Strata Lucida reader Marcus sent a great response to Saturday's post. He followed the Urban Archipelago link and got irritated enough to rant at the editors of that site:
Brilliant. We progressives are so hopping mad about the election that we've hit on a new strategy: bigotry. It works for the other guys, doesn't it? Relying on crude stereotypes ("fat," "rube," "Christian"), we drive a bulldozer over complex cultural and class issues by demonizing some caricatured Other as the scapegoat for our discontent.I dunno. Sounds pretty provincial to me.
Good thing thinkers like Thomas Frank haven't been suckered by the whole mainstream media red-state/blue-state whitewash. Guess you've been too busy listening to Le Tigre on your iPods while sipping soy lattes and building your Art Car for scooting around out on the playa next year.
See how easy it is?
When you allow the Republicans to dictate the terms of the debate (rural vs. urban, religious vs. secular, American vs. un-American), you've already lost. Calm down, Beavis, and try again -- maybe a little less reactionary next time.
I realize people are pissed about the election. But to resort to that level of full-on prejudice blew me away. I guess some on the Left say we need our own Rush Limbaugh. I always thought the point of being a liberal was being proud that we didn't.
Amen, brother.
Posted by Chris at November 29, 2004 10:45 AMI have to wonder when listening to Randy Rhodes on Air America. She's about as close as the left has to a Rush parallel (is she "tantamount" to Rush?); sometimes sharp, sometimes nearly incoherent, spooks behind every tree, whiny, irascible... the only difference is that I agree with her more often than not. But in Monday's diatribe about an RNC figurehead recently outed as having been trawling for bareback multiple-partner sex on gay.com, she came dangerously close to sounding homphobic herself (at one point she tried to make clear that it was the right's hypocrisy she was against, not his homosexuality, but this was tempered by her having made a lot of sexual jokes that I thought sounded a lot like embedded homophobia).
As Al Gore pointed out, we don't need to fight fire with fire, we need to fight fire with water.