« Questions, Answers, & Questions: A year-end playlist | Main | Financial Planning »

"Come Together"

About the only thing George Will and I ever agreed on was the manifest evil of the Designated Hitter rule in baseball, and he has apparently softened his opposition to that. But I respect Will; he is a reasonable, thinking, questioning, agile conservative. David Brooks, his apparent heir, is a poor substitute -- less agile, far more dogmatic, and way too anxious to appear to please. He is not a reasonable man, no not really, no more reasonable than his louder contemporaries. But he plays one on TV.

So it was alarming to flip to the back page of this morning's Lexington Herald opinion section and discover Mr. Brooks essaying on much the same subject which filled my "Hello Stranger" column in the present issue of ND (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/opinion/20brooks.html): the disintegration of our common pop music language. Surely to goodness we don't agree on something, Mr. Brooks and I.

Mr. Brooks, or his research staff, notes that critics began despairing of this great divide in February of 1982, when Time's Jay Cocks wrote about our splintering culture. Time is not famous for broaching new ideas, and so one can safely assume that Mr. Cocks was synthesizing a sentiment that had been afoot for some time. (Perhaps we can blame everything on the Sex Pistols, though they were simply the commodification and synthesis of a surprisingly durable musical sentiment.) That was roughly the season when I abandoned punk for mainstream country, and I don't remember much else except working all the time and being broke.

The occasion of Mr. Brooks' commentary is a suggestion by Little Steven Van Zandt that schools adopt a high school music curriculum he has pulled together, and study the roots and branches of American pop music traditions. No disrespect meant, but if teaching it in high school didn't render rock 'n' roll terminally unhip, I dunno what would. How many generations of rock musicians had to rebel against the big band arrangements they were taught in school?

Brooks makes a larger point, though. "It seems that whatever story I cover," he writes, "people are anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion."

The Atlantic's current cover story on the candidacy of Barack Obama argues that he is uniquely suited to end the (Vietnam) wars within the ruling Baby Boom generation, because he is not of that generation. A piece in one of the New Yorkers adrift on the coffee table reminds that, counting George I's tenure as VP in the Regan administration (and has anyone thought to re-examine his role to see if it was more of a template for Dick Chaney than we've imagined?) we've had Bushes or Clintons in the White House since 1980, and Senator Clinton's candidacy seeks only to advance that dynasty further.

Anyway, the crux of the Atlantic piece (I'm not that well-read; I just keep things around the house and pick them up in odd moments) is that the American people are not nearly so divided as our political henchmen argue. And while the author offers statistics to bolster that position, and I have none at my desk this morning, I still think that a dubious reading of society.

Perhaps I remember too clearly the strength and fury of responses we received when ND chose to endorse John Kerry for president. Perhaps I am too keenly aware of the social nuances required when meeting people in this small town, for there is a great deal of feeling out which must be done before anything like a substantive discussion about god or politics or anything interesting can be launched. People hold their views with strength and certainty; a great number of them really don't understand why, for example, the ten commandments cannot (and should not) be posted in all of our public schools.

To some extent this is a failure of imagination: They cannot imagine that somebody would feel disenfranchised by that assertion of state religion, nor can they embrace the notion that a Jew or a Mormon or a Moslem (or a nonbeliever) might find it reasonable to choose a different path toward peace. But I digress.

It seems to me we have always been a fragmented society, a continent settled by marginal religions, destitute adventurers and convicts. (I mean no disrespect to the native peoples who were here first...only an apology for the cruelty of humanity.) Slave holders and abolitionists. Robber barons and union organizers. Hippies and squares.

We have grown in population to the point that each of our particular quirks has enough membership to assert itself, should it choose, rather than muting its peculiarities for fear of social, political, or economic retribution. We now have tens of thousands of albums to choose from each year, dozens upon dozens of TV channels, and myriad public and private paths toward inner peace. Or prosperity, which we congenitally confuse with peace.

Brooks and Van Zandt argue that it may not be possible for a band to find a huge, arena-sized audience in the way that the Rolling Stones (1960s), the E Street Band (1970s) or U2 (1980s) have done. Which may, in a way, be true, but it leaves out Garth Brooks and "High School Musical" and Metallica and a bunch of other acts who can (or once) filled the sheds. The problem is the homogeneity of the audience which joined them in this horrid rooms to hear something approximating music being made.

Brooks also slaps at we critics: "People who have built up cultural capital and pride on their superior discernment are naturally going to cultivate even more obscure musical tastes," he writes.

Once again I'm moved to ask why we refuse to listen to the smartest, best-educated person in the room? Why is an elite fighting unit considered to be a good thing, but an elitist critic (or intellectual or whatever) such a well-accepted pejorative.

Anyhow. I don't know who I want to be president next, but it doesn't seem to be anybody running for the job (and I have looked at both parties: Dogma and cant are marketing shields; I'm looking for simple competence and the ability to lead at this point.) I don't know if ND will endorse a candidate in 2008 because we haven't talked about it.

But Brooks is right: We need to find a way to come together. Not to agree on anything, but at least to agree on what it means to be a member of this society. What the joys and obligations of that honor (luck, that is) are, and how we believe those duties should be carried out. We are supposed to disagree about policy; that's the furnace in which ideas are properly fashioned. But we have to find a way to agree about what it means to be an American.

Art does not lead society; it gives us a mirror through which we may see ourselves.

All of which made far more sense when I was thinking about it than it did when I sat down to write it, and so it goes.

Posted by grant on November 25, 2007 10:50 AM | Permalink

TrackBack