Sometimes the solution to theoretical problems become apparent not through careful research or close reading of important texts, but in the course of thinking about everyday life, in the course of leading a reflective life.  You have an everyday encounter. You give it thought, and a major intellectual problem is solved.

I had such an experience and revelation at a lunch in Berlin in November of 1994.  I remember the discussion.  I remember the setting, an Italian restaurant in the leafy outskirts of the city.  But I have only a vague recollection of my lunch partner, a female German scholar.

I was in Berlin in 1994 on a leg of a United States Information Agency sponsored lecture tour in Europe.  The main event was in Poland, where I helped inaugurate a short lived American Cultural Center there.  Following my stop in Warsaw, I flew to Berlin to speak in the well established American Cultural Center there about my book The Cynical Society, but also gave a talk at the Free University about my other relatively recent books, Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall.  The first Berlin talk was about my work on American political culture, the second on my work in Central and Eastern Europe.  After the second talk, I had a lunch with my hostess.  We engaged in the normal small talk.  No doubt, we discussed the presentation I gave and the reaction of the audience.  The details escape me except for one exchange.  It went something like this:

Jeff – “I think that it is not at all clear that Hitler’s crimes were qualitatively different than those of Stalin.”

Hostess –  “No!  Hitler was unique.  The intentional project of modern industrial genocide was unprecedented, uniquely evil, something that must not be forgotten.”

We went on and discussed this, I, as an expert on the Soviet bloc and its democratic opposition, she as a German scholar.   The conversation was warm, not at all heated, though the subject matter was tough.  I emphasized the immensity of Stalin’s crimes, of the gulag, of the mass starvation in Ukraine, the brutal treatment of those who dissent and of inconvenient national minorities.  She countered with recollections of the Holocaust.

At some point, I don’t remember when, I realized a paradox.  The meaning of this exchange would be precisely reverse, if I argued the position she presented, and she argued the position that I presented.  The embodiment of the argument determined the meaning of the exchange.

If I, as an American Jewish scholar, argued the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and she, as a German scholar, argued that Nazism was no worse than Soviet Communism, we would have been emphasizing the differences between us, revealing suspiciousness of the other, moving in the direction of nationalism.  As it was, we recognized each other as open people, as colleagues.  The meeting that we had was one of mutual respect and understanding.  The meeting of the imagined encounter would have been antagonistic.  Discussion could continue in the actual encounter, it would end in the hypothetical one.  Learning would accrue in the real one, probably wouldn’t in the imagined one.

As the author of The Cynical Society, I am quite critical of reductive reasoning, reasoning that reduces the meaning of an utterance to the qualities of the speaker, particularly related to positions and motives of wealth and power.   I emphasize that text should not be reduced to context.  On the other hand, as a sociologist, I know that context matters.  At the Berlin lunch, I think I saw how the criticism of sociological reduction and the insight of sociological knowledge can both stand.  Text and context are related in important ways, but context doesn’t determine text.  It culturally informs it.

This has many practical applications.  The cultural context of American racism, thus, informs how blacks and whites can speak to each other effectively.  This is why being race blind is funny when Stephen Colbert asserts it. It is why when whites complain that there is a need to struggle for equal rights for whites; they actually intend the opposite of what their words on the surface apparently say.  Indeed it is why when the Supreme Court rules that the law must be color blind, it is on very dubious grounds.

Neil Postman was a famous media critic.  He thought that the problem with television was not its content but its formal qualities as a medium. It presented a clear and present danger.  Because of it, we were Amusing Ourselves to Death.  In thinking about the role of television in contemporary politics, specifically as it is facilitating new kinds of major media events, I am struck by the fact that television’s effects may be quite the opposite, when it amuses us, it gives life.  When it is deadly serious, it is just that, deadly.  I am having these dark thoughts thinking about Glenn Beck, John Stewart and Steven Colbert, and their respective demonstrations on American sacred ground, the Washington Mall, between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally, held on the Washington mall, with speakers on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial, was seen as a serious event, an abomination for those who were pained by the hijacking of the legacy of one of the great mass demonstrations in American history held on the same place, on the same day of the year, forty seven years ago, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, highlighted by “The I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr.  But viewed from the right, even from a skeptical conservative observer such as Ross Douthat of The New York Times, it was an encouraging development, affirming important cultural values, showing that the right was “free of rancor, racism or populist resentment, the atmosphere at the rally resembled that of a church picnic or a high school football game.” (link)  Of course, on Fox the enthusiasm, the celebration, was less restrained.

Stewart and Colbert

On the other hand, the planned Rally to Restore Sanity, promoted by John Stewart, and the “counter demonstration,” the March to Keep Fear Alive, promoted by Stephen Colbert, are clearly meant to be funny, and there is truth in packaging, since both of the principals work for the cable network, Comedy Central.  But it is being taken seriously. Arianna Huffington, of the famous Post, let the world know that her organization would provide free bus transportation from New York to the Rally, appropriately on Stewart’s show. (link)

And President Obama even lent his support (o.k., perhaps with his tongue strategically planted in his cheek).  And the demonstration is likely to draw tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, because of a widespread sense that our politics has become insane, and there is a need to protest this.

Deliberate Consideration

These two media events show how far we have come.  The boundary between entertainment and politics has never been more tenuous.  But I admit.  I find one of these media events encouraging for the prospects of American democracy and the other extremely dangerous, and I don’t think it is just a matter of my political commitments.

Beck has his power because he is outrageous. He receives public attention by being a provocateur, denouncing the President because he just doesn’t like white people, criticizing healthcare reform as a form of reparations, leading people to believe with absolute certainty that bizarre readings of the American constitution and American history are the truth, and getting them to cling to the constitution as the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution clung to Mao’s Little Red Book.  The provocative is linked with the dogmatic on the Orwellian network that calls it tendentious news productions “fair and balanced,” and mass demonstrations are mobilized.  Sometimes Beck mutes his message, as he did at the Honor Rally, sometimes he is particularly combative, but both of his faces are backed by the appearance of certainty.

Colbert and Stewart on the other hand use humor to question dogma.  Their political sympathies are clear, but this doesn’t prevent them from making fun of politicians whom they admire.   Stewart is outrageously funny by being outrageously moderate:

“We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.” (link)

The form is more important than the content, and it is precise.

Postman thought that network television necessarily needed to amuse its audience to keep its attention.  He thought that “public discourse in the age of show business” (the subtitle of his book) would necessarily be un-serious and diminished as a result.  I was never convinced, but I am sure that we are seeing something else, a contest, now, in which the cable news programs that preach to the converted are polarizing and atomizing our politics using a form which is dogmatic and deadly serious.  In this situation, the forms of comedy, amusement and satire are life-giving antidotes, as Stewart and Colbert reveal.