Culture Wars and the Left

Posted on November 27, 2004 in Blogging Culture Liberals & Progressives The Orange

My regular readers might enjoy this latest salvo of mine against the most vapid and ignorant writers at the OC Weekly — a paper which I hasten to note also includes excellent reporting alongside its utter drivel, just like its parent The Village Voice.

Profiling by government agencies and right wing organizations is certainly a matter that would produce histrionics in the most even-tempered of at the Orange County Weekly. (And it should!) Yet this week, the erstwhile watchdog of Orange-County-style leftist politics does just that with Dave Wielenga’s ballyhooed Orange County: The Quiz.

Quizzes are nothing new to bloggers. Many of us can’t resist undergoing the latest interrogations at Quizzila to see how some only recently deadolescencized pundit pigeonholes us. Now and then you do hit upon a quiz which demonstrates a better than average knowledge of the world — which theologian are you? (Karl Barth here) or which famous philsopher do you agree with (David Hume) — come to mind — or even one which can help you know where you fit in such as the exceptionally well designed Belief-O-Matic quiz (Theravada Buddhist, Unitarian, and Liberal Quaker here). And then you have the trash quizzes, the ones slapped together to fill a back section in a slick magazine or allow bloggers an opportunity to display a cool graphic.

More of this at OC Metroblogs.

To add further to this discussion, I take offense at the idea that you have to be into sex, drugs, rock, and roll to be a real Leftist. Excuse me, but I have worked far too long with frustrated Christian leftists who have been ignored by the press. The Weekly has done its part to dispel that myth with its reportage by Gustavo Arellano and sometimes Steve Lowery, but, the flippancy and shallow caricature of Wielenga’s quiz is more fitting for a Fox Television sitcom because it erodes the progress made in the factual reportage that the Weekly makes elsewhere.

Anyone who has hung out at a biker bar for even a few minutes knows that sex, drugs, and rock and roll do not define a liberal. They can be the hallmarks of a reactionary boor as well. And plenty of us on the left do not engage in promiscuous sex, drug abuse, or listen to rock and roll. What defines a real leftist is compassion for the human condition. We try to do something about it other than belittling those who have felt defeated by recent events. We refuse to allow the vapid-angry wing of journalistic based punditry to define and demand any kind of credential — actual or de facto — of us.

If you think about it, there’s not a lot of difference between the “attack them because they don’t like our music and lifestyle” types at the Weekly and the talking heads who go on and on about “character issues” and “moral values”. Their remarks are every bit as stupid and meaningless to the average American. They perform character assassination and engage in stereotyping. Rather than being builders, they are dividers. And often they are proud of the fact.

When put face to face with Big Money, we can’t afford such self-destrucitve politics. I have despaired this last month as I have heard Leftist after Leftist cry about how they have lost faith in their fellow Americans. For stating that I doggedly believe in my fellow Americans — so many of whom have confided their angst in me — these treat me as a freak and a possible subversive.

There are times when I wonder if the RNC has become clever. After all, the second rate hacks who write stories such as the Quiz do get paid. What they say to people like me is “You can’t be part of our revolution because you don’t dance to our beat.” Which is where I divide with them: I believe in diversity. They are welcome at my party, but I don’t think they want to come there because they want to be cool. Where I am, we’re all citizens and human beings, all appreciated and all understood to be in the same mess. There’s no room for cool. Equality is just not their bag, man, any more than it is with those who live inside the gated communities of South Orange. That helps those who want to keep the gulf between the rich and the poor broad. Voice of the people? My ass.