Posted By BillHeise on December 20, 2009

The Adam Lambert Problem

I found this on the Web today. In the article, subtitled “Wrong track” poll numbers aren’t just about the economy,” conservative commentator Peggy Noonan focuses on the sinking of Obama in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

It is another in a long trail of polls that show a clear if occasionally broken decline in American optimism. The poll was discussed on TV the other day, and everyone said those things everyone says: “People are afraid they’ll lose their jobs or their houses.” “It’s health care. Every uninsured person feels they’re one illness away from bankruptcy.”

“All too true,” she concludes.

But something tells me this isn’t all about money. It’s possible, and I can’t help but think likely, that the poll is also about other things, and maybe even primarily about other things.

She then deftly shifts the debate to the Culture War, focusing her (and the reader’s) attention on the “The Adam Lambert Problem.”

She outlines her view of America as a land of cultural compromises as defined by an anonymous conservative as being embodied in the phrase “We don’t care what you do in New York.” Adam Lambert, in her view, broke the barrier down.

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we’ve had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it’s your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family’s watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on and—again, in front of your children, in the living room, in the middle of your peaceful evening—uncorked an act in which he, in the words of various news reports the next day, performed “faux oral sex” featuring “S&M play,” “bondage gear,” “same-sex makeouts” and “walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash.”

Not So Fast, Peggy Noonan

Perhaps she has a point. But I think she’s missing part of the point herself.

Noonan is attempting to revise the Culture War. Noonan feels that Adam Lambert is New York, and by forcing our pure 8- and 11-year olds to be subjected to such a display as she describes, the networks have broken the longstanding agreement they have with the American People. The American people are not interested in Adam Lambert’s outrageous sexual acts. They are more interested in ogling Carrie Underwood.

This is not surprising. She has seen the success of Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. The Contract was universally dismissed as a Contract on America by the (so-called) “left wing media” before it won a stunning victory in 1994. [I remember hearing a dejected reporter referring to it as the “Contract on America” the night of the election. His co-anchor, realizing his mistake, said, “I suppose we should start calling it by its proper name at this point.”]

By reviving the Culture war meme- -I love that word- -Peggy Noonan was attempting to revive the flagging hopes of the Republican party. By posing the question as one of Adam Lambert vs. Carrie Underwood (or whoever you think that New York dismisses as one of the little people from “flyover country” (another great word), she hopes to give her party a push in the right direction.

Noonan is, of course, taking a majority position, a wise choice for a politician. But she (and not just she) thinks that the situation is the same as it was in 1994. It is not.

1994 v 2010

In 1994, the people had suffered under 40 years of one party rule. Corruption was rampant. The Contract with America was an attempt at honesty. The liberal left felt it was a cynical and surely dishonest attempt at taking advantage of the current chaos in Washington. One commentator summed it up as follows: “Give us a new beginning with any new wagon master – wherever he or she might be headed.”

This, in my opinion, is one of the chief weaknesses of political thought in general, whether of the liberal left or the conservative right. Each side set themselves up as the holders of truth and right in their opposition as merely unprincipled politicians who use idealistic rhetoric to mask their grasp for power. Neither side has to cooperate with the other, because the other side is not engaging in a serious debate.

The problem with running on a new Contract with America is that the people’s memory is not that short. The difference between 1994 and 2010 is that in 2010 we have had the experience of Republicans in Washington going bad. It’s only been two years since the K Street scandals that rocked Washington, DC.

The Sins of Barak

Barack Obama ran as a principled idealist who was opposing unprincipled politicians who use idealistic rhetoric to mask their grasp for power. But he is governing, as everyone governs, from a purely political position. This appeared in the news stories are governing his first year in office.

He is cutting deals with the Chinese at the climate conference in Copenhagen. He is taking advantage of enforcers like Al Franken in the Senate, who takes the unprecedented step of cutting off debate from a senior Senator. He has taken the unprecedented step of cutting off FoxNews from access to the White House. This, in turn, caused NPR to ask Mara Liasson to “reconsider” her position as a FoxNews contributor. Another group has placed a bounty on the leader of the Chamber of Commerce. And, of course, there is the ACORN scandal, which has brought even the The New York Times to admit that

for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still.

All these infractions can be explained by the age old “it’s-the-king’s-counselors-who-mislead-our-leader” defense, but the American people in general are not fooled and Obama is ruthless in cutting loose those of his supporters who have “mislead” him (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, ACORN).

But for some things he can’t slough off responsibility so easily. Chief among these is his push for healthcare, despite the fact that it regularly rates far behind the economy and jobs in recent polls taken of the American people. Even Ms. Noonan , in her “All too true” (quoted above) misses the fact that the issue is not all that important in the minds of the American people.

In those cases, he says that he is bringing about the change that Americans want and that change is hard. As true as this might be, he is also governing the country from his own idealistic representation of how it should be, and not how it actually is. He is governing against the wishes of the American people, which brings up the question of whether the American people or to a Harvard-educated leader knows best what the American people want.

The political motivation is masked to its supporters by the fact that they agree with the positions that the President is taking. It’s only the other guys, the opposition, who are acting in bad faith and whose motives do not need to be examined therefore. Our guys are well-intentioned, if sometimes mislead; our opponents always have bad intentions, and they could just be evil.

We elected Barak for change from the usual politics of George W. Bush. It’s as if we were saying “Give us a new beginning with any new wagon master – wherever he or she might be headed.” But Obama is governing from his principles (just like the Republicans governed from their principles after 1994) instead of focusing on the people’s business. In politics that is a recipe for disaster.

The Tea Baggers

The latest movement to come along in this environment is the Tea Party Movement, which the liberal media regularly refers to in a thoroughly disgusting BSDM reference as the Teabaggers. The people who showed up for these Tea Parties are people who remember the not-so-long-ago Republican disaster in Congress and don’t want to go back.

This is why I think Ms. Noonan is misled in her belief that the Republicans can recreate their success of 1994 in 2010. It’s a case of “Fool me once, more fool you; fool me twice, more fool me.” The Tea Party candidates recently polled above both Republicans and Democrats in recent poll. This suggests are looking for leaders who follow the will of the people, rather than using the people in their own cynical pursuit of power.

The media are attempting to figure out what this means by attempting to fit this round peg into their square “templates.” They are not having much success.

The problem for the now self-styled Teabaggers is that, should they conform to the media template, they will lose their populist appeal. They will have to enter into the “we are good; those who oppose us are bad” template that governs the coverage of the news is America.

A Zero Sum Game

Politics is a Zero Sum Game played with power relations. In the political system, power can be distributed to the individual, the family unit, or the state. Power taken by the state is taken from either the individual or the family unit.

In America today we have people who are quite committed to all three of these units as the primary locus of power. Conservatives tend to value individual freedom. Liberals tend to push power away from the weak individual into the collective state. Conservatives feel that unleashing a power of the individual, whether it’s on or in the larger marketplace, is where justice should reside. Liberals feel the natural balance of power should favor the state, not in all things, but in terms of regulation of the free market, where some people win and (most) people lose.

There is no answer to where power should finally rest. Any position relies on a person’s a priori construction of the problem. Such positions inevitably suppress the positions of others as much as they raise too high their own constructions. It is no use to simply go back and start over, as Derrida proposes. That position, too, is problematical.

Ms. Noonan should perhaps come to terms with the lessons from recent history, which is that government by the state grows no matter who’s in charge. Even the Teabaggers cannot stop the inevitable (slide/rise) of the state over the individual. “Power”, as Lord Acton said, “corrupts.”

Categories: Economics, In the News, Philosophy
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