Know what the big disconnect in America is? It’s not red
state-blue state. It’s not liberal-conservative. It’s not any
manner of racial or technological divide, or wage gap, or
urban-rural split, or married people vs. single people, or soccer
moms vs. NASCAR dads, or anything like that.
It’s this: Some people are obsessively driven to do the same
thing again and again, and other people — most people — just
couldn’t care less.
The obsessives include the media, the entertainment industry,
the leaders of business and finance, politicians, and all their
assorted flacks and hangers-on. The rest include everybody else.
There are a lot more of the rest of us.
Throw the press a juicy bone, like a kidnapped child, a
celebrity in trouble, whatever. Then watch the whole pack turn like
a school of feeding fish, like a single organism, chewing and
chewing and chewing until the rest of the country says, “Enough,
already!” It’s not just the tabloid stuff. Political journalism
does the same thing. There’s the designated rave of the day, and
everybody has to weigh in on it.
The obsessives, whether consciously or not, know that the way to
win is to tire out the other side. That’s how the student
rebellions of the 1960s succeeded. School administrators then
belonged to the non-obsessive class, and, what’s more, were
generally inclined to peacemaking and placating. You can’t placate
an obsessive. He just keeps coming. The Clintonites won the
impeachment fight that way. They knew if they made the same noises
over and over again, the public would mostly turn away.
This split does have liberal-conservative overtones, but not the
in the modern, ideological sense — more in the historic sense of
conservatives being inclined to preserve an existing order. Peter
Hannaford, writing
in The American Prowler last week, quoted President Calvin
Coolidge speaking in 1926 on the 150th anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence:
“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are
endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments
derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is
final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these
propositions.”
That is, of course, exactly the way most ordinary people think.
But there rings from Coolidge’s wonderful words something faintly
exasperated and parental: “How many times do I have to tell
you…?” And on the willful childish side, you can almost hear
the wails of the social justice obsessives demanding the latest
“right”: universal health care, universal furniture, whatever.
Almost nobody has written or spoken for the vast majority of the
ordinary, the non-obsessed. Ronald Reagan tapped into that
audience, to the befuddlement of the obsessed media, who couldn’t
understand what people saw in him. Grover Norquist has tried to
make a coalition out of the “leave us alones,” a paradox if there
ever was one. Richard Nixon reached out to the silent majority. But
by the very nature of things, no one in the obsessed crowd can
truly speak for all the rest of us.
So I will.
Most people like it that we can turn on CNN or CNBC once every
couple of months, when the bombs fall on Iraq, or when an election
blows up, and watch Christiane Amanpour bravely bouncing on her
toes against some night sky on the other side of the world, or see
Chris Matthews interview Howard Fineman. Most people accept that we
might have to put up with Senator Robert Byrd bloviating about some
Dixie-fried outrage, or with Al Sharpton whipping up some frenzy or
other — once in a while. Most folks like to be able to check in
with Ann Coulter for a good laugh here and there. Many of us
periodically enjoy the nonsense of the likes of Rosie O’Donnell or
Oprah Winfrey or Martha Stewart or Steven Spielberg.
But any of us ordinary folks would be horrified actually to have
to be Steven Spielberg or Rosie O’Donnell or Howard
Fineman or Christiane Amanpour twenty-fours a day, seven days a
week. And most of the time, what most of us want to say to the
whole sodding bunch of them, politicians, celebrities,
commentators, newsies, and all, is this:
Shut up. Go away. Take a hike. Give it a rest.
My friend Jeff Jacoby writes at least once a year, advocating
that governments at all levels follow the example of states like
New Hampshire or Montana, where the legislatures meet for something
like 16 weeks every other year.
This is a good idea, a very good idea. One only wishes that the
whole yakkety culture would take it to heart.
