Is it really Labor Day?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It is, or so the calendar says, though you might be forgiven for forgetting that there's a day set aside for labor, that is, for working men and women, people who aren't CEOs or investment bankers, who aren't the sort of "supermen" our society deifies in Ayn Rand fashion. (Just spend five minutes on Fox News or CNBC or any other mainstream media outlet, pretty much, and you'll see that deification in full swing.)

It's like "labor" doesn't matter anymore, except the "labor" of the millionaires and billionaires at the top of the corporate hierarchy. It certainly doesn't seem to matter in Washington, or in various state capitals, where the GOP has made it part of its plutocratic, corporatist mission to assault labor whenever and however possible. Republicans have always been anti-labor, of course, but at least many of them pretended to care about labor, pretended that their pro-business orientation included concern for workers. But now their mission is nakedly exposed for what it is. Even their populism is anti-labor, with their base, hardly plutocrats themselves, buying their anti-labor agenda. Whether it's teachers, factory workers, public servants, or family farmers, they don't seem to give a shit. Except when there's a union involved, when not giving a shit becomes venomous hatred.

One would hope, if not expect, Democrats to fight back, but they rarely do, so widely has the corporate net been cast. Unless they think they can score some political points, as in Wisconsin, they generally don't stand up for working men and women either, at least not with nearly enough passion and commitment.

So maybe it's time to call a spade a spade, as they say, as E.J. Dionne (not seriously, though his commentary is nothing if not serious) suggests:

Let's get it over with and rename the holiday "Capital Day." We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil — the phrase itself seems antique — as worthy of genuine respect.

No matter that the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Pope John Paul II, both quoted by Dionne, were ardent supporters, each in his own way, of labor.

That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience today is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.

Consider that what the media call economics reporting is largely finance reporting. Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the world of work and unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat. Workers have vanished.

But we are now inundated with news (and "news") about the world of capital. CNBC and the other financial media are for investors what ESPN is for sports junkies. We cheer the markets, learn the obscure language of hedge fund managers and get to know some of the big investors in off-field interviews. Workers are regarded as factors of production. At best, they're consumers; at worst, they're "labor costs" cutting into profits and the sacred stock price.

In other words, it's about time we gave a shit again -- all of us:

With the worker disappearing from our media and our consciousness, isn't it only a matter of time before Labor Day falls off the calendar? As long as it's there, it should shame us about our cool indifference to the heroism of those who go to work every day. 

It should... but, alas, it won't. There is too much "cool indifference," and far too much hatred. What is needed is a paradigm shift with respect to how we think about capitalism, and how we think about society generally -- about what we value, about the nature of work, about respect for the everyday heroes of those who don't get the Fox/CNBC deification. And that, I fear, isn't coming anytime soon, not given how entrenched our political biases are, not to mention our widespread ignorance.

Today is indeed Labor Day, but most people are just enjoying the day off without regard for what it means, or for what the struggle for the rights and dignity of the working class -- and that means almost all of us -- is all about.

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Yesterday, partly in anticipation of Labor Day (and partly because I love the song), I posted a fantastic clip of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band performing "Youngstown." It is one of the finest songs about the working man (and woman) ever written. It includes these lines:

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well
Taconite, coke and limestone
Fed my children and made my pay
Then smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

I encourage you to check it out.

Public opinion and the public option

By Michael J.W. Stickings

E.J. Dionne makes an excellent point in today's WaPo:

Health-care reform is said to be in trouble partly because of those raucous August town-hall meetings in which Democratic members of Congress were besieged by shouters opposed to change.

But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt?

I think that's right, and Dionne goes on to show just how the media created that impression:

There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents.

It's also clear that the anger that got so much attention largely reflects a fringe right-wing view opposed to all sorts of government programs most Americans support. Much as the far left of the antiwar movement commanded wide coverage during the Vietnam years, so now are extremists on the right hogging the media stage -- with the media's complicity.

This is not to say, of course, that health-care reform with a robust public option commands huge support with the American people. It doesn't -- for three reasons: 1) Republican propaganda has been effective at misrepresenting reform (especially the public option); 2) the media have given credibility to Republican propaganda by positioning it as a legitimate alternative to the truth in their coverage of politics as sport; and 3) Obama and the Democrats in Congress have been unable to get their message out effectively -- in other words, they haven't yet made the case for reform in a way that shifts public opinion in their direction.

Still, what is clear, I think, is that there is much broader support for reform than we are led to believe by a media establishment that has overstated the significance of a few select town halls, playing up the sensationalism of it all while basically ignoring what hasn't fit into its GOP-friendly narrative of conflict and opposition.

For meaningful reform to pass, it is essential that Obama and the Democrats tap into -- and seek the support of, even at this late date -- the vast majority of Americans who aren't on the right-wing fringe and who, much to their credit, don't think that shouting and screaming is the best way to participate in a democracy.

The triumph of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis: E.J. Dionne on Rush, Newt, the media, and how conservative spin skews the news

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, make sure to check out this brilliant column from E.J. Dionne, published yesterday at the WaPo. While it says what many of us have been saying for a long time -- namely, that the establishment media are effectively being manipulated by, and have for a long time been dominated by, conservative narratives that shape and frame how the media inform their consumers -- it is nonetheless a powerful indictment of the media, and their relationship with the far right, from a critic near the very center of Beltway establishmentarianism (and from one of the more thoughtful Beltway pundits). Here's a taste:

If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina.

Democrats are complicit in building up Gingrich and Limbaugh as the main spokesmen for the Republican Party, since Obama polls so much better than either of them. But the media play an independent role by regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.

Indeed, there is much blame to go around, and some of it must be reserved for the Democrats, and for liberals-progressives generally, who have not effectively counter-balanced the right in terms of setting the narratives that govern the media (though they have been doing much, much better in this regard).

But it is the establishment media, the MSM, that continues to treat right-wing propaganda like mainstream orthodoxy, that continues to provide a lofty platform for the likes of Rush and Newt, that essentially validates their views and biases, that tilts the political spectrum to the right, making it seem as if Obama (and pretty much any liberal) is some crazed anti-American radical.

Are Newt and Rush "winning," as Dionne suggests? Yes, in a way -- and in spite of Obama's popularity. Which means that there is much work for us to do.

Hardball

By Michael J.W. Stickings

"It's time to play hardball," advises the WaPo's E.J. Dionne today, echoing the sentiments of many who think Obama needs to fight back against Republican anti-stimulus spin. (See my post from last night, for example.) Dionne concludes:

In just two weeks, the elation of Inauguration Day has given way to a classic form of partisan hardball. Obama and his advisers have been forced to learn basic lessons on the run. For starters, the media cannot be counted on to be either liberal or permanently enchanted with any politician. Arguments left unanswered can take hold, whether they make sense or not. And one more lesson: No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water.

Obama and his advisers weren't clueless, though, and they must have known Republican opposition was coming. What they may have underestimated was how successfully the opposition spin would resonate, not least because of a media establishment more than willing to manufacture drama.

And of course Obama is an unsentimental realist who knows full well he can't walk on water, hence his efforts to reach out to Republicans in the first place. Where he acted in good faith, though, the Republicans are not, and he now must prove his mettle not by hovering above the partisan fray and seeking broad bipartisan consensus but by playing politics Washington-style. That may not be his style, nor his preferred method of governing, but it is what is needed now to get this stimulus done even in the face of loud, hostile opposition.