Archive for January, 2010

John Edwards starring as Norman Desmond

Published January 31, 2010 Life and Culture , Politics , Single Women 3 Comments
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It would be rude of me to ask if you have ever seen a sex tape, and ruder still I suppose to inquire as to your possible starring role in one. As I spinster I can assure you that my theatrical inclinations are limited to pretending I am interested in the lives of my friends’ children, but if attending a screening of Debbie Does Dallas counts as watching a sex tape, then I guess I have. I understand that what one or more consenting adults do in the privacy of his/her/their bedroom is his/her/their business, and if the inclination is to memorialize the activity electronically, whether for future reference or as means of sending Uncle Jonas into cardiac arrest for early collection on an inheritance, so be it. But let’s be honest, you and I are but faces in the crowd, and it’s highly unlikely that no one save a few intimates is going to be much interested in our celluloid escapades.

But not everybody who opens up for the camera is a private citizen, and the public’s need to know about the lives of the rich and famous pretty much demands that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee use the subtle angle of a ceiling-mounted video cam to give us the skinny on those parts of their bodies that are not tattooed and those unconventional parts that are. Sometimes, of course, a fledging actress such as Paris Hilton, she of the life-like appearance in such gems as House of Wax and the Hottie and the Nottie, needs to give her career a goose. A release of an independently produced cinema verite in which the depths of her capacities are plumbed could be just the thang.

Between the worlds of the hoi polloi and the Hollywood bottom feeders, though, is the middle ground of people who are in the news because they are newsmakers or because their fifteen minutes are ticking. In the latter instance I think of Carrie Prejean, who’s so 2009 that I probably need to remind you who she used to be: the Miss California contestant who briefly became the poster girl for what she called “opposite marriage.” Her career as a spokes model came to a premature end, though, when the poster turned out to be of the centerfold variety, and an iPhone app of her making her own fun became available. Presumably Miss Prejean is back in her aptly named hometown of El Cajon, where one supposes she is even unto this day licking her…wounds.

But the blockbuster sex tape has got to be the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction one of the ambulance-chasing shyster turned one-term senator turned serially unsuccessful presidential candidate John Edwards and his extramarital cupcake Rielle Hunter. As cupcakes go, Miss Hunter is in a class by herself, and I mean than as a compliment. She’s stayed out the public eye, and she doesn’t appear to have a book deal in the offing. Edwards himself though is a different kettle of fish. I’d always suspected that his perfect coif was a substitute codpiece, and now that we’re pretty sure his extra-conjugal congress has been recorded for posterity—if the National Enquirer says so, it must be true—I am feeling rather smug that my suspicions have been confirmed.

You know, I can almost understand why a Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, or even a Carrie Prejean would engage in a little boudoir porn. It kinda fits their bleachy blond beach bod personae, and in the sorry world of popular culture it probably is a good career move. But for an over-the-hill adulterer who aspires to public office to yell “Action!” before jumping into the sack? He may have proven that he doesn’t shoot blanks, but he surely shot himself in the foot.

Before I began writing this post I asked myself, “what is left to say about John Edwards?” Six hundred and forty-seven words later I have my answer: nothing.

The State of the Union Address

Published January 27, 2010 Politics 1 Comment
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The first thing I noticed about the State of the Union Address was that VP Biden and Speaker Pelosi coordinated their outfits—he resplendent a purple and lavender striped tie, she in a shapely lavender suit. Presumably their choice of color, a blend of blue and red, was a sartorial homage to bipartisanship. The President wore the hackneyed albeit obligatory power-red tie, a defiant display of his famous postpartisanship, I suppose. The next thing I noticed was that the Speaker must be getting a bit forgetful: she sported the same false eyelashes that had her blinking the Morse code behind President Bush at last year’s State of the Union Address. There she was, once again sending cryptic ocular messages via her flashing corneas.

It was only after that that I noticed what the President was saying…bailout…root canal…recovery…jobs bill. Yawn. Thirty billion for small business loans…small business tax credit for raises and new hires…eliminate capital gains for small business. Those ideas perked me up. But those earning over $250 K will not have tax cuts. When, later in the address the president said this, my perkiness deflated: increasing taxes on small business owners grossing over a quarter of a million will offset and more whatever incentives he offered them at the outset of his speech.

Back to the soporific: building “the infrastructure of tomorrow” and “clean energy projects”… “awful last decade of speculation”…American innovation. Nuclear power and off-shore drilling. Huh? That sounds good. But apparently those good ideas will be held hostage to the Senate’s passing cap-and-trade legislation. Fund education; reform health care; control the deficit, which was caused by the profligacy of “the last eight years.” Bad, bad “last eight years.” But, the president lectured, we must be “bi-partisan” because “what frustrates Americans is that every day is election day”: one wonders if the President includes himself in that admonishment to both parties.

It was not until one hour into his address that the President mentioned “protecting America” (as opposed to “defending America,” interesting choice of terms). To his credit, he used the words “terrorist” and “Al Qaeda,” although he spoiled the effect somewhat by adding that “we captured or killed more terrorists this past year than all of 2008.” Does the President not understand that snide cracks such as this give the lie to his claims of wanting to dampen the flames of rancorous partisanship? Does he understand that when he completed the approximately three minutes he devoted to the “protection” of America and shifted to other foreign policy issues such as continuing to fight the spread of AIDS, he missed a wonderful opportunity to tip his hat to the “last eight years” by acknowledging the tremendous funding the Republican administration directed toward the scourge of AIDS in Africa?

The President’s first State of the Union Address was marginally better than I thought it would be. President Obama kept his condescending tone to a minimum, though it did break through now and again. And he did say some things that, upon first hearing, I did not disagree with. But in the end, I still had an answer to the “one simple question” he posed at the beginning of the speech. “How long,” the President asked, “should America put its future on hold?” It is a simple question, so simple even I can answer it: until January, 2013.

One Year Later He’s President Misunderstood

Published January 23, 2010 Higher Education , Politics 1 Comment
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In the fall of 2008 Robin D. G. Kelley, professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, delivered a lecture entitled “Confronting Obama: A Primer on Race and Empire for the New U.S. President.” Professor Kelley’s audience was large and sympathetic: undergraduates, fellow professors, and retired academics in the main. I was there too.

Kelley began his talk bowing and scraping to memory the deceased rabble-rousing intellectual gadfly for whom the overall lecture series was named, a genuflection required of all speakers in the series. His audience endured the ritual politely, but was clearly impatient to get to the good stuff. Their impatience was rewarded.

For over an hour Kelley held forth, his congregation raptly attentive. His every mention of Obama’s name was responded to by huzzahs. His caution not to take for granted the election of candidate Obama was followed up by the chant so dear to the professoriate and its acolytes: “Racism! Classism! Sexism!”

Toward the end of the sermon, as I was enjoying the usual somnolent effect the lefty doxology has on me, I was jolted into full attentiveness by Kelley’s startling conclusion that candidate Obama would say what he needed to say in order to secure election, but that we, the savvy intelligentsia, could easily interpret the campaign code of centrist rhetoric and parse the radical mysteries beneath it. I was stunned. And believe me, having spent as many years as I have in the belly of the academic beast, there is little in the way of leftist glossolalia that can shock me. Kelley’s speech did, and my hat’s off to the man.

What I found so hard to believe was not only the open admission from a supporter that Obama was working hard to deceive voters into thinking that he was something he was not, but that a room full of purportedly intelligent, ethical people were cheering on the deception. What I did not find so hard to believe was the communion of speaker and listeners, united in their smug assessment of their superior intellect and their contempt for the American voter. That much was business as usual. Kelley’s extraordinary if unflattering honesty about Obama was not.

So here we are a little more than a year later, one-quarter of the way through what has all the makings of a failed presidency. Unemployment is sky-high; economists are nervous about a double-dip recession; our staunchest ally has just raised its terror alert; and our president has done little more than lecture citizens on their shortcomings. Like a common scold, Obama has lectured us on everything from where to set our thermostats to our inability to evaluate evidence before jumping to conclusions to our choices for the evening news.

The president, of course, doesn’t see things in quite the same way. Like Kelley, he believes that Americans are a little slow on the uptake and need his guidance. Consider his conversation this week with George Stephanopoulis. Says the president, using the pronoun royal, “we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here [Stephanopoulis’s interruption omitted] that people will get it.” In other words, the American people are even dumber than he thought during his campaign: they don’t “get it.” Time to trot out the “core values” rhetoric that Kelley so shrewdly identified as bait-and-switch.

Of course the president goes on to explain to Stephanopoulis why we don’t “get it.” Our judgment has been clouded by the white-hot rage we continue to feel about George Bush. We lack the rationality to appreciate Obama’s tinkering with “this provision” or “that law” because we “are angry, and…frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

A positive take-away at last. Bush and Obama are indistinguishable. This must mean we are finally judging our presidents by the content of their character and not by the color of their politics.

Did She Leave the Campaign in a Huff?

Published January 21, 2010 Life and Culture , Politics 3 Comments
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One overlooked aspect of Scott Brown’s campaign strategy is the absence of his wife—Gail Huff, a general assignment reporter for Boston’s WCVB-TV, an ABC affiliate—on the campaign trail. While the primary motivation may have been avoiding potential conflicts of interest arising from her job, the fact that Brown did not use the little woman as a campaign prop is refreshing and I hope trend-setting. Voters after all elect the candidate, not the spouse. Elections are not two-for-one specials.

Wives play a weirdly distorted role in their husband’s political careers. More so, I think, than the husbands of female candidates, the obvious exception duly noted. Voters, we are led to believe, obsess about the political wife’s wardrobe, how she wears her hair, her favorite recipes, her intelligence vis-a-vis the candidate’s. The foregoing might be interesting, but important? Relevant? I don’t think so. I suppose for a candidate with little or no platform, or whose grasp of the issues is flaccid, the distraction of a burning home fire might be a welcome one, but for the most part I think the attention paid to a candidate’s wife is diversionary as well as a vestige of pre-feminist, sexist reportage. The truth is voters don’t care—as evidenced by Brown’s decisive win despite his wife’s disappearing act—about the height of the heels a candidate’s wife wears, or the color of her latest nail varnish, even though we are routinely treated to these breaking developments as if they were substantive to the election.

On the other hand, the trouble a candidate’s wife’s words can conjure for her husband is the stuff a reporter’s dreams are made of, even though these gaffes reveal nothing about the candidate’s ability to govern or legislate. A few samples to refresh your memory:

Nancy “I Have a Little Gun” Reagan
Barbara “It Rhymes with Witch” Bush
Teresa “Now Shove It” Kerry
Michelle “[America is] Just Downright Mean” Obama

Indeed, sometimes Candidate A’s wife is an asset to Candidate B’s campaign. Did anybody, besides Teresa, think, for example, that Ms. Heinz-Kerry’s pronoucements were helping her husband’s dismal campaign? Even though some of her statements, I confess, were unforgettable, as when she confided to People magazine in an election-year interview that the husband prior to Senator Kerry was “the love of my life.”

Brown’s run ought to have political strategists re-evaluating the merits of a wife’s role in a husband’s campaign. The voters of Massachusetts were not afforded the opportunity to be distracted by Gail Huff’s wardrobe; the voters of Massachusetts did not have their attention on the candidate derailed by ambush stories on a slip of the tongue Huff might (or might not) have made. I say “Bravo/Brava” to Brown/Huff, for bringing campaigning into the 21st Century by respecting Huff’s right to be her own person and by respecting the voter’s right to focus on the person actually running for office.

Surf’s Up!

Published January 19, 2010 Politics 5 Comments
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AP is reporting that Scott Brown (R) has defeated Martha Coakley (D) in the special election to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. Brown’s unofficial margin of victory–52% to 47%–is more than respectable, and while Coakley had a predictably strong showing in Boston, Cambridge and their upscale neighbors to the west and south, Brown had a broader appeal, winning easily in communities as disparate as tony Andover and working-class Chicopee.

As a citizen of the Commonwealth whose vote in the last presidential election was washed away by the tsunami of change that Obama rode into office, I am delighted that the ornery, contrarian nature of the Massachusetts electorate has sent a wave of another kind, a shock wave, through the corridors of power. Yes, for the last few weeks it’s been clear the tide was turning in Brown’s favor, but to see a Republican elected to something other than the office of governor is as refreshing as it is astonishing.

Even now I imagine the pundits and spinmeisters are opining about the “Massachusetts referendum” on health care, are placing their bets on the upcoming mid-term elections, and are asking what all of this means for the president’s ability to move his agenda. Good for them. But for now I will simply savor the moment: neither the dimming star power of the Kennedys, nor the eleventh-hour invective of President Obama, nor the slimy tactics of the Coakley campaign could overcome the common sense of voters who turned out in droves.

As Mr. Brown heads to Washington, I offer him my best wishes and support. Oh, and one more thing: Blame me! I’m from Massachusetts!

Vote for Scott Brown

Published January 16, 2010 Higher Education , Politics 4 Comments
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A number of years ago a fight erupted on Beacon Hill, the seat of all Massachusetts politics. The brawl was between Governor Michael Dukakis (D) and the entire bicameral legislature, led in the House by Speaker George Keverian (D). Although fisticuffs did not ensue, in the mature manner which the art of politics is practiced in the Commonwealth, the Speaker stopped speaking to the Governor. What the fight was about was of little consequence—the Governor objected to the legislature’s engineering the appointment of a bird-brained former State Senator (D) to a highly paid administrative position within the bureaucracy of the public system of higher education (essentially, business as usual in the Bay State)—but its aftermath was one of revenge and recrimination. “You might forget,” said Speaker Keverian to a local television reporter in reference to the political death match in which he and the governor were embroiled, “And you might forget,” the Speaker continued, fixing his chilly dark-eyed stare on another member of the press, “But I won’t forget.”

During that same decade, Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger (D) made an example of an upstart state senator from the hinterland of Springfield, a mid-sized city in what the folks on the Hill refer to as “the western part of the State,” the frontier land that extends from Route 128 to the New York border. Senator Alan Sisitsky (D) had all the makings of an up-and-comer: young, brash, liberal and intelligent, he nevertheless lacked the street smarts not to go head to head with Bulger. Shortly after Bulger took Sisitsky’s office away from him—Sisitsky’s desk was moved into a hall of the State House—Bulger verbally assaulted the junior senator so viciously that the young man flipped out on the senate floor and was carted off for a good long rest. He never returned to Beacon Hill.

So, with the special election for US Senator entering its critical final phase, it seemed a good time to look back on the ways in which Massachusetts Democrats turn on each other when the going gets tough: they have long memories for slights real and imagined, and they have no qualms at all about eating their young. But most of all, they scorn losers. Such is the party that spawned candidate Martha Coakley (D). Should she lose on Tuesday (hope for the best, I always say), my advice to her is get out of town, fast. She’ll return to her job as Attorney General, finish out her term, then retire quietly from elective politics. Oh, she’ll likely find a sinecure at one of the dozen or so “institutes” on one of the state university campuses, where she’ll teach one course a year on law enforcement or women in politics, and the campus will proudly tout her occasional appearance on campus as a real coup in their bid for academic respectability and more importantly send a message to the Democrats in State House that it always pays to be nice to the university.

What astonishes me is that this scenario might actually come to pass. Scott Brown (R), a State Senator from the South Shore, has run his campaign as if it were taking place in a state where voters think about the issues before pulling the lever at the polls. He has run a campaign that assumes voters will take into account what is best for them in the here-and-now and what will be best for their children in the future. Even more astonishing, his campaign has taken a high road, leaving Martha alone in the dust of her dirty tactics and negative campaigning. But most of all, Brown has run a campaign that is a campaign. He did not take a three-week Christmas vacation (Coakley did); he did not concede defeat when Coakley took her premature victory turn after winning the Democratic primary.

Massachusetts voters have a wonderful opportunity on January 19. They can give the Democratic party in the state the kick in the pants it deserves for taking them for granted for so long. They can elect a senator—Scott Brown—who will be beholden not to party bosses (there are no Republican bosses in Massachusetts) but to the voters who elected him. And, should Brown go to Washington and help put the brakes on the catastrophe that is the health care legislation, the good citizens can dust off their ancient bumper sticker, trim a word from it, and proudly tell the world, “Blame Me. I’m from Massachusetts.”

Harry Reid: Don’t Get Me Started

Published January 12, 2010 Higher Education , Life and Culture , Politics 2 Comments
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Over the last thirty-six hours or so I have watched the unfolding story about Harry Reid’s “racist” comments with great interest, and greater sense of nostalgia for the campus where I spent so many years. Even though I am not there now, I can tell you with complete confidence what the on-the-ground reaction is: while most students are either too wrapped up in their studies or the compelling dramas that are their personal lives to register the debate about the senator’s vocabulary, a small but influential group are busily organizing anti-racism workshops and calling for the (college’s) administration to do something about its systemic biases. Actually, it’s a little early in the semester for this ritual to begin, but getting a jump on the protest season with an out-of-the-gate cri de coeur means there’ll be more time left before Commencement to agitate about animal rights, transgender rights and the food in the dining commons.

Of the panoply of evils in the hormone-fueled world of undergraduates, at least at the institution where I toiled, racism trumps them all. And this is why I scratch my head when apologists for Senator Reid’s words, such as the Boston Globe, critique them for a “stunning lack of sensitivity” as opposed to their racist implications. Because where I come from, that’s no distinction at all. Any lack of “sensitivity,” let alone a “stunning” one, is prima facie evidence of racism, pure and simple, the kind academics will use to create a teachable moment about “white privilege” and class oppression. Students will want to meet with the (college) president to urge he make a statement, and the president will in turn point out that two years ago he created the position of “special assistant to the president for diversity and multicultural education,” so the students should talk to the assistant instead. The assistant will then pull together an “emergency task force” of faculty, students and a token staff member or two. The task force will demand a budget for pizza and brownies, meet solemnly for weeks, then report that more study is needed and that the entire campus, trustee to cafeteria worker, must complete an on-line litmus test to establish each individual’s “intercultural effectiveness.”

Let us pause briefly to consider the following, all true on the aforementioned campus: the “special assistant” was relieved of his teaching and advising duties thereby reducing the faculty by one and reducing the faculty of color by a significant percentage; the funds for the pizza and brownies come from the same budget that has no provision for underwriting the additional cost to students of laboratory, music, or studio art classes or for their independent research; ditto for the money spent on the “intercultural effectiveness” survey. But I digress.

The college will purchase the “intercultural effectiveness” survey instrument and the concomitant training for the special assistant and another administrator so that they are qualified to “interpret” the results. And that’ll be the end of it. The staff will take the “intercultural effectiveness” quiz (on college time, an additional hit to the strapped budget in terms of workers’ productivity), and a few faculty will as will the more earnest trustees. The president will direct his senior administrators to complete it—or else—and then report proudly to the board of trustees on the spectacular progress he has made rooting out racism on campus. Then, one semester will go by with no “feedback” or follow-up. The “further study” recommended by the emergency task force will not take place; the good sports who took the survey will wait in vain to learn the results and find out just how racist they really are. Then another semester will go by. And another, until the time and money spent on the exercise are forgotten. Soon it will be an election year, and a prominent politician will say something stupid and the cycle starts again. A new “emergency task force”—perhaps this time called the “anti-racism coalition and their white allies working group”—will chow down on pizzas and brownies. Whatever information could have been gleaned from the “intercultural effectiveness” survey (if indeed it is still on hand) will be deemed too dated to be worth resurrecting, and so a new survey instrument must be purchased and administered.

The Globe editorial admonishes Senator Reid: “the senator ought to focus on modernizing his own half-century-old dialect.” Sounds like the clarion call for sensitivity training to me. Easier and less expensive, I think, to skip the pizza-and-brownie budget and the exorbitant fees for the “intercultural effectiveness” survey and let the good voters of Nevada root out the old racist come November.

Low Society

Published January 8, 2010 Life and Culture 2 Comments
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Just as the tail of the Tiger was sashaying off the front pages, a youngish woman named Casey Johnson died, and her demise set off a new round of daily reports of sex and scandal among the rich and would-be famous.

As you know if you have been sentient for the last seven days, Casey was a black sheep heiress of the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Her parents cut off her access to her share of the family swag because, reportedly, of her drug-fueled lifestyle. Her mother also took custody of her granddaughter, afraid apparently that Casey was unfit to raise the girl. It’s not hard to imagine why Sale Johnson Rashad would feel this way: Casey, in no particular order, had in recent months 1) her hair set on fire by a girlfriend; 2) allegedly stolen jewelry and clothes from her ex’s current girlfriend; 3) been living in the kind of squalid rental that defines the seedy side of Hollywood. She was also “engaged” to a self-promoting dynamo/ecdysiast with the sleazy name of “Tila Tequila.” Ms. Tequila is one of those ultra-petite and oddly proportioned femuncula reminiscent of Pia Zadora.

If you are like me, you only became aware of the engaged couple in the aftermath of Casey’s untimely departure. Although I vaguely remembered reading about the pixie cut pyrotechnics, I did not remember who it was that had the hot hairstyle. And as far as Ms. Tequila is concerned, not only had I never heard of her, I still don’t exactly understand what the basis of her fame is. She is, I gather, a nude model, singer, reality TV star, and clothing designer, again in no particular order.

I have followed this breaking story with interest so avid it perplexes. There is nothing new here: poor little rich dope fiend dies a premature death estranged from her family and entangled with a grade C celebrity. We’ve heard it all before. There is no moral lesson here: heiress leads empty life and dies, friends blame her wealth and upbringing. Heard that one, too. No, I think what has me so intrigued is the way in which this one story defines our contemporary notion of “society news,” the stuff that used to fill the “women’s pages” of the daily paper, and that is gasping for its dying breaths in the “Style” section of the Sunday New York Times even unto today. When I hear or see the term “socialite” I think of Brooke Astor cuddling dachshunds to her bosom as she wrote generous checks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I do not think of aimless young women willing to engage in unappetizing PDA’s or reveal their private parts and sordid private lives to cameras and the world. If that’s what “society” has come to, we are in more trouble than I thought. Next thing you know they’ll be letting the Irish into the Vincent Club!

But all is not lost, I think. In contrast to Casey and Tequila there is Victoria Beckham, she of the emaciated form, bad complexion, tattoos and perpetual frowns. I had been prepared to sneer at the former Posh Spice, a pastime practiced by many readers of the British tabloids. I thought that she was a washed-up singer from a manufactured “girl group” who managed to snag a rich, buff, sports celebrity for a mate. End of story. And in fact, Posh is all those things, but I have come to understand, she is also a whip-smart entrepreneur, whose latest endeavor—her clothing line—manages to be edgy and classic at the same time. At 35, she has succeeded in a range of fields with the canny intelligence of a natural business woman and the confidence of a seasoned dealmaker. I was surprised to learn of her privileged upbringing. Surprised, I guess, because unlike Paris or Casey, Posh could have settled for being famous for being famous but she didn’t. And so when I see the endless photos of her in the Daily Mail, I don’t wonder or even care if she has tipped off the paparazzi, I think she is scoring free advertising for the multiple products that make up the Victoria Beckham brand. You go, Spice Girl!

Ain’t I a Conservative?

Published January 5, 2010 Life and Culture , Politics 4 Comments
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Thirty or so years ago historian/curmudgeon Paul Fussell wrote the amusing and enduring little book Class. In it he both describes and skewers the residents of the various strata of American society, from its “proles,” whose lawns feature comfy sofas to its aspiring class, with its New Yorkers artlessly positioned on the coffee table right next to the small marble obelisk. Since Fussell was a tenured academic, he needed to invent a class that includes himself and others like him, not wealth-makers necessarily but opinion-makers, at least in their own minds, and so he conceived of “Category X,” the same group, essentially, that Richard Florida and others today have taken to calling the “creative class.” Members of the creative class are well-educated, arty, intellectual, often (according to Florida) gay folks who like to cluster in urban centers where they can commune with each other, nibbling on biscotti and chewing on the big ideas of the day.

Now comes David Brooks, who has also written, not as well, on Fussell’s topic in Bobos in Paradise and its sequel On Paradise Drive. Brooks’s books contain little of Fussell’s insight and none of his memorable, dead-on descriptions, but they do paint a portrait of “smart, ambitious, educated, and antiestablishment people with scuffed shoes.” It’s unclear whether Brooks is rechristening his bobos the “educated class” in his column in today’s New York Times, but he might be. Brooks distinguishes members of the “educated class” from the foot soldiers in the “tea party brigades” by contrasting their views:

“The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

“The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should ‘go our own way’ has risen sharply.”

He continues: “The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class.” In other words, if I am reading Brooks correctly, in America today there is the “educated class” and everybody else, the great mob that constitutes public opinion.

Here we go again. Just a quick glance at the bales of comments shows in one respect Brooks is quite right: many of the writers are racing to establish their bona fides as members of the educated class. Sample, from douglassforgan of boulder, co: “Oh, just say it like it is—it’s the educated class versus the morons, and the morons are winning.” While others—that would be the “morons” themselves—are weighing in with statements such as Amber’s of London: “’The educated class’, Mr. Brooks? Since when did education take on such an ugly elitism? I refuse to believe that the American people, with some of the best higher education institutions and initiatives in the world, will turn en masse against a culture and tradition of educational aspiration and self-advancement.”

Thank you, thank you Amber in London for finding the words to express what I have been struggling to articulate. You have put your finger exactly on the insidious argument Brooks makes, a rhetorical weapon that conflates education and leftist politics and willful even prideful ignorance and anti-intellectualism and conservatism. To my everlasting dismay, the right has totally conceded this contention to the left. (Please don’t tell me David Brooks is a “conservative.” David Brooks is an opportunist. And more power to him.)

From 1958 through 2009 I went to school, first as a student, then as a teacher, last as an administrator. That’s fifty-one years of feeling myself a stranger in a strange land. I should thank my lucky stars I suppose that as a major in English I took my courses in pre-post-modern classes, and read literature for all the meaning, beauty, and historical, spiritual and artistic insight I could wring from it. The schools I attended were “good” public schools, a university blessed with an incredible faculty but cursed with the indelible stain of being a public institution, and a precious, elite graduate school. The schools where I taught were all public: a community college, a state college, and the same university from which I graduated. There I was also an administrator, but the last two decades of my career were spent in an independent liberal arts college, small and expensive it qualifies as elite if not for the quality of its students and faculty but for its pedigree and its promise to someday fulfill its potential. Along the way I published a couple of handfuls of academic articles. I indulge in this trip down memory lane so that you can be assured of my bona fides when I tell you that I have lived my life within the “educated class.”

For this I harbor a lifetime of resentment and despair. Resentment because my conservative leanings have been stifled by the oppressive group-think of the academy. Resentment that my opinions discredited before I could even make them known. Resentment that time and again I bore witness to accepted members of the “educated class” indulging—in a consequence-free environment—in the kind of shoddy argumentation I would find unacceptable from first-year composition students. Resentment that bleeds into despair that students preparing to become members of the “educated class” either must adopt its ways or find themselves with a ticket to collegiate oblivion.

The despair is worse than the resentment, which will fade because I can at last say aloud what I think and no longer taste the bile of swallowed rejoinders. That this should happen only after I have been freed from the surly bonds of the academy is itself cause for despair. But what plunges me deepest into the slough of despond is the painful truth that the “educated class” of which David Brooks and others write and belong has no room for me and others like me. We have been exiled to the land of the proles, our ideas no more worthy of consideration than that lawn couch is likely to make the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. In a time of such national and international peril, marginalizing the brain power of those who have dared to cross class lines as a matter of conscience seems to me, well, to paraphrase doug from boulder, moronic.

NOTE to readers: All quotations from David Brooks are from his January 5, 2010 column “The Tea Party Teens,” except the definition of “bobos,” which is from his Bobos in Paradise.

All that Glisters is not Gold Floor

Published January 1, 2010 ...and their Social Life , Life and Culture , Single Women 3 Comments
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For the last several years during Christmas week I have been spending a few nights at the Copley Plaza in Boston, the hotel that once billed itself as “Boston’s Grande Dame.” Specifically, I hole up on its “Gold Floor,” which, according to the introductory patter of the desk clerks, is “patterned after a fine home on Beacon Hill.” And it is true that on the Gold Floor there is a large drawing room complete with fireplace, a paneled library with leather wing chairs (and books), and, best of all, a butler’s pantry. It’s enough faux Brahmin to make one forget that the Gold Floor is just another manifestation of the marketing concept many hotels use to charge more for essentially the same room that’s on any other floor by slapping a name on it (“concierge level,” “grand club”) or providing the illusion of exclusivity by issuing special keys to bring the elevator to the exalted level. Nevertheless, for three days just before New Year’s I happily play let’s pretend and wallow in the artifice.

For a single woman, this is almost dream getaway. You want to be called “Miss”? The obliging staff calls you “Miss.” You want your slippers and robe set out for you? No problem. You want elves to shine your shoes for you overnight and return them gift-wrapped in the morning. Sure thing. Hang a “privacy, please” tag on your door and you can laze around till 3 p.m., go out for a brief constitutional and return to a room freshly made-up by unseen hands.

And then there is that butler’s pantry stocked with every imaginable breakfast item, hot and cold, all morning long, its selections changing daily. Mid-day there are cookies and fruit and come cocktail hour (or on the Gold Floor, cocktail two hours) a lavish display of canapés appears, along with an honor bar that would knock your socks off. You never have to leave the Gold Floor for the duration of your stay!

And this year, I barely did. I was writing, so I alternated between the laptop I brought with me and kept in my room and, when I wanted a change of scenery, the desktop computers tucked away in the drawing room. My meals were there for the taking, as were my adult beverages. So what’s with the “almost”? What’s not to like? Well, a couple of things.

First, the television. When I entered my room I gave a little gasp of joy, for the Copley had finally upgraded to flat screen, high-def models. Great, I thought, the perfect antidote to my chronic insomnia. Silly me. I had forgotten my brother-in-law’s first rule of hostelry: the more expensive the room, the fewer the TV channels. Not only did the Copley spurn many of Boston’s local channels, which meant no nightly hour of Family Guy, but of the measly number of choices it did offer—twenty-five, maybe—a full third to half of them were sports: ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN HD, ESPN News, ESPN Classic, NESN, something called “Speedway,” and on and on and on. I understand that in the heart of Red Sox nation there is interest in keeping up with the local teams, but to dedicate our precious airways to all sports, all the time, including repeats of games from five years ago? An entire channel for motorcycles? You know what I think? Of course you do. Whatever genius thinks up the television selection for the Copley has got to be a man, programming for all those he-man road warriors out on the hunt to bring home the bacon for the little woman. Me big-man traveling IT consultant. Me want my sports TV. Somebody needs to remind these hospitality experts that women constitute half the workforce, and that most women at the end of a long day working (or, in my case, loafing) are not interested in catching up on curling matches from 1983.

The other drawback that keeps the Gold Floor from delivering single women to the promised land is that for all its luxe amenities it apparently represents a real bargain for families on holiday. For a single person paying the same as a couple or a family of four for a room on the Gold Floor, the cost of that one “complementary” breakfast and a plateful of appetizers is more than built into the price of the room. But for the traveling Griswolds, with multiple hungry mouths to feed, it is an incredible deal. Nothing shatters the illusion of exclusivity faster than a father looking the other way as his kid plunges her hands into a chafing dish of oatmeal. Nothing kills the frisson of that first sip of martini faster than a sullen teenager discovering that mini quiches make great projectiles. And nothing but nothing eliminates the possibility of strangers-that-pass-in-the-night romance faster than a raucous family reunion fueled by an honor bar. Next year I am hoping that the Gold Floor will hire a couple of bouncers.

I know that I could decamp for the Mandarin Oriental that’s just opened, or the Taj that occupies the old Ritz, but I am a creature of habit and tradition. Especially that one about kids being seen and not heard.

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