Excitable Media: Real: My Kingdom for a Soapbox

The Political Greenhouse Effect

If you're like me you've glanced at the paper sometime in the past few months. You've probably noticed that the political season is heating up like high school love, as Jim Hightower likes to say, and heck, it's Saint Valentine's Day so there's no incongruity there. And if you're really like me, you also spend hours every day listening to the radio while reading the paper by the light of the TV, searching for that one little byte of information that could right the wrongs, stopper the leaks, spackle the cracks in the great plaster wall of American democracy. And if you're really, really like me you're starting to get a serious case of media nausea. I can at this very moment feel a fermentation of the bowels. Hell, I can hear it quite audibly, tumbling and grumbling: "left and right and wrong and right and left and wrong and right..."

Sure I know all this politics business is important, but that doesn't change the fact that there are still seven whole calendar months until Election day, and …well, just pause what you're doing for a second and think ahead to the political conventions. Imagine the Democrats in Boston and the Republicans spending September 11th on a cruise ship in New York City. Think of the sheer volume of rah-rah boosterism that'll

Destroy toy Tokyo

be on the menu, and try and tell me you're not dreading the divisiveness and condescension lurking like Godzilla just over the horizon. Now if you're 100% like me, you're waking up at three AM, wondering: Has it always been this way? Was political wrangling always this bitter, or are we becoming more partisan than ever before? Here in Minnesota, local politics has reached higher levels of nastiness during the past few years than any time in the past half-century, and I think the same must be true in Washington. At least on the surface, we really, truly hate each other.

The reason my election fatigue has ratcheted all the way up to 'near-constant sigh' is that it's almost a year to the day since Colin Powell gave his famous UN speech, you know, the one that was made up? Just the other day I saw for the first time in a while some demonstrators standing on the corner of Summit and Snelling Avenues, and it gave me those warm fuzzy memories of 2003 when everyone and their mother was gathering on bridges and intersections all through the TC waving flags and Iraq signs and watching helplessly as cars spit mud at their feet. And now when I see the diehards, I just keep thinking about the dearth of opportunities for political speech. I don't mean to dissuade any placard-bearers, but frankly, a road-side sandwich board is ineffective activism. What do the sidewalk signbearers hope to gain by standing like hitchikers while commuters rock out to ABBA behind their Camry windows? At best, with luck, someone will honk a horn, and even then it might just be the road rage talking.

Organizing Structures

When I was an undergraduate, even on my staunchly apolitical campus, organizing was so much easier than it is now in the real world. We had a system called "tabling" where, if you wanted to get people involved in some activity (e.g. drinking, soupkitchens), all you had to do was set up a card table in the mailroom, and if

You see Berkeley
(Is that Sarah Humpage?)

you stood at your table with a flyer and a smile, before you knew it you'd have a long list of names and numbers and you'd be in business. I'm sure every college has a similar sort of idea bazaar, and this has to be one of the main reasons why college students have traditionally been on the cutting edge of political change.

In fact, this summer, post-war, I was in Berlin, Germany enjoying myself during the great European heat wave of '03. I remember one day where I was sitting in the hot sun drinking a cup of milchkaffe, surrounded by German people, when I glimpsed a couple of youth-types setting up a card table on the sidewalk across the street from the Prinzlauerberg train station. They placed some papers on the table, took out a megaphone, and created their own little soapbox from which they addressed the public like a pair of Fuhrers. As I watched them, not understanding a word they were saying, I remember being impressed by how similar their process was to the tabling model I remember from college. They walked off in about an hour, and at least in Berlin, political organizing is easier than it is here in America. People that want to engage the public can just set up on the street and wait for the world to walk on by.

Sure I'm historically naļve, but I've convinced myself that the days of yore presented more opportunity for public soapbox organizing. I also believe that it was this infrastructural difference that enabled the great democratic movements of our time. You know: Prohibition… The Repeal of Prohibition… Civil Rights… Democracy grew out of our public parks and places like Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park, which was (and is) known throughout the city as the place to hear a good rant. These public places were the norm in America, and in in places like New York City the streets are still paved with soapboxes. Not only does the Big Apple have bustling hives like Times Square, where "The Naked Cowboy" plays his guitar daily on the island median, but every train station, busy intersection, or park throughout New York becomes a platform for the assorted axe grinders and panhandlers, many of whom have

Speakin'

just been released from Bellevue. I don't want to glorify the past, but at least back then people could gather and self-structure themselves into effective groups on their own.

New York, Chicago, and San Francisco aside, most American cities don't allow for this kind of group-oriented political activity anymore. Here in the Twin Cities, my hometowns, I can't think of a single place where you could set up a table and hope to get any mass of people as an audience, except of course for the annual State Fair, which is only 2 weeks out of the year and doesn't count. Public soapboxes are few and far between, but when they do emerge they're taken advantage of almost immediately. For example, each time I go to a ballgame at the HHH Metrodome, I leave to the sweet sounds of hellfire and brimstone thanks to some old religious guy standing on a concrete block and ranting to the crowd about the evil of Satan.

Political activity goes to where the people are, and now that people are always in their cars, activists end up on roadsides and bridges and heavily-trafficed intersections, where they're reduced to the rhetorical equivalent of bumper stickers.

Consumption vs. Empowerment

Here's an anecdote: A few months ago I was at home cooking dinner during a particularly cold winter night when the doorbell rang, and on my porch I found a young woman from the HRC, a GLBT political advocacy group. After she asked me for the money I don't have, she gave a smile and some information about how to help their cause, which I happily took. Since then I've been on their email listserver, making regular suggestions to my congresspeople. So that's a heartwarming story, but it only had a happy ending because I was waiting for a potato to bake, and so didn't mind killing time listening to a spiel. Having

It was delicious

gone door to door myself during political campaigns, I really didn't envy her job. I know how people usually react when you ring their doorbell: You almost always get a glare, unless it's Halloween, where instead you get candy. Like it or not, you become a modern day Fuller brush salesman.

As bad as these travelling political salespeople have it, the other campaigning approach is even worse: namely, telemarketing. Again, back when I was a volunteer, I spent a bit of time on the phone banks calling people up and asking for money or time or votes for candidate X, and we all know that telephones bring out the worst in people.

I don't want to argue about whether or not these kinds of political organizing are good or bad, because much of the time they actually work out quite nicely, and I'm certain that these reach-out methods are more effective than waving signs from an interstate overpass. But what

Modern soapbox

concerns me is that political organizers have adopted as their only avenues the very tactics traditionally used by corporate marketing departments, and at least symbolically this makes political volunteers seem like they're out to sell something. It tranforms voters into consumers, and tranforms political activists into "Ron" from Ronco, selling Democracy™ in just three easy payments of $19.99. But wait there's more…

What we're talking about here is the attitude behind grassroots organizing. The more that political activism becomes associated with consumption and salesmanship, the more it alienates the public, the very people you're trying to politically engage in the first place. Imagine for a second that you're one of the vaunted swing voters, a working parent w/two kids and very little time for issues, although you do want to get informed and make a good voting decision. There's a crucial difference b/w (1) passive political engagement, i.e. getting a phone call from some political phonebank denzien trying to keep you on the line and sway your vote, and (2) an active political engagement, i.e. grabbing and reading a brochure or attending a live discussion about some issue at some sort of public venue. It's like the grammatical difference b/w passive and active voices, and has to do w/the way in which involvement occurs. When a person actively makes a political decision, s/he gains a measure of agency/dignity/self-determination, and that fosters democracy. On the other hand, when democratic engagement assumes the guise of marketing, I am convinced that it leaves people feeling powerless, no matter how noble the cause.

Madison Avenues of Political Dialogue

Nowadays, the only way most people get information is through the mainstream media avenues of television and radio, and maybe the newspaper. In the old days "getting political information through mainstream media" would mean watching Walter Cronkite and a guest discuss the political convention, watching the debates, or watching David Brinkley read a news story. But today, it will surprise nobody that political information comes in the form of the paid political advertisement.

JFK's first TV gig

Right around this time of year I become even more thankful than usual that I don't live in Iowa, where I would have had to endure the 100-year flood of political advertising that made up their primary. Of course, nobody with a TV is ever really safe, and I'm sure that the ad tidal wave will be here soon.

There are lots of problems with relying on TV ads for political information, and that's a topic for another day. (A short list would include: there's no accountability, censorship is completely legal, they're expensive, ads are always short, and ad profits go to media companies who are supposed to be the sole source of objective analysis.) For now, though, just know that the triumph of advertising creates a symbolic bond b/w voting and consumption, and that this symbolic bond minimizes the decision we make as voters. Political advertising transforms the choice b/w Democrat and Republican into a Coke vs. Pepsi brand-identification decision, and compared to the active engagement that real-life soapbox encounters provide, this makes today's brand of politics kiddie-pool shallow.

The Sub/Urban Schism

Two issues ago, the traditionally-conservative-but-now-liberal-compared-to-Dick-Cheney Economist magazine published an article on the schism in the American political landscape between urban and suburban districts. The columnist concluded, in traditional Economist fashion:

You've seen this before

"But if the Democratic Party as a whole is not necessarily doomed in suburban America, the San Francisco version of the party assuredly is. Democrats can survive in the land of mega malls only if they make their peace with mainstream America-if, that is, they adjust to the priorities of people who own their own homes and go to church on Sunday.

It is possible to imagine voters in [suburban] districts such as [House Speaker] Mr. Hastert's returning a Democrat. But it is impossible to imagine them sending their sympathies to the French consulate during the recent row between America and France, or tolerating an invasion of beggars. Whether America becomes more Republican is debatable; there seems little doubt that it will become more conservative, and less cosmopolitan. In the long term that may have more profound implications for America's relations with the rest of the world than any little disagreement about Iraq."

Horrifying rhetoric aside, this article's point should be well heeded. The recent redistricting snafus in Pennsyvania, Texas and many other states illuminate the cultural divide that exists in American politics today. Like it or not, the right has embraced the kind of brand-driven politics that plays well in the suburbs, whereas the left has relied much more on the kinds of active, soapbox organizing that can only work in the denser cities.

The point I am trying so longwindedly to make here is that urban and suburban infrastructures are also political infrastructures. The fact that the core cities are so heavily liberal, and the outer suburbs so heavily conservative, has a lot to do with the kinds of political speech that can occur in each environment, and in the suburbs where public space has gone the way of the dodo, political branding is the trump card. The good news for the Democrats is that American cities have rebounded strongly from the urban nadir that was the 1970's, and that the young people living in cities and college towns all across America may well become a core constintuency. The bad news, however, is worse: all projections agree that most of the growth in American metro areas will occur in the suburbs, way way out in commuter-ville. And in order to regain a measure of governmental control, the Democratic party is going to have to aggresively counter the right's media echo chamber, and somehow try and stop the gradual erosion of public political discourse in the American media.

The Importance of Structural Reform

The good old days

The current political situation really puts the Democrats in a tight bind, because first they have to start winning elections. This should be possible, because, especially on issues like environmentalism and social liberalism, they represent overwhelmingly popular positions. But they need to try and foster political support while simultaneoulsy engaging more people into the political process, w/out committing the cardinal sin of "cheapening the conversation" and turning people off politics altogether. In other words, they can't win a cynicism pissing contest with Newt Gingrich. It's possible to do both, and Howard Dean's recent internet-fueled explosion provides a powerful model for how to engage people in an active way while simultaneously projecting a powerful image/message for the mainstrean. Ironically for the left, keeping it real means embracing the artifical. We must learn to love all the McHouses and mega malls that cling to our interstates like so many boxy barnacles.

That's the short term political scenario, and it's a fine line to walk. But, over the long term, there are two broad policy planks that emerge from the current media/political landscape. The first is media reform, which has been a hot issue during the last congressional session, thanks to an unlikely coalition of the NRA and the conservative christians on the one hand, and the labor unions and the watchdogs on the other. Following hot on the heels of Clinton's 1997 degregulation, Bush recently tried (and it looks like he'll succeed) to raise the market ownership cap. Making sure that media outlets remain diverse and competitive is vital.

The second goal should be encouraging and maintaining public areas within our cities and suburbs. The left needs to defend parks and libraries, streets, public plazas, and message boards wherever they exist, and make sure that, as much as possible, these kinds of places get built in burgeoning suburbs.

The best thing about Bedford Ave.

One thing's for sure: the democrats will never out-stoop the Bush white house when it comes to political manouvering, and maybe the silver lining w/Bush is that he proves there's still some low ground beneath Terry McAuliffe's ever-sinking feet. Remember what former Bush official John DiIulio said in 2002:

"There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything-and I mean everything-being run by the political arm. Everything-and I mean everything-is being run by the Mayberry Machiavellis. "

Given how senile (really old, almost dumbfounded) Bush has looked lately on TV, I have a lot of faith in people to not vote for him. Well, actually I have a very slight amount of faith... but after that last election, and how slim the marigins of victory have become, I'm feeling optimistic. Of course, that only means that we'll be seeing a lot of negative desperation, because Bush has a great gobs of advertising money. This might be a good time to take a six month vacation to the South Seas. You know, do some anthropology or something.