Thursday, November 18, 2004
RollingStone.com: Politics - The Aftermath
Tom Wolfe (I have considered a hero; here sayin' some goofy things)
I'm going out to Kennedy Airport to wave goodbye to all the journalists (Really, a bunch of lazy-ass journalists want to suddenly develop new beats/careers? I doubt it) I know. They're all leaving for London, and I think someone should go out there to see them off. They're taking this very hard. These are people who are as overcome as if one of their parents had just died.
I was surprised by the outcome of the election.(So were a lot of journalists. Maybe that's why they're taking it so hard) I talked to so many Republicans who said, "Loyalty's loyalty, but too many things have gone wrong." A good example is James Webb, a man who I respect enormously, one of the most decorated Marines in Vietnam and, like most military officers, a Republican. Here's a guy who knows the military backward and forward, and he considers the Iraq adventure one of the greatest strategic bungles of all time. He just couldn't vote for Bush, even though his opinion of Kerry could not be lower.
If you look at the voting map, it's almost identical to 2000. I interpret that to mean that the war was not decisive, and the campaigns were not decisive. I think it was a cultural election (Eh, maybe, but I think you are underestimating Republican marketing skills) -- if by cultural we mean ingrained values of different groups of people. I call it "championism." It's when you vote for convictions that represent your people, instead of what's good for you financially or in terms of security. (Or that make sense? I think what you might have seen were journalists reacting to a very non-rational response to their belated attempts to portray the realities of the war- their job.) All of us do it (To varying degrees, perhaps, but this is not a good time to be irrational) . Take the Scots-Irish (pimps friend's book), the largest unrecognized ethnic group in America. They spread from the Appalachians into the Midwest, and they voted heavily Republican, even though they are by no means wealthy people. To them, gun control is not about guns -- it's an attack on them and their way of life. They're very independent and very stubborn, and they're damn well going to have their guns.
I'm not immune to those feelings of championism either. Right after 9/11, when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said that the attacks were punishment for the decadence of the American people, I found myself getting defensive on their behalf: "Robertson went to the same college that I did, and Falwell is from Lynchburg, Virginia. What they said was ludicrous, but these are my people!" You couldn't defend anything they said, but because of championism, I didn't want to see my people abused (Mr. Wolfe, being called to task for saying really goofy things is not abuse).
Not that many people in America who are registered to vote want to be lectured to by Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi and P. Diddy. If you're living in southern Ohio, and you're against gay marriage because you're religious, these guys make you feel like you're being treating like an idiot . . . worse, like a primitive. Bush, on the other hand, is very good at feeding the impression that "I'm one of you. I can hunker down with you anywhere you want." He's acquired a kind of rural accent. But Kerry is incapable of doing that (you mean perpetrating a false impression). Simply as a public speaker, he badly needed a change-of-pace voice, as do all speakers. Even Muhammad Ali, who was a very funny guy, was not funny for fifteen minutes in a row, because he had no change of pace, and the same is true of Kerry.
I've never seen an election taken so personally by people -- not even Nixon vs. Kennedy. But this country is so centrist, we're not really going to go wrong whoever's elected. Our government is like a train on a track: People yell at it from the left, and they yell at from the right, but the train goes right down the middle where the tracks are.
I guess ol' Tom is losing his edge. This is not a middle course that we are upon.
¶ 11/18/2004 08:31:00 PM
Tom Wolfe (I have considered a hero; here sayin' some goofy things)
I'm going out to Kennedy Airport to wave goodbye to all the journalists (Really, a bunch of lazy-ass journalists want to suddenly develop new beats/careers? I doubt it) I know. They're all leaving for London, and I think someone should go out there to see them off. They're taking this very hard. These are people who are as overcome as if one of their parents had just died.
I was surprised by the outcome of the election.(So were a lot of journalists. Maybe that's why they're taking it so hard) I talked to so many Republicans who said, "Loyalty's loyalty, but too many things have gone wrong." A good example is James Webb, a man who I respect enormously, one of the most decorated Marines in Vietnam and, like most military officers, a Republican. Here's a guy who knows the military backward and forward, and he considers the Iraq adventure one of the greatest strategic bungles of all time. He just couldn't vote for Bush, even though his opinion of Kerry could not be lower.
If you look at the voting map, it's almost identical to 2000. I interpret that to mean that the war was not decisive, and the campaigns were not decisive. I think it was a cultural election (Eh, maybe, but I think you are underestimating Republican marketing skills) -- if by cultural we mean ingrained values of different groups of people. I call it "championism." It's when you vote for convictions that represent your people, instead of what's good for you financially or in terms of security. (Or that make sense? I think what you might have seen were journalists reacting to a very non-rational response to their belated attempts to portray the realities of the war- their job.) All of us do it (To varying degrees, perhaps, but this is not a good time to be irrational) . Take the Scots-Irish (pimps friend's book), the largest unrecognized ethnic group in America. They spread from the Appalachians into the Midwest, and they voted heavily Republican, even though they are by no means wealthy people. To them, gun control is not about guns -- it's an attack on them and their way of life. They're very independent and very stubborn, and they're damn well going to have their guns.
I'm not immune to those feelings of championism either. Right after 9/11, when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said that the attacks were punishment for the decadence of the American people, I found myself getting defensive on their behalf: "Robertson went to the same college that I did, and Falwell is from Lynchburg, Virginia. What they said was ludicrous, but these are my people!" You couldn't defend anything they said, but because of championism, I didn't want to see my people abused (Mr. Wolfe, being called to task for saying really goofy things is not abuse).
Not that many people in America who are registered to vote want to be lectured to by Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi and P. Diddy. If you're living in southern Ohio, and you're against gay marriage because you're religious, these guys make you feel like you're being treating like an idiot . . . worse, like a primitive. Bush, on the other hand, is very good at feeding the impression that "I'm one of you. I can hunker down with you anywhere you want." He's acquired a kind of rural accent. But Kerry is incapable of doing that (you mean perpetrating a false impression). Simply as a public speaker, he badly needed a change-of-pace voice, as do all speakers. Even Muhammad Ali, who was a very funny guy, was not funny for fifteen minutes in a row, because he had no change of pace, and the same is true of Kerry.
I've never seen an election taken so personally by people -- not even Nixon vs. Kennedy. But this country is so centrist, we're not really going to go wrong whoever's elected. Our government is like a train on a track: People yell at it from the left, and they yell at from the right, but the train goes right down the middle where the tracks are.
I guess ol' Tom is losing his edge. This is not a middle course that we are upon.
¶ 11/18/2004 08:31:00 PM
