Here.
A visual representation of analytic philosophy: an open box. Because analytic philosophy is unpacking concepts. Get it? Yeah...
In recent news: The Washington Post is annoying. Two items of note. The first, "Who's more Red, White, and Blue Collar" (here) is an unfailingly inane description of the political process framed in terms of "ordinariness":
The presidential race has turned into a riveting competition for ordinariness, as both campaigns have concluded that whoever does a better job of winning over voters like Winschief--an average blue-collar man in an average American town of 60,000--is more likely to triumph in Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
Identifying with the common man has been a requisite in presidential elections for almost two centuries. But the stakes are especially high in a race largely defined by an economic crisis, and campaign experts say the candidates have gone especially far in their appeals.
At least, I suppose, the author admitted that he was defining "ordinariness" as an average blue-collar man in an average American town of 60,000. For the record, this isn't necessarily normal. But by couching it as such, The Post is playing into a typically white-bred and fictitious myth: namely, that blue-collar, bowling men are real, ordinary men and others are either effeminate, faggoty elitists or dirty minorities.
Perhaps that's a touch on the strong side, but it isn't unwarranted. I, first of all, enjoy the irony of an undoubtedly well-educated media elite proclaiming that he isn't ordinary. But what I love more is the implication that this is somehow a deservingly unprivileged demographic, one who, by nature of their ordinariness, deserves pandering, whereas, when pandering to other groups, one is elitist and out-of-touch.
This is how a rich white woman became the populist, working-class hero, while the black man, son of an immigrant, who just finished paying down college loans became the out-of-touch effeminate fop.
The Post, not content to just play into one idiotic narrative today, also--probably inadvertently--proved my point by writing a novel and reporting their own analysis of it (to paraphrase Elizabeth Edwards). From "Eight Questions About Today's Primaries," (h/t kid oakland) (here) the author writes:
Barack Obama dealt forcefully with the issue last Tuesday, breaking with his former pastor and denouncing his words in strong language. Many Democrats think he's done the best he can for now, and even prominent Clinton supporters say they doubt that the relationship between Obama and the minister will have much impact on Democratic voters.
Some Democrats think this is now largely a media-driven story[.]
I'm going to break this down. Obama has dealt with the issue, and some think it's a media-driven story. Okay. Want some evidence it's a media-driven story? This article makes no--repeat no--new claims about the Wright business; it says that Democrats think it's media-driven and Republicans are going to try to keep it that way. So the news here is...
I'm stumped to. It seems to me like the author thinks this is important and so he went out and got interviews with people who disagreed over whether or not Wright would effect Obama. They wrote this story; they reported day in and day out over the Wright-Obama connection, then, when Obama "dealt with the issue," they persist in analyzing their coverage, as if their own navel-gazing might somehow be mistaken for real news by their readers.
The second bit of news for the day is the take-down (by digby, here.) of a particularly stupid story in Vanity Fair:
Politics is now about sex. Not just scandalous sex, not just who is having what kind of sex, but what we think about the sex each politician is having, or not having. Sex (sex, not gender) in politics is as significant a subtext as race...
We want to know. That’s a big part of Bill Clinton’s legacy: there’s always a sexual explanation. We’re savvy. Sex completes the picture—it explains so much. Tim Russert and other Sunday-talk-show hosts might maintain the illusion that politics is, or should be, a formal dialogue about impersonal issues, with sex only a topic of surprise, scandal, and shocked-shockedness, but in real life everybody is constantly and openly speculating on the sexual nature and needs and eccentricities of every rising and demanding political personality.
To reiterate a point made elsewhere (here and here), not "everybody is constantly and openly speculating on the sexual nature and needs and eccentricities of every rising and demanding political personality." Really, I've maybe speculated twice or three times: once to say that "wouldn't it be funny if Hillary were sleeping with a hot, young male intern," once again when I suggested that Spitzer mostly cried with his prostitutes, and one last time when I brought up the sexual repression felt by many conservatives might express itself in a somewhat kinky fashion. The majority of my political discussions--the vast majority of them, in fact--revolve around the media's dumb-ass coverage (like this dumb-ass piece) and, you know, the issues.
I'll let Lance Mannion close for me:
[T]he National Press Corps covers politics as if they are writing a novel and interpreting that novel at the same time. Which means they are treating politicians as if they were fictional characters.
And with fictional characters, sex does explain everything.
Ask Hamlet.
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