[Peace-discuss] Flag flap

[C. G. Estabrook]

[God help me, Al's got me quoting the New Republic.  There's lots wrong
with the following article, but it makes the point about "the real effect
of [Dean's] words," which Al asks for.  The real effect was not a PC
foot-fault, which can then be excoriated by right-thinking liberals like
John Edwards, but a clumsy raising of the question of class. And I should
say that I hold no brief for Dean -- he seems to me a perfectly
conventional right-wing politician, around whom some objections to the
present administration have coalesced. His "movement" on the whole is
inarticulately more progressive than he is.  --CGE]

Rebel Yelp by Jonathan Chait

Only at TNR Online | Post date 11.07.03

In 1984 Michael Kinsley famously wrote that a gaffe occurs "not when a
politician lies but when he tells the truth." This line has been quoted
endlessly since. But the more insightful part of the same column was
Kinsley's observation that, to become a gaffe, "the subject matter should
be trivial." The column drew a comparison between political journalism and
literary deconstructionism. "The ideal 'text' for political journalists to
chew on," he wrote, "is an episode of no real meaning or importance--such
as a small joke about New Jersey--which can then be analyzed without
distraction exclusively in terms of its likely effect on the campaign."

The furor over Howard Dean's comments about the Confederate flag offers a
perfect illustration of this dynamic. Sometimes politicians send out
subtle signals that are meant to attract racists to their side--think of
George W.  Bush going to Bob Jones University or Mississippi Governor
elect Haley Barbour meeting with the Conservative Citizens Councils. But
this is obviously not one of those instances. No sane person believes that
Dean approves of the Confederate flag or that he said anything that could
be reasonably construed as such. Certainly no sane person thinks Dean is a
racist. Everyone agrees, rather, that the problem is Dean's failure to
apologize. Well, if he didn't say anything wrong in the first place, why
should he apologize? In classic fashion, the story has become Dean's
failure to handle the story. Reporters and pundits created the dynamic
they're purporting to analyze.

If you step back from the situation for a moment, the notion of Howard
Dean as a closet Confederacy sympathizer is about the most ridiculous
subtext for a scandal you can imagine. It's as if Dennis Kucinich were
accused of being a lackey of the big defense contractors. Dean's
Confederate flag riff is actually notable for being a wildly unconvincing
attempt to persuade people that, if nominated, he could carry some
Southern states. As Dean said in a speech to the Democratic National
Committee last February:

"White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag
decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their
kids don't have health insurance either, and their kids need better
schools too!"

So Dean's plan is to get poor Southern whites to vote their economic
interests rather than their cultural predilections. How simple! Why hasn't
somebody else thought of that idea? Oh wait, that's right: Everybody has
thought of that idea.

The notion that the Southern economic elite try to divide the populace
along racial rather than economic lines goes back around 400 years. Even
though most southern whites didn't own slaves, a majority of them
supported the institution. This analysis is familiar to anybody with a
high school- level understanding of American history--or, failing that,
anybody who's ever heard the 1964 Bob Dylan song, "Only a Pawn in Their
Game":

A South politician preaches to the poor white man, 
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain.
You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain.
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

As it turns out, forging that economic coalition is a good deal more 
difficult than it sounds. The only success liberals have enjoyed has come 
when they've found candidates like Bill Clinton, who distanced himself from 
cultural liberalism (on issues like crime and welfare, for instance) to 
convince Southern whites that he was more conservative than the national 
Democratic Party.

It would be a massive understatement to say that Dean is not ideally 
positioned to replicate this strategy. His aggressive secularism, 
association with civil unions, and antiwar stance all make him culturally 
anathema in the South. This is one of the many, many reasons Dean would be 
squashed like a bug in the general election if nominated: Bush could take 
the South for granted, and concentrate all his resources on battleground 
states like Pennsylvania. Thus Dean's bold assertion that he would win the 
South because he would concentrate on economic issues, as if liberals 
haven't been trying that for decades.

What's alarming here is not that Dean wants to win votes from guys with 
Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. It's that he thinks he actually 
can.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at TNR.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030728&s=chait072803


On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Alfred Kagan wrote:

> Indeed, the Democrats, being a mostly white organization, are just as
> racist as the Republicans. We can look at Clinton's so-called welfare
> reform as one example. But symbolism does matter.  Words do convey
> context. People understand more than the literal because they live in
> a real world. Dean's misuse of race is a reflection of his society.  
> When we ignore the real effects of his words, we ignore racism.
> 
>