that the World War II generation was made up of conformists and that the Baby Boomers broke society open and fought racism, it's important to get the chronology right.
The oldest Baby Boomers were born in 1945.
Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954. The oldest Baby Boomers were 9.
Central High School in Little Rock was desegregated (with military assistance) in 1957. The oldest Baby Boomers were 12.
The Freedom Riders started in 1961. The oldest Baby Boomers were 16 and probably not allowed to go.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and the voting rights act in 1965. The oldest Baby Boomers were 19 for the first and 20 for the second. They couldn't even vote yet, because the voting age didn't drop from 21 to 18 until 1971.
It wasn't the Baby Boomers who put the major building blocks for civil rights in place. It was their parents, the World War II generation. That generation did include racists, but it also included the people who waged the most successful war on the racists.
The Baby Boomers were the first to benefit from the world their parents created. That left them to work out a lot of the details, and really a lot of the details haven't been worked out yet. But it's a mistake to think the World War II generation was all the same just because the outfits were kind of uniform. Civil rights was a struggle that took place to a large extent within their generation.
The fact that they let the Boomers grab so much credit for stuff that happened when they (the Boomers) didn't know how to drive yet underscores Brooks' point.
The Wild Adolescent Narcissist thing mostly happened after this phase. The Beatles still wore ties in 1964, and the Vietnam war was just getting underway. The hippie years of the late 60s/early 70s was very different from the years between (roughly) 1955 and 1965. Which is just as well, because I don't think adolescent narcissists would have had the guts to do school desegregation if it required armed guards. Eisenhower had seen a lot worse, though.
The Boomers also sort of pioneered the habit of taking credit for broad social movements and bold pioneers alike, even though what they really did to accomplish these aims was watch TV in the rec room. If I hear one more Boomer go on about how Woodstock changed everything, man, or how "we" ended the Vietnam War, or "we" marched in Selma, when in real life he was firmly focused on The Partridge Family and Space Food Sticks, I believe I might scream. Not that there's anything wrong with The Partridge Family.
Agreed. There's been a long conflation of the later 60s movement with the earlier civil rights movement.
Part of it, of course, gives the largely-white hippies of the later period credit for the hard-won civil rights advances earned by mostly African-American civil rights workers and leaders. (And no, that is not to deny credit to the freedom riders, or to the white activists who went South to register voters or to the white activists who were murdered. It's simply to say that they played a noble role in a movement that was largely led by African-Americans.)
"Part of it, of course, gives the largely-white hippies of the later period credit for the hard-won civil rights advances earned by mostly African-American civil rights workers and leaders."
Where ? Who ? I'm an "early boomer" who participated in the actual civil rights movement circ 1963-64, but I don't know of any histories of that era or common interpretations that credit the hippies as responsible for the civil rights advances - certainly not the "hard won" ones. If anything, the biggest issue is conflating "black power" with the civil rights movement.
Anyone involved in SDS when it meant anything other than trendiness or bullshit will acknowledge the civil rights movement as the inspiration and the model for activism. Nobody would claim that the white kids of the '60s were anything other than participants early on - certainly not leaders. But the group who brought that experience back to campuses were very influential (see Mario Savio and Tom Hayden among others, including young women who were influential in the earliest stages of regenerating the feminist movement.)
The hippies were a parallel phenomenon to the Panthers, etc. and while quite different, there's more of that late-60s self-indulgence and pop apocalypse shared by the hard-core hippies who engaged in politics and the black power generation than anything having to do with the mainstream civil rights movement that achieved the mid-decade legislative gains. For good or ill, the focus seemed to shift to culture and identity by '67.
The thing that distinguishes the "hippy" generation from their parents generation regarding race was that they - however superficially - embraced black icons of civil rights and popular culture with more openness and enthusiasm than was common among whites of previous eras. These are all over-generalizations, but I think the supposed generalizations I read in the comments directly above are largely straw men.
I agree that histories of the era most always give the credit to people other than hippies. But I have seen more than a few intergenerational spats (especially ones involving Woodstock) in which the hippie demographic has claimed undue credit for civil rights.
Yes, I should have clarified. Of course, no respectable historian makes any such claim, although people using shorthand phrases for "the Sixties" often implicitly.
I'm talking about folk history. I know lots of people who make that thoughtless equivalence, especially when the conflation serves their self-regard. I'm glad if you don't have the experience of hearing that, but in my experience it's pervasive and well-rooted.
And the conflation happens a lot in pop histories from the right, which are of course hostile to both the Civil Rights Movement and the hippy movement, and want to use each to discredit the other. (Someone like Jonah Goldberg, who can't distinguish between Mussolini and Eleanor Roosevelt, also happily lumps people like John Lewis with people like Abbie Hoffman.)
And obviously, I'm not talking about you, brucds, or any other activists from 1964-65, which was before the full hippy, um, flowering. And when you say that you and your peers were inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, I am really, really not talking about you. Looking to those leaders as predecessors and inspirations means understanding your historical relationship to them. It's the self-mythologizing Woodstock cult, that hazily imagines itself as Part of the Struggle and awards itself credit as a full partner in earlier gains, that I find objectionable.
So you're talking about "folk history" and "inter-generational spats" - but of course I could come up with a bunch of versions of same. I don't really understand what this addresses, other than inchoate resentments and what amount to misunderstandings at the margins. Maybe we're talking about the way some "sixties" retrospective on MTV or VH1 conflates things that were happening in the same decade. That's about all I could see in this.
I wasn't just talking about activists in my longer post. I was talking about the people in Congress who drafted legislation, the judges who decided cases, and the executives charged with enforcing the new laws. Some of them were galloping racists and fought ridiculous last stands. But some employed the police, the National Guard, and the power of other major institutions on the side of equality. It was a mixed bag -- a battle WITHIN the World War II generation to see how the country would cope with the changes that were occurring.
The middle aged black people who led the civil rights movement were, of course, as much a part of the World War II generation as anyone else.
The Boomers weren't really society's top grown-ups until the early 90s. They were coming up through the ranks, and of course they participated in things along the way, but they were still the young adults (read subordinates) in the 80s.
But they were still the first to live with the new rules and take them as the norm. It's no accident that the first black president is a Boomer.
I think it's also important to look at other social changes from roughly 1900 to 1950. That's when the country started to move en masse from horses, corsets, agricultural labor, and minimal information flow to the age of cars, modern dress, industrial and service work, and the mass media. The 60s (early or late) wouldn't have happened without those changes.
I think the first part of this simplifies things. Martin Luther King was 26 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. He was only 39 when he died. By the most generous definitions of middle-age, he may have been that when he died. Joe Lowery was 34, Fred Shuttlesworth was 33. Abernathy was 29. John Lewis was 23, at the March on Washington, by which time he was a vet. There are also the schoolchildren who faced the police during the marches.
This isn't to take away from your broader point, which I think is helpful and actually surprised me. I just don't think it's necessary to swing to the other extreme.
The entirety of the "sixties" started fairly aggressively in the fifties - even a bit the late forties. That's obvious across the spectrum - ranging from the confrontational public demonstrations and boycotts of the civil rights movement, as well as anti-nuclear demos in the "protest" political sphere, to the "beats" in literature, and the black crossover and R&B-inspired "rock and roll" in popular culture, the "Brando/Dean" method thing in acting icons, and off-beat directors like Nick Ray. Even "Playboy" if you want to reach to the semi-ridiculous that was remarkably influential in shifting attitudes. The first "Freedom Ride" - although it wasn't called that, but was exactly the same in intent and outcome (jail terms and beatings for the inter-racial group who had the guts to pull it off) was in 1947.
Interesting point about how young some civil rights leaders were. Maybe it's the suits that make them look older in pictures. MLK was born in 1929, though, according to Wikipedia. Too young to fight in World War II, but still no Boomer. He's my father's generation, then, the so-called Silent Generation. The parents of Generation X, the way the World War II generation is the parents of the Boomers.
Sometimes even those of us who belong to the small generations in between the big waves forget that the big waves aren't the whole story.
But sometimes I do think that having Silent Generation parents, who were perfectly capable of listening to Janis Joplin while wearing conservative clothes, is part of why I'm always trying to split the difference when people try to assign other people to polarizing stereotypes.
One last comment -- did a little more looking into the Silent Generation, and it seems that members include (in addition to Martin Luther King, John McCain, and Nancy Pelosi):
The Beatles, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the Beach Boys. The Boomers were teenagers practicing guitar licks in their bedrooms while these people were on concert tours.
Not so silent, really.
Oddly enough, the parents of the Silent Generation were called the Lost Generation on account of disillusionment related to World War I. Lost, to Silent, to X. Maybe we should focus more on these in-between groups. The whole World War II-Boomer rivalry can get a bit dull.
The economically dominant culture has ALWAYS appropriated its style, fashion, and cultural trends from black culture. Because it is culturally "different" the appropriated behavior is always initially perceived as taboo. The outsider/taboo characterization of the behavior IS what drives the impetus to adopt the signals of the behavior, although not necessarily the actual behavior (can't REALLY be a gangster at New Trier High, now can we?). From Ragtime, to Blues, to Jazz, to Rock and Roll, to Rap, flying these flags has been a signal of cutting edge cool for white people. Black styles of dress and speech have moved inexorably into the mainstrean as some style artifact becomes identified with outlaw sensibilities, and as adoption proceeds, it difuses its energy into some a predictable flow toward daring to trendy, to hip, to cliche'.
Brooks implicit association of the style of the immodest with black culture is correct, but it is the disortion through the prism of the dominant culture that makes it distasteful to him. He looks at the influence of his own and does not like what he sees
Brooks doesn't understand the difference between history and nostalgia - which given his educational credentials is remarkably myopic.
Or perhaps he's just a douchebag.
What can one truly say about the modesty of a nation of people who have envisioned the wholesale looting of a continent as Manifest Destiny. Not just destiny mind you, manifest destiny.
How about the modesty of the idea that America is the world's shining city on a hill--that our way of life is better than everybody else's and that we have an exceptionalism that pardons us from international law in all circumstance?
What can one say about the public civility of the Greatest Generation's House Unamerican Activity Committee?
It's true that in order to pass, everyone must play the mild mannered Clark Kent, but our secret desire goes to the vigilante with super powers and the audacity to do it in blue tights with red jocky shorts and cape, not to mention that big S emblazoned across the chest. When has America ever been modest? What is it about America that is modest; the whole idea of this nation is that somehow we can transcend our histories.
Modesty, that must have been why Mr. Brooks so heartily embraced the invasion of Iraq, even if there was the sticky matter of the principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials.
Ah...Joe Wilson--does anyone think that the sour look on the faces of the more modest Republicans which had the expression of men smelling a dead skunk in the roadway communicated anything different--or just less foolish. Kanye West--I don't mean to say anything, but who really gives a s***? Stupid is as stupid does. Frank Sinatra wasn't all that modest either.
It's a Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck world, all a John McCain campaign. Prince Fielder--ashes, ashes, all fall down. The Babe never called his shots. Ty Cobb was a saint. This land is my land, this land is your land--socialist poppycock, eh? The immodesty of Woody Guthrie.
What he said.
Ah...Joe Wilson--does anyone think that the sour look on the faces of the more modest Republicans which had the expression of men smelling a dead skunk in the roadway communicated anything different--or just less foolish
what was not said/done got me more than you lie
Ty Cobb was DEMENTED. An absolute raving, gun-waving nutcase who lived in a state of permanent debilitating rage. He jumped into the stands once and beat up a disabled fan who had called him a n****r. He routinely fought with -- FISTfought with -- opponents, teammates, and umpires. And he once stabbed a black nightwatchman who intervened in a beating he was administering to a black elevator operator. Seriously, he was just about the nastiest SOB who ever lived. When he went into the hospital to die he had a paper bag with a million dollars cash and a pistol in it. A FREAK. Al Stump's book "Cobb: A Biography" is a fascinating, repulsive read.
Babe Ruth was a bit of freak himself, though not anything like as evil. My favorite Ruth story: entering a hotel room full of bar girls, prostitutes and other hangers-on, he announced "anybody who doesn't wanna f***, get out". I didn't get that from one of my childhood hagiographies!
But man, at least they could play ball. What exactly is it that the Kardashians do for a living? Give dumb looks?
This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
Nice try, Brooks defenders, but this bit invalidates the arguments that he's talking about individual displays of (im)modesty.
Can I just say that I love the comments almost as much as I love the post? Revisionist history makes me gassy, and it's great that people are ripping his BS apart.
Jesus. Thank you. I'm sick of hearing about the "greatest generation" as blameless and archetypal of American society. This is kind of why "Mad Men" is so great - if you really pay attention, it's really crapping all over that image.
Well that didn't take long. This new joke is hitting the internets fast and furious: Kanye West just interrupted Patrick Swayze's funeral to let everyone know Michael Jackson's death was better.
It's tempting to look at the past and see what we want to see. David Brooks looks back and sees humility, TNC looks back and sees hubris. I don't know to what extent we can do either, but looking at this topic personally I'm reminded that we remember, or in the case of history we did not live through we edit and select, what fits the identity we have shaped for us.
There's no reason that both can't be true. I don't remember ever reading any iron law of history that says that individual humility can't coexist with great pride in one's group or one's organization. The past that Brooks chooses to reconstruct, and the past that TNC chooses to reoncstruct are different. The people David Brooks is writing about are mostly dead in 2009. My father is 62, and it was his father who fits the profile of the type of person David Brooks is describing. Fortunately for David Brooks My Grandfather is dead, and the rest of his generation are rapidly dying. In his lectures on the civil war, which in my opinion everone who reads this blog is required to watch, David Blight quotes Emerson saying that "We remember at the extremes." Whether the reconstructed rememberence of David Brooks contains a kernal of truth is beyond me, but I suspect that in a sense it does. Brooks when he looks for figures to embody the virtues that he believes were represented by my grandfather's generation picks two very telling examples Dwight D. Eisenhower and George C. Marshall.
Everyone knows who Eisenhower is, Marshall not so much. George Marshall is worth a look, and to those who are interested, of all the public figures of the 20th Century I would put up Sam Rayburn and George Marshall as the most honest. Unfortunately I'm exhausted nad don't have the books present I need to reference these two individuals so any help would be apreciated. Eisenhower, was also renowned for his personal honesty, but Eisenhower probably best embodies the paradox between private and public morality. It was Esenhower who said that:
After all Eisenhower and the rest of the people mentioned by David Brooks had grown up in a society that was, in the north de facto, and in the south de jure, segregated. People of talent were in the main, and I'm generalizing hugely, forced to make a life for themselves, not on the national stage but within their communities. Each big city had it's political machine. Al Smith had lost the Election in 1928 because he was a catholic. This idea seems almost inconcievable today yet today in 2009 we have only had one Catholic President.
Digressions about Al Smith and Kennedy aside, I think it's Eisenhower, not Strom Thurmond, who best represents what David Brooks and TNC were arguing about. On the one hand we have a person who for all of his commanding presence, in all probability --and I'm no scholar-- encountered eitehr a woman or a person of color in a leadership position in his life. Colin Powell could only come after Harry S. Truman integrated the armed forces. However, for all of his southern sympathy, it was Eisenhower who sent federal bayonets down south to force school integration. Eisenhower was no saint on the matter of race relations in American History as the above quote shows, but neither was he a James O. Eastland who said that:
I think in looking back at the past one sides sees the personal honesty of some, --by no means all, and certainly this does not apply to even a majority all the time depending on where or when a person looks-- public officials and one is tempted to equate a personal honesty with a public morality. The two are not the same, nowhere is it written that just because a person is honest, or humble that they can't do bad things.
David Brooks has a point, but as usual so does TNC, and the rightness of one does not necessarily exlude the other. The same generation which Tom Brockaw saw as "the greatest generation" was the same generation that perpetuated evils on members of society soley because of the color of their skin. The Issei and the Neisei interned, and among the Neisei forced to fight in the 442nd speak to the evils of the day. However with all of that evil the 442nd was the most highly decorated unit in World War Two. I wish I could have been there to see the day that someone told, that racist bastard, Jimmy Eastland about the 442nd, or even better the Tuskegee Airmen.
In the final analysis, we can choose what we wish to remember. Christ what exatly is history except a artificialy-created memory written down on a peice of paper? The of any person, who reads and thinks enough to have a credible opinion is to find out what part of the recolection is worthwhile and what part of the recolection is bunk. Surely if we look at our past as the common property of everyone we have to claim it all. As Americans we have a common heritage, and indeed a common history not just with our heroes, but also with our villains, and everyone in between.
In my mind, the american paradox begins and ends with our two founding documents. In our declaration of independence, we said that all men were created equal, but in our constitution we gave slavery the force of law and said that many of our best men were only 3/5ths people. We have been trying to bridge this gap for a long time, and yet we are still, and probably always will be at a place where our ideals and our practices fail to mesh completely. We have come father than we were in 1960, or in 1945 which was what David Brooks was looking back at throught the gogles of 2009. Indeed we have read things into our founding documents that would have been unthinkable in either 1776 or 1789 when the bloody things were written down. However we still have a long way to go. It's very tempting to look back and see the heroes of a previous age. George C. Marshal, or for that Matter Harry Truman, or Hubert Humphrey should serve as inspirations to all of us. However, the Strom Thurmonds, Jimmy Eastlands, and George Wallaces should serve as a warning also. We as people are capable of both great kindness and great wrong. I don't exactly know where the fight currently lies between David Brooks and TNC, but I would say that with regards to the present article David Brooks chose to look back and see the mountaintop, for TNC on the other hand the time that David Brooks describes came right in the middle of a vale of suffering.
Sorn have you read War & Peace? I've pushed this on TN too much, but it is an extremely comforting, great work about the nature of history.
Sorn, I think you're oversimplifying the division and essentially agreeing with TNC. Brooks is the one who's homogenizing history, boiling it down to its most noble, ultimately guilty of the very human crime of nostalgia. TNC is, I think, saying: "Wait. That's only part of the story." I think you're saying that too.
The past wasn't necessarily great, nor was it necessarily worse. It's just the past. Understanding this, of course, then has immense implications for how we understand the present.
Yeah, basically. It's just the past. I wouldn't, for instance, write a piece about how America's history stands out, among nations, for its overwhelming arrogance. It's a country. Run by human beings. Sometimes their arrogant. Sometimes they aren't. I simply detest the "We were so noble" argument, as well as the "They were so evil" argument. Man is an animal.
My Bad,
I was extremely tired when I wrote that. I know TNC usually dislikes the villian as much as he dislike's the hero. I remember the "Nathan Bedford Forest has the Coldest Eyes I've ever Seen" post which was a masterful example of Mr. C's worldveiw.
On the other side of things though, it did seem to me when I was writing that with regards to this post and specifically with regards to the view put forward by David Brooks, that in pointing out the falures of Brook's Nostalgia that the emphasis was too much on the Strom Thurmond character types, without a corresponding emphasis on the possible reasons, or even specifically the examples chosen by Brooks as representative of the values he was talking about. Brooks chose 3 very specific embodiments of the character type he believes demonstrates the values of my grandparents. They were Gregory Peck, Eisenhower, and George C. Marshall. Tellingly TNC chooses Strom Thurmond and Isaac Woodward, Isaac Woodward whose story, i believe, was one of those that caused Truman to integrate the Armed Forces.
Now I may be wrong, but I think that Woodward and TNC are/were telling two different stories because of their respective identities. This means no disrespect to either party, but I'm still unsure about where the argument lies. It seemed to me to be a classic case of two people arguing over something but using different definitions, and as a result arriving at different conclusions.
I still may be entirely wrong, but last night that was the impression I recieved when I read through both posts. I've been reading this blog so long sometimes I unconsiously see things that may not be there, so I apreciate it when people tell me I'm wrong.
Apologies,
Memory plays tricks on a person the post was "history throught the veil," and the quote was:
sorry it's been a long month and it's about to get much longer.
well-said.
I read this post earlier in the day and have held off commenting until just now. Perhaps this means that my response will be missed, but so be it. Here are a few thoughts that I have:
First, if you are a white dude, don't try to "relate" to black people or the black experience. This isn't the usual cliche, but I actually do have black friends even living in a super-duper white majority area.
There was a time when in social situations I would dwell on "black issues" as a way to..hell, I don't know.."relate." It was overcompensation on my part to show that I was one of the "good ones," and it didn't last long. I run with a pretty open and honest group of friends (of all races) and was quickly set straight. We still discuss racial issues, but I no longer feel behooved to try and act like I somehow.."relate."
Second, the United States as a country has never been humble. Quite the contrary. Hubris, not humility, is generally the rule. See Manifest Destiny, greatest health care system in the world bragging, use of military strength as our primary leverage, obscene displays of wealth, etc, etc, etc...
Finally, Brooks seems to be caught up in the whole "greatest generation" delusion. Much of the current conservative movement buys into this bullshit.
They like to pretend that in the 40s and 50s there were no gays, that the blacks were happy and content, that abortions or pre-marital sex and teenage pregnancy never happened. It was all 57 Chevys and drive-in movies and burgers at the malt shop.
This is all pure fiction. All of these issues were present then, they were just covered up or (literally) beaten into the background.
My late grandmother's first husband used to get drunk and beat the shit out of her on a regular basis until he was thankfully killed in WWII. Were the police ever called? Of course not.
My Dad's father wept openly the night Obama was elected. He was a truck driver after WWII. So were some of the same guys he served with. Yet after the war the black veterans had to eat in the back of the truck stop while the whites ate at the counter. Grandpa always ate in the back as well.
Brooks, like many of his ilk (at least as expressed in this article), wants to go back to before the 60s, when all of these issues were ignored or swept under the rug.
Well, I don't. If this country can't accept a black president or a gay couple living next door or a woman having rights to her own body, then maybe we ain't so fucking great after all.
Any attempt to look to the past as utopia is doomed to failure, because humanity is sinful and imperfect. You can't point to one society that didn't have some glaring collective sin. Brooks can obviously be called out on glossing over the sins of past generations. But I think he does have an excellent point about our own society's self-addiction and self-obsession. Michael Jordan's hall of fame speech is a perfect example. Dude was good at putting a ball through a hoop and acts like he's a god on earth. I love MJ, but a little perspective and humility would be nice. What does it say about a society where athletes and untalented pop singers can have multiple palatial estates while DSS workers struggle to pay the bills every month? I think one of Obama's greatest hurdles is to try to remind this country of a sense of interconnectedness and our obligations to one another. I know that sounds corny, but we do live in a hyperworld where we are driven more and more into ourselves and away from communal unity and interaction.
TNC, you are by far sky rocketing to the top of my favorite writers...that was a tour de force column. If you're ever in Philly I'd love to share a beer and thoughts...
Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else
Independent of history, I find this a strange definition of humility. "Nobody is that much more significant than anybody else", okay, sure, that could sort of work, or even "nobody is particularly unusual", but nobody is that different? To think that everyone is like me seems like its own kind of arrogance.
I'd missed that rhetorical trick before. Yeah, that's not my definition of humility at all. "No one is better than anyone else," maybe, though that's not quite right either.
Yeah, some of my humblest moments are encountering people who are way better than I am.
Perhaps the weirdness is that he's stated it in a universalized form--instead of a statement about my own smallness relative to the universe like "I'm not that unique" or "I'm not better than anybody else", he's turned it into a statement of everyone's smallness relative to everyone, which doesn't quite work.
I am not sure that all of Coates examples really turn on modesty. It is certainly possible to politely and modestly do all kinds of vile behavior.
But Brooks column really was embarassing. Even within the column someone notes that the feature that he is pointing to about 1945 did not hold a couple of years earlier. To take a notably atypical year as indicative of the previous history of the country is just bad reasoning.
PT Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth goes back before 1945. This country expanded on Manifest Destiny and has a western tradition based pretty much entirely on individuals bragging about their won accomplishments. Travelling shows and travelling preachers all proclaimed themselves the greatest.
There was a lot of humility, of the sort that Brooks is praising, in the month following 9/11. An equally bad 20 something perspective column could be written about how we have become more humble and comparing that post 9/11 time with some of the open arrogance of the past.
Of course I have left out the racial angle, and maybe that makes it worse. But one does not need the racial angle to recognize what a poor column it was. Although maybe that supports the racial angle since why would Brooks write such an embarassing column if he was not skirting something.