The Great Seduction

The age of personalization

2008-09-05T12:03:21-07:00

Welcome to the age of personalization. We live in a time of personalized products, personalized technology, personalized democracy and, of course, personalized politicians. We want our media to be a panopticon of mirrors; everywhere we look, we want to see ourselves -- or, at least, we want to see people who appear to resemble ourselves. In the appropriately entitled "The Mirrored Ceiling", the excellent NY Times columnist Judith Warner reminds us that this age of personalization disgorges inauthentic everyman/woman politicians like Sarah Palin and George W. Bush:

"One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can “relate” to. This need isn’t limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush. And it isn’t new; Americans have always needed to feel that their leaders were, on some level, people like them."

How odd it is that in the age of personalization, an age in which we cherish the familiar and the authentic, we are seduced into electing characters who are, in fact, nothing like ourselves. We get what we deserve, of course. But maybe Americans should learn from their disastrous fling with the all-too-ordinary George W. Bush and chose exceptional politicians quite unlike themselves -- crippled patricians like FDR, for example, or mixed race oratorical superstars like Obama.

Our age of personalization is actually more complicated than it first appears. On one level, of course, it represents a culture of narcissism in which we are so in love with ourselves that we want to see our reflection everywhere we look. But I suspect that, on another level, it reflects not only self-love but also self-loathing. Paul Krugman touches on this in his "Resentment Strategy" column this morning. Krugman wonders how wealthy, well-connected East Coast insiders like Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani have the gall to preach an anti elite message to the Republican faithful:

Can the former mayor of New York City, a man who, as USA Today put it, “marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu” — that was between his second and third marriages — really get away with saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think small towns are sufficiently “cosmopolitan”?

Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?

The conventional What's The Matter With Kansas explanation of this is that socio-economic elites like Guiliani and Romney are tricking stupid ordinary Republicans into voting against their own interest. But I wonder if it isn't more complicated that this neo-marxist logic. Maybe Freud is a better guide to the American ruling class than Marx. You see, there is a strong element of self-hatred, of repressed guilt in the American elite. Thus, the Romney-Guiliani hatred of their own class is a very public form of self-flagellation. These guys really mean what they say about the corrupt American elite. But the real object of their critique is themselves.

How the Internet can save America

2008-09-04T11:39:44-07:00

Trust a Canadian television critic to untangle the bizarre knot of American politics. In an absolutely brilliant piece in today's Globe and Mail, the paper's tv columnist John Doyle explains the Palin phenomenon as reality-tv run amok. He describes the made-for-tv spectacle as "So You Think You Can be Vice-President":

"What's happening with the Palin story is what has happened over and over again on U.S. TV over the past 20 years. Ordinary, working-class people, sometimes startlingly inarticulate and with messy personal lives, are thrown into the TV spotlight and, by being ordinary - bartenders, truck drivers, hairdressers and janitors on Survivor or Big Brother - they are a good bet for being compelling on TV. The women have names such as Misty and the guys are called Ace, or similar."

Doyle sees the Republicans as being driven by the same marketing rationale as executives at network television stations seeking higher ratings for their shows:

"The torque that has driven so much of reality TV is the reasonable belief that ordinary people, with all their messy baggage and lack of sophistication, are more authentically American than the fictional doctors, lawyers and detectives being portrayed on network dramas. Either that, or the broadcaster bets on the audience being transfixed with horror by the trashy lumpen proles turning up on TV. In choosing Sarah Palin and pushing her family and life into prime time, the Republican Party is being driven by exactly the same marketing impulse."

So, if American politics really has become reality-tv run amok, then how can we ensure that "So You Think You Can Be Vice-President" gets dreadful ratings and is quickly pulled by the studio executives? The first thing we need to do is reread Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death in order to make sense of Palin in historical terms and not just as a bizarre one-off media spectacle. And then -- having understood that American television led us to this nadir of reality-tv politics by trivializing everything of any significance -- we should all switch off our television sets forever. Burn them, trash them, eat them. Do whatever is necessary to destroy the damn things so that we never have to watch messy women with names like Misty or Bristol make utter fools of themselves in public.

So what do we watch instead? I've been critical of the Internet in the past -- but not even I can blame the Internet for Palin. The truth is that television brought us Sarah Palin while the Internet delivered Barack Obama. I guess that we've got to give the Internet a chance. It might be the one thing that can save America.

The new plot against America

2008-09-04T08:35:32-07:00

The only idea in the Palin speech was her attack on mainstream media. What she is trying to do -- in good libertarian Web 2.0 fashion -- is become the media herself so that she can distort reality. Don't trust the experts, she is rabble-rousing her ignorant followers. It's angry amateur hour. Palin -- and the reactionary cultural forces that both created the woman and have been created by her -- is the reason why I wrote C ult of the Amateur . It's a new plot against America (read Roth's original version for many self-evident comparisons between the fictionalized Lindbergh and the all-too-factual Palin).

What this should prove to the liberal blogosphere is that mainstream media -- the Post, the Times, even the Journal -- is more of an ally than a foe. Arianna Huffington should cease her pathetic vendetta against the harmless Sulzbergers. Smart, well informed left wing bloggers like Josh Marshall should unambiguously remind their readers of the instrinsic value of our leading newspapers, magazines and cable news channels. Just as the left in the Thirties mistook the liberal establishment as their enemy while underestimating the real threat to civilization, so the same is true today amongst blinkered mainstream-media bashing leftists.

Peggy Noonan is right -- it is indeed over. For now, at least. But Palin is planting the seeds of a virus that, I fear, will eventually come to power in an America hobbled by economic decline and political gridlock. John McCain's myopic decision to invite her onto his ticket makes him the Franz von Papen of his fissiparious party -- the old Center Party aristocrat who mistakenly imagined that he could manipulate the mob for his own political advantage. Von Papen's myopia lead directly, of course, to the Nazi seizure of power in Germany. That won't happen in 2008. But the oblivious McCain -- who seems to be in a different universe from the rest of the world -- is playing with the same amateur fire.

Meanwhile, Joe Klein is right. Mainstream media must be strong in the face of all the lies and distortion:

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

So far, so good on this front, I think. Even the powers-that-be at CNN -- nobody's ideal of a heroic media organization -- have refused to back down over Campbell Brown's Tucker Bounds interview. I just hope that mainstream media will stick to its professional principles and continue to expose all the lies and distortion of this new plot against America.

Reality Politics: the Sarah Palin Show

2008-09-03T12:37:45-07:00

How does the Sarah Palin Show compare with the Ronald Reagan Show? Reagan was a Hollywood actor who imported his professional acting skills into American politics; Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is an overnight celebrity hockey mom who has allowed her soap opera of a family to become the subject of American politics.

How appropriate, then, that Janet Maslin should review Marc Eliot's new book about Reagan, The Hollywood Years, in yesterday's Times. Maslin explains that Elliot interprets Ronald Reagan as a "serial populist" who figured out a way "to marry the medium that loved him to the message he loved":

“His hem-and-haw frown, complete with the familiar one upraised eyebrow, his shortcut way of expressing doubt, suspicion, anger and moral outrage."

Eliot explains that Reagan screen-tested this look and these mannerisms from his long Hollywood career in movies like Kings Row. Thus the Reagan Show represented the Hollywood visual mastery of expressing emotions -- doubt, suspicion, anger and moral outrage. Reagan brought stagecraft into American civic life. As a professional actor, he transformed politics into a glossy movie.

Now fast forward fifty years -- to the America of Oprah and the Internet. How is Sarah Palin marrying her medium with her message? When Americans watch Palin, they are staring into the mirror of reality television, of confessional talk shows, of our public cult of feeling and authenticity. Palin's family -- with its idyllic public face and its scandalous secrets -- is an always-on real-life version of King's Row. Fifty years ago, Hollywood was in the business of inventing reality; today, with the Sarah Palin Show, there's no need to invent the reality of doubt, suspicion, anger and moral outrage any longer. As Maureen Dowd suggests in today's Times, Palin's "stuff happens" reality is now flooding America:

Now reality, in all its messy, crazy, funky glory, has flooded the party, in the comely, crackling form of Sarah Palin.

As usual, Dowd is spot-on. Palin will marry her message and medium by crafting herself as a reality television star in American politics. Whereas Reagan hemed-and-hawed his way to President, expect Palin to bring the cathartic tools of participatory media to our "public" life. Her speech in Minneapolis tonight inaugerates the age of reality politics. No, she won't win in '08. But the Sarah Palin Show is the future, it's the natural sequel to the Ronald Reagan Show.

As the world sniggers

2008-09-02T19:19:19-07:00

The all-blue Cindy McCain is obviously not amused to be associated with such white trash.

The rest of the world, however, is having a lot of fun with the Palin soap opera. The BBC's Justin Webb has two words for us: Thomas Eagleton. Others are suggesting Tim Pawlenty as a band-aid. ABP should be the cry from the RNC -- Anyone But Palin.

Why are smart conservatives like Ross Douthat, Bill Kristol and David Brooks trying to intellectualize this one? Tell the truth, guys. McCain's Palin pick has set new low standards for political misjudgment. This week's Weekly Standard asks whether Palin is "the one we've been waiting for". Actually, she's the one that all Democrats have been waiting for since 2000. Historians will tell us that the Presidential election happened early in 2008. It was all over by the Monday after Labor Day weekend.

Politics as soap opera

2008-09-01T19:59:34-07:00

What can one expect from a Miss Alaska runner-up and now Vice-Presidential candidate who chose to name her children Bristol, Track, Trig, Willow and Piper? Live by the semantic sword, die by it too. If you call a girl Bristol, expect her to get seduced by every Tom, Dick and Levi in Alaska. That's about a close all you'll get to justice in an America where politics has become soap opera.

NY Times satirist Maureen Dowd, that faithful Catholic, is down on her knees praying that the McCain-Palin ticket comes in. Four years of columns about Track, Trig, Willow and Piper, not to mention Bristol and Levi shouid amply make up for Hillary's defeat. Given that Dowd gave Cheney the memorable name of Vice, what will she call Palin? Vicelette perhaps. Or Vicelite.

Meanwhile,the Democratic Yahweh, the stony Barack Obama, has refused to lower his all-too-serious self into this afternoon television drama. Shame on the Harvard law grad for his unbending dignity. He said the pregnancy “has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president....my mother had me when she was 18. How a family deals with issues and teen-age children — that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics.”

The perpetually pedagogical Obama -- all European opera and no American soap -- is wrong, of course. Everything (especially sex) is political and I wouldn't vote for Barack Obama's mother any more than I'd vote for the politically inexperienced Sarah or her more experienced teenage daughter Bristol. If the Bible thumpin' Sarah Palin couldn't stop Levi getting his dirty hands on her Bristol, then what hope is there for the rest of America -- especially since the enlightened Alaskan Governor is against all forms of sex education for adolescents. I fear there's going to be a lot of underage copulating if America elects Palin as its next Vicelette -- and, as a consequence, a lot of freshly minted little Tracks, Trigs, Willows, Pipers and Bristols bringing joy to their adolescent parents.

McCain blinks

2008-09-01T09:21:27-07:00

Bring back the real McCain pleads this week's Economist. But I'm afraid that, with the Palin pick, the old maverick McCain is finally dead and buried. He had the chance to stare down the Republican Christian right by choosing the intriguing if far-from-ideal Lieberman, but instead he blinked and went for bible-thumpin', pistol-packin' Sarah. Does he expect the world to laugh or cry at such a ludicrous choice? As an Englishman with American kids, I'm doing both simultaneously. This is what the Economist said about McCain before the Palin pick:

Hawkish foreign policy, irresponsible tax cuts, more talk about religion and abortion: all this sounds too much like Bush Three, the label the Democrats are trying to hang around the Republican’s neck. We preferred McCain One.

But McCain One is now ancient history. By allying himself so closely with the religious right and selecting a candidate so self-evidently unprepared for national office, McCain really is transforming himself into Bush Three. The decision is now in the hands of American voters and the choice couldn't be starker. Obama might be sanctimonious and Biden a windbag, but this highly team tower over the McCain-Palin ticket. Rather than being Moldova, Haiti or South Ossetia, America is a serious country with massive global influence and obligations. You can't elect a shot-gun wielding vice-president who questions Darwin and whose moral claim to fame is producing babies with Downs Syndrome. The Palin phenomenon -- with its populist cult of the ordinary -- is a shameful indictment of libertarian political culture in America. She's what you get when you continually chip away at the ideal of political authority, expertise and professionalism.

McCain claims to be an America patriot, but with this Palin pick, McCain is belittling America. An America with Sarah Palin as vice-president would confirm all the world's worst stereotypes about the United States and would do a profound injustice to this great country.

For whiners rather than winners

2008-08-29T07:54:34-07:00

Yes, of course it was a good speech. But I'm left with a nagging feeling that it was written for whiners rather than winners. Blame it perhaps on Springsteen, but the nationalist reactionary language of "Born in the USA" is an inauspicious way of introducing the first genuinely 21st century American President. Like the twenty year old song, the speech was neither modern nor bold ("Born to Run" would have been a much livelier warm-up). Only at the end -- when Obama reached his promised land of identity politics -- did the speech truly reflect the man.

The Democrats tried to appropriate brand America as the backdrop for the speech. Thus the mass of kitchy little flags and all the Las Vegas style imperial symbolism (Are We Rome Yet? -- Yes, We Are!). But the speech itself looked backwards rather than forwards. It spoke of the America of the 20th rather than the 21st century -- idealizing the mythological white working class America that is, for better or worse, shrinking by the minute. It was a speech over-dedicated to the America of laid off car workers and the other supposedly innocent victims of globalisation. For all the talk about America, it wasn't quite an American speech. It failed to paint the future cheerfully, expansively, as inevitably American. Peggy Noonen, who usually has a good feel for these sorts of unspoken Reaganesque details, suggested this morning:

And I'll tell you, Mr. Obama left a lot of space for Mr. McCain to play the happy warrior next week. He left the Republicans a big opportunity to wield against him, in contrast, humor, and wit, and even something approximating joy.

I fear she's right. And, if this morning's rumors are correct and McCain goes for Palin (or even Lieberman), the pedagogical Obama is suddenly going to look very earnest, very unamerican. There still too much Harvard Law School in his act. He's got to have a drink, loosen up and look like he's having fun. There was too much Hillary in the speech and not enough Bill. He needs to stop catering to all the narrow little interest groups within his party and joyfully seize the moment. As Springsteen wrote at the end of "Thunder Road", the most optimistic and cathartic American popular song of all time:

"So Mary climb in, it's a town for losers and I'm pulling out of here to win."

That's the real American journey. And Barack Obama hasn't got to the end of Thunder Road yet.

Knowing Obama

2008-08-28T09:05:07-07:00

Obama's biggest problem, the pundits parrot, is that Americans don't know him. The O is actually the ?:

"Is Obama more beer than Chardonnay? Is he a Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks guy? Must he talk fancy? Is he one of us despite having what his wife Michelle called “that funny name?”

So, they say, tonight offers the first opportunity for Americans to get to know their next President. It's the "stranger in a stadium's" first meeting with the American people --a physical date with 75,000 screaming fans in a middle American football stadium as well as a virtual date with an audience of hundreds of millions on television and the Internet. This is the standard version of America's first date/sermon with Obama:

"Barack Obama aims to weave the personal with the political Thursday as he explains to 75,000 supporters in a massive stadium — and millions more at home — how as president he would make a difference in their lives."

And it's wrong. You see, Americans do know Obama, they know him all-too-well. We told by the pundits that he has a "unique story" -- but actually his is the traditional American narrative, uniqueness universalized, as equally familiar to Thoreau and Emerson and as it is to Fitzgerald and DeLillo. He's a 21st century version of Gatsby, a chameleon, Schumpeter's ideal type, perpetual creative destruction personalized, who reflects both all our dreams and our nightmares about ourselves and America. He's done exactly what American collectively need to do -- changed, reinvented, retooled himself. He is the 21st century man, a self made man and his is the journey of a confident man. Obama is the future. He is what Americans need to become if they are to prosper in the global economy.

So the speech tonight in Denver is a necessary charade. Americans will pretend to meeting Obama for the first time. But, in spite of of their shy protestations, they all know the guy and we all know that they know him. In contrast, McCain -- with his nostalgic familiarity with a static, irrelevant history -- represents what we are escaping from. He stands for the obstinate past, everything comfortable, all that we need to forget.

Keen Kindle kontradiction

2008-08-27T10:59:23-07:00

Is Amazon's Kindle the next iPod? The signals are, at best, mixed. Techcrunch, Silicon Alley Insider and tech analysts like Mark Mahaney and Steven Weinstein have been playing a guessing game about the sales impact of Kindle -- bullishly suggesting that the product, like the iPod, is about to go mainstream and sell millions and millions of units by 2010, 2012 or some other tipping point in the misty future.

But as I argue in my Independent column this week, the cheerleading tech media hasn't been thinking about Amazon's e-book from the perspective of a bibliophile like myself. I'm the Keen Kindle Kontradiction -- the reason why I'm not bullish about Amazon's e-book. I'm a keen buyer of books, purchasing and reading around two hundred each year. I'm also a keen traveller, logging somewhere around 200,000 miles a year on airlines. And i'm a keen gadget geek too, taking with me on all my global trips an iPod, a World Edition BlackBerry 8830, a Canon S80 camera, an M-Audio Microtrack digital recorder, a JVC HD7 camcorder and various laptop computers. So, one would assume, I'm should also be a keen Kindle konsumer -- especially since nothing annoys me more than schlepping heavy books on and off planes and to and from airports.

But I'm not. I don't own a Kindle and have no intention of buying one. And that's because I'm a bibliophile. I love and collect hardback and softback books -- I buy them, read them (at least one or two pages), scribble in them, and then lovingly retire them to my groaning bookshelves as evidence of my immense erudition. And while I don't have a problem reading a digital book (the words are the same, after all), there is no way that I will go digital and stop buying physical books. And that's the current problem with the Kindle. Amazon's business model is that it forces me to an either/or decision. Take my Cult. For $9.99, I can buy the digital download of my book on Amazon or I can buy the physical paperbook for $11.20. But to get both, I have to spend $21.19. That's why I won't buy a Kindle. The analog book doesn't give me digital rights and I refuse the buy the identical product twice -- however impressed I am by its ergonomic elegance.

The reverse is true, of course, with music. When I buy a physical CD, I'm free to put its tracks on my iPod. And that's one of the main reasons why the iPod went from a nice-to-have to a must-have product. Until Amazon and the publishing industry offer bibliophiles like myself simultaneous digital and analog rights to purchased books, the Kindle will remain a very pale comparison to the iPod.