By Gary Alan Fine, May 24th, 2011 
 
I am allergic to political gatherings. You are not likely to discover me at movement rallies, rubber-chicken circuit banquets, or victory parties (more commonly weep-in-your-drink defeatathons). I treasure the quietude of the old voting booths where one could think one’s civic thoughts while surrounded by worn fabric. I enjoyed the experience so much that I annually decided to change at least one intended vote just because that choice would mean that casting a ballot was an act of deliberation.
Still, nineteen years ago on a bright September afternoon, I made my way to the train station in Norcross, Georgia, near where I resided at the time. That day Al Gore was coming to town. I no longer recall whether Gore was riding a whistle-stop train or merely using the station as a nostalgic background. Given Atlanta’s transportation mess, I imagine it was the latter. The idea of rearranging my schedule to hear Senator Gore declaim might seem an act of perversity, or at least desperation.
But it was not. It was lovely and sweet and purposive, not only because of the flags and the band and National gemeinschaft and Southern gemutlichkeit. Without yelling, Al Gore was eloquent, passionate and true. At least true enough for campaign purposes. I left persuaded that the order of the Democrats’ 1992 ticket should be reversed. I voted standing on my head.
I tell this tale because of current discussions of Indiana’s Mitch Daniels and Minnesota’s Timothy James Pawlenty, both of whom being regarded as a bit wonkish and “Gorish.” Apparently Daniels homelife was slightly Gothic, and he decided that he could miss the attentions of Perez Hilton, Gail Collins, Larry Flynt, and Matt Drudge, but T-Paw has decided to make a go of it. It is too early to trek to a local rail station, if there are any . . .
Read more: In Praise of Serious Pols
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 22nd, 2011 
Because the demands of the academic cycle, because of the challenge of term papers, dissertations and dissertation proposals, I am late this week in this review. But now that I have a few moments this Sunday evening, I can make a few points, noting that all week we have been concerned about the difficult relationship between words and deeds.
If there were any deed which would be clearly and unambiguously a candidate for automatic verbal condemnation, it would seem to be slavery, but this is not the case. Narvaez shows, choosing the extreme case to make his very important point, judging the unacceptable requires a capacity for moral indignation. He worries that with the noise of infotainment, of cable television, web surfing and social networking, the capacity to express indignation is waning. On the other hand, Gary Alan Fine, in his reply to Narvaez, seems to be as concerned with the direction of such indignation as its presence or absence. Condemnations of Israel, for example, sometimes come too easily from the left and the Arab world, and they can be manufactured, as Daniel Dayan shows in his post this week.
This was an exciting and provocative exchange. I think Narvaez in his response to Fine revealed how sound public debate yields results when it is specific. Small things, details, make all the difference. Not moral indignation about Israeli atrocities, but a specific atrocity, the complicity in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, for example. And Narvaez is surely right, democracy requires such indignation. The jaded society is a clear and present danger to democracy, explaining for example broad American acceptance of torture of political prisoners as long as it goes by the Orwellian name of “enhanced interrogation.”
And paying close attention to the relationship between words and deeds applies as well to the persistent problem of fictoids in our public life, as we discussed last year. Little tales that confirm preconceived . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Words and Deeds
By Gary Alan Fine, May 18th, 2011 
All influential politicians attract rumors. Like tar babies, no matter how much denied or improbable, sticky rumors do not disappear if they capture something defining about their target. They are too good to be false. For several weeks before our consumption of all things bin Laden, Americans speculated on the meaning and significance of President-elect Barack Obama’s birth certificate. There was never much evidence to suggest that the president was born outside of the United States, but it had a certain cultural cachet. Even if the rumor was not explicitly racist, Obama with a Kenyan father, schooling at a Muslim school (although not a madrassa) in Indonesia, and a globalist political stance could be seen as extra-American. The birther rumor had a political logic, even if the facts were against it.
However, Obama is not the only politician to have to confront a rumor that skips lightly over the truth but that addresses public concern, allowing us to use beliefs to reveal our hidden attitudes. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (and my former Congressperson) has announced that he will be running for Obama’s job. He would like to be discussing policy positions, but to many Americans he also brings a character deficit. To be sure, those who hold most strongly to this belief are not likely to be in the Newt camp, but the same could be said of the birthers and the president.
Gingrich is currently allied with a third wife. He is a serial adulterer, not necessarily a disqualifying trait for father of his country. However, in Newt-world the juicy rumor involves his first wife, his former high school geometry teacher whom he wed at 19. The rumor is that when his first wife was dying of cancer, Gingrich popped up cheerily and cheekily in her hospital room to ask for a divorce (perhaps he felt that she was “a little square” [I couldn’t resist a little geometric humor!]). The story, in the way it has been told, has flaws and holes. It lacks a birth certificate, but it does have legs. A quick Google search reveals that the story is all over the Internet.
. . .
Read more: Newt Gingrich and the Politics of Rumor
|
Blogroll
On the Left
On the Right
|