Do We Need Glenn Beck To Help Us Understand Political Self-Dealing?
If I understand Matt’s defense of Reihan Salam’s “Glenn Beck is the new Malcolm X” piece correctly, he seems to be arguing that we should ignore the offensively silly framing device and instead focus on the highly banal points about America’s changing demographics. Fair enough, I guess, but I still don’t see what’s new about demagogues appealing to reactionary white people or how this specifically illuminates Beck. In particular, the opposition of older people to the new health care bill says very little about changing demographics or Beck, but is just straightforward “I’ve got mine *^$# you” politics that is as old as the hills and would exist even if the country’s other racial and cultural demographics weren’t changing. If conservative older Americans were in favor of abandoning their own taxpayer-funded healthcare I might buy “nostalgia politics” as the primary motivating force, but of course they don’t. The tendency to act in one’s political self-interest is universal, not particular, and affluent old white people being conservative isn’t exactly a new phenomenon crying out for explanations.
Hear, hear. “Fuck you, I’ve got mine” is indeed at the core of Tea Party thought, and I’ve long wished the media would simply (accurately) portray it as such instead of getting lost in the more subjective quandaries of how crazy/racist/old/white the group is. In the summer of 2009, you had an enraged group of people with health insurance, by and large, protesting a plan to extend health insurance coverage to many more people. This sort of description didn’t exactly penetrate the regular media very often; instead you had deep thinkers explaining how it’s tough to do health reform when 85% of the public is insured and those people feel like they don’t get anything out of it (even though that was inaccurate too).
What I’m not seeing in the discussion of Beck’s rally is any discussion of how its religiosity ties in with the concurrent notion that Obama– and by extention his administration’s policies– are not legitimately American. I’d have thought somebody would pick up on it, but it seems as though the commentators that one might expect to make the connection were caught flat-footed by the revival meeting rhetoric of the thing, and don’t want to appear intolerant.
But simple contradictions are so contemplated!
I mean, it’s easier to let Tea Dullards spew on about “LOWER TAXES” and “NO DEFICITS” simultaneously.
After all, the media still use the term “fiscal conservative” without a hint of irony.
Glenn beck is actually the new Father Coughlin for the old entitled white guys.
Well, once again my opinion of Matthew Yglesias is lowered.
Me, I love the “Glenn Beck is the new Malcolm X” part. It’s a very creative and well formed example of the internet’s oldest art form, trolling.
It’s something most right wingers wouldn’t have come up with and it’s guaranteed to piss off just about everybody.
The thing is, the rest of the article is incredibly snoozeworthy, both in substance and style. I thought Salam was a hilarious agent provocateur, but after reading the article I’m trying to decide if he’s just incredibly earnest and ignorant or if he’s fallen off into the Jonah Goldberg/Powerline pit of despair, where you can force him to write a political article, but you can’t force him to do a good job.
And Matthew Yglesias’ complaint is that it wasn’t boring enough.
Imagine how elderly viewers of Glenn Beck must feel when they accidentally catch themselves watching an episode of Jersey Shore.
Well, I’m 52, not exactly elderly, but probably smack dab in the middle of the Beck demographic. And yet I have no problem accepting our new multi-culti overlords. I suppose that it’s OK for Salam to stereotype people of my generation and beyond as bigoted, angry white homophobes, but I have a feeling that we’re more diverse than either he or Yglesias believe (case in point: my wife’s 80-year-old aunt, a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and liberal fascist).
The sliver of us that is the Tea Party is angry…about…something, and That Black Man in the White House is as good a target as any, and FOX, Beck, Palin and the rest are doing a fine job of focusing that anger at the multi-ethnic horde who are taking over America, and away from the plutocrats who actually deserve it.
In my emerging role as internet cranky old guy, I find most annoying the fact that young, sharp pundits (like MY) seem to see every ancient political dynamic as something really new and different because it plays out on the Intertoobz.
Now, about my lawn…
Yglesias may be young, but like many of those who have managed to secure prime real estate on the intertubes he clearly identifies with the oligarchs, and wants them to know he isn’t a threat to the established order. See McArdle, Megan and Douthat, Ross for slightly more extreme examples.