Food for thought. -
KWC
Quote: "The
greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of
knowledge." (Daniel J. Boorstin)
Author's
Quote: "If
the objective of cultural politics is to win adherents, the objective of this
postmodernist pseudo-politics is to convey the idea that you have already won
adherents - that the revolution has already occurred and power has been
transferred."
Published
on Sunday, November 23, 2003 by the
Los Angeles Times
Conservative
Revolution? No -- Just Dazzlingly Effective PR
by
Neal Gabler @
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1124-15.htm
AMAGANSETT, N.Y. - All told, it has been a
pretty good year for cultural conservatives. The New York Times, the primary
target of conservative opprobrium, disgraced itself in scandal, the Fox News
Channel continues to crush its cable competition, hipsters like Dennis Miller
and Colin Quinn have defected to the right, corny Jay Leno is beating tart
David Letterman in the ratings and a conservative revolt forced CBS into
pulling a miniseries on the Reagans because its opponents said it was biased
against the former president.
Not
a bad run. But some conservatives think these events amount to more than just
a winning streak. They see signs of a geological shift in the culture tipping
the balance from the left to the right.
For
decades, conservatives controlled the political agenda, even to the point of
hijacking the nation for two years to concentrate on a popular president's
moral lapses. The cultural agenda, however, was another thing. Though the
country seemed to be tilting right politically, popular culture, if anything,
seemed to be speeding toward increasing liberalization. Madonna and Britney
Spears; Eminem and hip-hop generally; "The Daily Show," "South Park" and "The
Man Show"; "American Pie" and dozens of other raunchy or violent movies that
dominated the box office; even tattooed athletes - all testified to the power
of America's free-spirited, contrarian strain. Conservatives could point only
to the success of the now-canceled series "Touched by an Angel" as evidence of
a largely untapped right-wing audience.
Not
anymore, we're told. With the victory over CBS, conservative Internet gossip
Matt Drudge boldly declared this to be the "second century of the media ...
where it's much more of a people-driven media."
One
could certainly point to Sept. 11, 2001, as a cultural watershed that has
transformed the nation. But American popular culture after 9/11 looks much
like American culture before that fateful date. Still, there is unquestionably
something new and important afoot in the culture.
The
conservative declaration of victory is itself part of a large, complex process
that gives the impression of a cultural revolution without actually effecting
one. It is the phenomenon of a phenomenon - a great postmodernist gambit in
which the buzz about something overwhelms the thing itself. It works, because
what rivets and energizes the media doesn't have to be a real, measurable
change in the cultural landscape, but the idea of a new phenomenon on that
landscape. The media are in the phenomenon business, and if they turn the
phenomenon into a revolution, so much the better.
One
can see this postmodernist process at work nearly everywhere in the culture.
Take "The Osbournes." Most everyone in America today knows who the Osbournes
are, has read about them, heard about them or seen them on commercials or
hosting award shows. But when you examine the ratings of their MTV television
series that generated all the notoriety, you discover something remarkable.
Even before its recent dip, almost no one watched the show. In a nation of
roughly 280 million people, "The Osbournes" gets an audience of just about 3
million viewers, or slightly above 1% of the populace. So how does one account
for the family's near-universal recognition?
One
might conclude that the program existed not to be watched but to be written
about or discussed. The show was an excuse to create a phenomenon, of which
the Osbournes and those who marketed them were the beneficiaries. They were
popular for appearing to be popular.
Frankly,
one can say the same thing about almost everything in America today, save for
films and television programs that do appeal to a sizable audience. Though
this process is little remarked upon, it has profound implications for the
culture, suggesting a psychological shift at least as important as the
supposed one after 9/11: that watching entertainment now seems less gratifying
than knowing about it.
In
the context of cultural politics, the implications are no less profound.
Everyone who follows the media knows that we live in an increasingly
conservative society. Everyone knows that conservative talk radio is a
dominant force and that Rush Limbaugh alone attracts 20 million listeners
weekly. Everyone knows that the Fox News Channel - on which I am a contributor
- has drained millions of viewers from the broadcast networks. Everyone knows
that millions of Americans mobilized against CBS' Reagan miniseries.
Yet,
everything that everyone knows in the preceding paragraph is absolutely
false. In sheer numbers,
conservative talk radio is still a relatively small phenomenon, and Limbaugh's
aggregate audience of 20 million - if you assume that most of his die-hard
fans listen to him daily - is probably closer to 4 million or 5 million. Fox
News is unquestionably a cable success story, but, excluding major news
stories, at best it attracts an audience of 2 million - not even in the same
league as the least-watched broadcast news report and a blip on the larger
demographic screen. After more than a week of constant, highly publicized
agitation, CBS reportedly received 80,000 e-mails protesting the Reagan
miniseries, not exactly a populist wildfire.
Here's
the truth: Even after 9/11 reputedly turned us into a nation of flag-waving
patriots, even after Fox News Channel torpedoed the liberal media, even after
the drumbeat of Limbaugh, even after Dennis Miller decided to forgo humor for
attacks on Bill Clinton and even after the Reagans were saved from liberal
calumnies, the country, according to both a recent Washington Post/ABC News
poll and a Pew Research Center poll, is almost exactly evenly divided between
those who lean left and those who lean right. Evenly divided. All of which
means that the conservatives haven't made a huge dent politically and, again
from the looks of things, have made less than a dent culturally, especially
since political and cultural proclivities do not always lean in the same
direction. There are an awful lot of Republicans, evidently, who like Eminem
and "South Park."
So,
why all this talk of conservative ascendancy? In a sense, it's pure invention.
What conservatives have been able to do is deploy the same postmodernist
techniques that celebrities have been using for decades, and for the same
purpose: to make the buzz into the buzz. Like the Osbournes, conservatives
take their little triumphs and package them as phenomena, which the media -
including the conservative media - eagerly retail to the public. Blogger
Andrew Sullivan, for example, calls the new cultural trend "South Park
Republicanism" because "South Park" has taken its whacks at political
correctness and other liberal shibboleths. But whether or not there is such a
thing as South Park Republicanism, the idea is media-genic because it suggests something
big is happening that the media want to be in on. You just whisper it into
what critics of the right have called the "right-wing echo chamber" - of
conservative talk radio, Fox News, various conservative publications and now
conservative blogs - and it turns into a roar that the mainstream media cannot
ignore. In short, the new cultural
revolution is a sound-effects machine.
Nearly
40 years ago, historian Daniel Boorstin coined the term "pseudo-events" to
describe things like premieres, photo ops and publicity stunts: They have no
inherent value and exist only to be covered by the media. The right wing has
now devised a pseudo-politics,
of which the "conservative revolution" is a primary feature. It may look like
the real thing, sound like the real thing and, most important, be covered by
the media as if it were the real thing, but it is essentially just a way to
gain media attention, which is usually enough to convince people that it is
the real thing. If the objective of cultural politics is to win adherents, the
objective of this postmodernist pseudo-politics is to convey the idea that you
have already won adherents - that the revolution has already occurred and
power has been transferred.
American
culture is a constant, continuing transaction between new and subversive
ideas,
forms and entertainers that originate at the margins of the culture and then
eventually get mainstreamed while the margins continue to serve up the new.
This is a liberalizing process, but it isn't necessarily confined to a liberal
audience because all but the most Neanderthal and anhedonic of conservatives
are just as likely to enjoy these entertainments as left-wingers are. Still,
it means that the popular culture, at least, is unlikely ever to become
conservative in any meaningful way unless liberalism is so widely embraced
some day that conservatism becomes the radical, subversive alternative to it.
Until
then, a few conservative swipes at CBS or a few million viewers at the Fox
News Channel or even a few "South Park" fans who identify themselves as
Republicans won't signify a shift in the cultural balance of power. They
simply provide excuses for the media to label it as one.
Neal
Gabler, a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg, is author
of "Life
the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered
Reality."