Born At The Right(?) Time

Me and my buddies we are travelling people
We like to go down to restaurant row
Spend those Euro-dollars
All the way from Washington to Tokyo
I see them in the airport lounge
Upon their mother's breast
They follow me with open eyes
Their uninvited guest

Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time

(Paul Simon, Born at the Right Time)

Peggy Noonan observes that The New Republic's cheerful acceptance and publication of the "Scott Thomas" stories casts quite a lot of light on how the editors view the world. Through Hollywood-tinted glasses:

On the Thomas stories, which I read not when they came out but when they began to come under scrutiny, I had a similar thought, or a variation of it. I thought: That's not Iraq, that's a Vietnam War movie. That's not life as it's being lived on the ground right now, that's life as an editor absorbed it through media. That's the dark world of Kubrick and Coppola and Oliver Stone, of the great Vietnam movies of the '70s and '80s.

If that's what you absorbed during the past 20 or 30 years, it just might make sense to you, it would actually seem believable, if a fellow in Iraq wrote for you about taunting scarred women, shooting dogs, and wearing skulls as helmets. This is the offhand brutality of war. You know. You saw it in a movie.

If you'd had a broader array of references, and were less preoccupied by the media that is the great occupying force in our own country, and you were the editor of the Thomas pieces, you might have said, "Whoa." Just whoa.

Noonan speculates on how this came to pass:

I'll jump here, or lurch I suppose, to something I am concerned about that I think I am observing accurately. It has to do with what sometimes seems to me to be the limited lives that have been or are being lived by the rising generation of American professionals in the arts, journalism, academia and business. They have had good lives, happy lives, but there is a sense with some of them that they didn't so much live it as view it. That they learned too much from media and not enough from life's difficulties. That they saw much of what they know in a film or play and picked up all the memes and themes.

In terms of personal difficulties, they seem to have had less real-life experience, or rather different experiences, than their rougher predecessors. They grew up affluent in a city or suburb, cosseted in material terms, and generally directed toward academic and material success. Their lives seem to have been not crowded or fearful, but relatively peaceful, at least until September 2001, which was very hard.

But this new leadership class, those roughly 35 to 40, grew up in a time when media dominated all. They studied, they entered a top-tier college, and then on to Washington or New York or Los Angeles. But their knowledge, their experience, is necessarily circumscribed. Too much is abstract to them, or symbolic. The education establishment did them few favors. They didn't have to read Dostoevsky, they had to read critiques and deconstruction of Dostoevsky.

It is also something I have long suspected. This post from Huffington Post by Sean Daniels illustrates it perfectly:

What really happened at Animal House? Delta Tau Chi or Delta House as its members called it was a place where everyone was welcome. People of all races and religions were embraced as was made clear when John Blutarsky welcomed freshmen Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman after they had been summarily dismissed from Omega House. They were invited in to a party and offered refreshment and friendship. At no time were they subjected to any of the practices that came to light at Abu Ghraib……..

…….What happened in 1962 on the Faber campus should be remembered as a time when freedom loving individuals came together to defend the beliefs that they stood for.

But the fact is, of course, that nothing happened at Faber College in 1962 - or ever - because it is fictional. It is nothing more than a movie script. But that is not the way Daniels presents it. He states it as fact (and no, it isn't cherry-picked out of context). Is this, then, where the departure in world views is coming from? Children of privilege who have "Never been lonely, never been lied to, never had to scuffle in fear, nothing denied to" versus people who have had the opposite experiences? Is it that simple? Of course, it isn't going to apply universally there would be exceptions on either side of the divide. But is that where at least a good portion of it is coming from?

Noonan suspects so. As do I.

• 

  By Lars Walker, Friday, 26 October , 2007 @ 2:47 pm

  I like this train of thought. Another thing to remember about “Animal House” (or most any other movie) is how one-sided it is. The Delta House boys were good, in every way that mattered to the viewer (who hadn’t come to the theater to think). The Omegas were purely evil. They couldn’t argue their side–they weren’t even given a side to argue. They were straw men, set up to give us somebody to hate, so we could rejoice in their demise.

  Even a movie like “Braveheart” is the same. To judge from Gibson’s movie, the Scots were peace-loving people who would never have gone to war if it hadn’t been for the aggression of those evil English. The facts of history are far different, the actual issues far murkier.

  The Baby Boomer thinks he’s broadminded, but he’s actually used to thinking in White Hat/Black Hat terms. The powerful are always evil. The poor are always good. The weaker side is always in the right. Because such thinking puts the Boomer in opposition to his own culture, he congratulates himself with his openmindedness. But being prejudiced against one’s own side is still a prejudice. His thinking ultimately springs from Marx, who had no concern for right or wrong, only the distribution of wealth.

• 

  By Kathy, Friday, 26 October , 2007 @ 5:20 pm

  Actually, I think it is the product of prosperity not earned, spoon fed high esteem and a failed education system. Having been taught to regurgitate rather than formulate, logical evaluation of liberal concepts are performed perfunctorily, satisfying an ideological criteria being the ultimate benchmark.

  Life then becomes school writ large, and since the student was an observer rather than participant of his own success, he continues removed from any prejudice of self preservation, taking the side that will remove from him the wealth he so richly does not deserve.

• 

  By Andrew X, Friday, 26 October , 2007 @ 6:34 pm

  It’s funny how topics that seem to have no realationship are in fact linked by their underlying philosophies. I posted this comment over at the inestimable Captains Quarters post on of all things, the ‘Jena 6′ case in Louisiana, but it seems just as appropriate here, in respect to the creation of conflict and the magnification of real or perceived problems only so one can “heroically” confront them on the side of the angels, done by those have “never been lonely, never been lied to, never had to scuffle in fear, nothing denied to” –

  –

  I paraphrase from memory a statement made by a young black person who traveled to Jena (with thousands of others) for the Sharpton / Jackson rally etc etc.

  He (basically) said: “I have only read about my parents and grandparents marching for civil rights. Now I have a chance to participate in something like that and experience what they did”. (Or words to that effect.)

  This statement really rocked me, because of how much it illuminates the entire cultural divide over not just race, but politics, Iraq, everything.

  Note that this was his “chance”. “Now is my chance…” means a GOOD thing. My chance for a promotion, my chance to get the girl, my chance to get rich, etc etc. No one speaks of my chance to get fired, my chance to break my leg…

  For for this young man speaking about Jena… for him, these “racist” events, it was a GOOD thing, a wonderful opportunity, a chance to “experience” something….

  Note this has NOTHING to do with what did or did not actually happen in Jena. Such things are in fact irrelevant. This rally may have FELT to him like it was about the black community confronting racism, but in fact it was ALL about him and how he “felt”.

  Feeling good above all else, and I do mean all else.

  How many march against Iraq for the exact same reasons? How many vote for the exact same reasons? How many rage against Bush / Cheney / Rove for the exact same reasons? How many journalists, in Jena, in Durham, in Baghdad, write and report what they do for the exact same reasons?

  They don’t even make a better world, they just “feel” that they do, and that is not just satisfactory, but the entire orgasmic climax to what they do and why.

  And so the “narrative” marches on, utterly oblivious and uncaring about the facts on the ground.

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