The New York Times today published some ruminations -- by a professor -- of sociology! -- at Columbia -- on the absence of insurrection in America today. The sense of a sweaty brow relievedly wiped was palpable.
The learned Sudhir Venkatesh offered a number of hypotheses about why people aren't wild in the streets (yet). Maybe it's like the Thirties -- took a while then too. Or maybe it's suburbanization. Or maybe it's that damn Interraweb thang -- everybody's too busy emailing or texting or whatever. Or maybe it's debt -- everybody's just so ashamed.
Venko doesn't appear to prefer one of these answers to another. In fact the whole long 1240-word essay really says next to nothing. It's an amped-up version of the classic NY Times "on the one hand, on the other hand" song, performed by an octopus with eight hands. A learned octopus in a mortarboard.
I can't remember where I read it now, but in some story or other I think I recall the following exchange:
[young punk prof in a soft science]: "Of course, in a science like Sociology..."Venko's ruminations put me in mind of this exchange. Geez, what do we pay these guys for, if not to tell us when to fuel up the corporate jet and get out of Dodge? I mean, really -- the physicists can at least build us an H-bomb, fer Chrissake.[crusty old prof of physics, interrupting]: "There are no sciences like Sociology."
Having tried and tried, myself, to get into the Times' bully pulpit, with very intermittent and rare successes, I always wonder what catches the Opedsters' eyes about the twaddle they do publish.
Hmm. Here's Venko's peroration:
Fury, after all, can manifest itself in more productive ways than urban rioting or cable-TV ranting. Fury can inspire real protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, even good old-fashioned, town-hall meetings. That’s how we’ll recover our public life and perhaps help one another through this crisis — storming angrily into the streets and then, once we’re out there, actually talking to one another.People might get mad. They might even go out into the street! -- It's been known to happen. But with any luck at all, maybe they'll just... talk.
Comments (11)
Off topic, probably, but I have to post this right now, from American Leftist:
"Liberals have centered their case for governance upon such elitism for many years . . it has the redeeming feature of allowing liberals to compete for political power without threatening entrenched interests with dramatic changes in policy."
The elitism mentioned refers to the liberal's claim to be smarter, more careful, more procedurally sophisticated, than the red-meat-eating conservatives. We don't just throw our women into bed -- we talk them into it!
Posted by senecal | March 30, 2009 8:41 AM
Posted on March 30, 2009 08:41
The fate of liberals do who propose and pursue dramatic changes is instructive for the rest. The liberal hive mind stirs into action and sends flying monkeys to shriek the Holy Proprieties of Liberalism at them, until their ears bleed.
I used to pass a few every day, on the way to work. There they'd be, lying on the sidewalk, blood slowly trickling from their ears, a glazed look in their eyes. The perpetrators wore tweed jackets and mortar boards -- gang costume, I assume -- and called themselves Overton's Enforcers.
"You shouldn't have bothered Mr & Mrs Swing Voter, see? We don't like doing this, but you forced our hand."
I tried to help their victims, but it got very creepy when the poor, abused liberals would snarl and grit out, "Thanks.... Ralph..."
Posted by Al Schumann | March 30, 2009 11:37 AM
Posted on March 30, 2009 11:37
So, Mr. Smith, you have published op-ed pieces in the Times? I'm intrigued. Can you furnish the links for your collected op-ed works?
Thanks,
Van
Posted by Van Mungo | March 30, 2009 2:01 PM
Posted on March 30, 2009 14:01
Venko forgot gumption. Good old-fashioned gumption.
Posted by Peter | March 30, 2009 2:33 PM
Posted on March 30, 2009 14:33
v mungo
i don't know about father smiff's archives
but i got mine for ya ... right here...
Posted by op | March 30, 2009 4:12 PM
Posted on March 30, 2009 16:12
Professor Paine, meet Professor Irwin Corey. I'm sure he hasn't broken into print on the NYT op-ed page either, alas.
Posted by Van Mungo | March 30, 2009 6:33 PM
Posted on March 30, 2009 18:33
It's truly amazing -- and a little bit amusing -- to see some overeducated schmuck from the NYT blowing all that real estate explaining why Americans aren't out pitching a bitch in the streets when that question can be answered in three words:
AMERICANS. ARE. PUSSIES.
Aside from the Steelworkers' and anarchists' contingents at the '99 Seattle/WTO mobe and a few scattered Black Blocs at a few subsequent antiglob mobes, Americans have become a bunch of Twittering, blogging, YouTubing, TV-watching, pasty, fat-assed, molding-themselves-to-their-Barcoloungers-
until-they-resemble-Soyuz-custom-molded-seat-liners, waiting-for-someone-else-to-do-their-job, mealy-mouthed, milquetoast namby-pambies. We've gone from a generation unafraid to -- horrors -- march and rally without permits and fight the cops in the streets and destroy draft-board offices to a bunch of cowed, intimidated, permit-negotiating-with-the-cops, pointless-symbolic-CD-staging, Gandhi-worshipping, sweetness-and-light, kumbayah-singing pussies who think that "taking action" involves slapping a "Free Tibet" sticker on their cars, screwing in a few "green" light bulbs, mailing checks to PBS, and reading The Nation while they're taking a dump. And, more's the pity.
It's gotten so I'm embarassed to be a member of The Movement™ in this goddamn' country. (Yeah, I know -- what Movement?)
Posted by Mike Flugennock | March 31, 2009 9:10 AM
Posted on March 31, 2009 09:10
Mike, you know the liberal guise so well, in such breathing detail, can I conclude that you might be "one of them" in recovery?
I screamed at "the pigs" and spent a few nights in jail in the glorious seventies, but in the end feel like we were all patsies.
It could be different, this time around.
Posted by senecal | March 31, 2009 10:32 AM
Posted on March 31, 2009 10:32
Ah, Floogs, dude, about all that killing everybody public executions style and all of us being "pussies" and the rest, and the big tough talk and the let's kill and bomb and berate - dude, that's the other side who sounds like that. The sixties killing talk didn't work then, and we aren't Navy Seals now. In a fight, we'd get slaughtered. Butchered, like the German trade unionists of the past.
Posted by mjosef | March 31, 2009 7:12 PM
Posted on March 31, 2009 19:12
"The sixties killing talk didn't work then, and we aren't Navy Seals now. In a fight, we'd get slaughtered. Butchered, like the German trade unionists of the past."
u forget billie jack
Posted by op | April 1, 2009 7:40 AM
Posted on April 1, 2009 07:40
(a) i remembered i made a list of sociothingies and (b) remembered to bring it over here and (c) found one already made!
in two sections. "americans":
and "us":
ok for fun here's my list, it's a month old.
of course i was more on to the bigger cleaning job, it being tougher and sadder to tear up the roads than the derivatives contracts and insurance policies.
Posted by hapa | April 1, 2009 6:14 PM
Posted on April 1, 2009 18:14