Heretics' almanac: Bill Maher spews contempt

Andrew Sullivan said he'd be on Bill Maher's show, and since I wanted to see what Andrew looked like, and whether he was as articulate speaking as writing (not everyone is), I watched it.

Maher (who I can't stand) invited Alan Simpson (the former Republican senator from Wyoming), Susan Sarandon, and Noam Chomsky to talk via satellite, and Andrew, Pat Schroder (the former Democratic ~~senator~~ US representative from Colorado), and D.L. Hughley. It got ugly, and most of the anger was directed at Maher. And I couldn't help agreeing with Simpson and Sullivan. There was something offensive about Maher's attitude. (Susan Sarandon was sincere and simplistic, though undeniably gorgeous, Noam Chomsky is, well despicable in a reasonable sort of way, and Schroder and Hughley did their best to make this a civilized discussion).

This got me thinking.

I live in a diverse, mostly affluent community that came out very heavily in favor of Kerry. The people I interact with are often religious, but their problem-solving framework is secular and rational. What I mean by this is: they don't rely on some higher power to make sense of the world. I read The New Republic, the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Commentary magazine, and other publications that obsess endlessly over presenting intellectually unassailable points of view. Complexity and change can provoke anxiety among my set, but it is also invigorating.

But there is another way to look at the world. It involves wishing for greater simplicity, for morality and faith to prevail over all the confusion we get on primetime television and the silver screen. It is not about being self-righteous or intolerant; it's about emphasizing faith as a means of guidance.
Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon, and Bill Maher himself come across contemptuous toward this worldview. Maher ridiculed the religious right as dogmatic naifs, people who put "Jesus" over rationality and are ignorant bigots.

What set Simpson off was a crack Maher made about gays ("Oh, I'm sure theyr'e very active"). Simpson accused Maher of stereotyping gays, which is true; he did. Bill Maher (and various Hollywood screenwriters) apparently know how to turn stereotypes about gays into something humorous; but when conservatives rely on the same stereotypes to make a serious point, they're accused of bigotry. We were supposed to laugh when Ross and Rachel in Friends fell in love, had sex in a museum display, broke up, humiliated a poor British girl at the alter, got married while drunk, divorced, conceived a child together (also while drunk - it appears that the two never had sex while married with each other). Sex and the City was not just frank talk about sex, relationships, and love - it put the glamor into moral ambiguity. We watch the Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Everybody Loves Raymond to see how the "simple folks" live. With all we know about the personal lives of the Hollywood set, it's no wonder some people feel that popular culture is mocking their belief that the world shouldn't be so complicated and confusing.

For people in my precinct, morality is all about asking the right questions. For many others, morality is all about having the right answers.

I suppose this is the classic conflict between the cosmopolitans and the provincials, and the cosmopolitans will - mostly in jest - propose solutions to it. Districts should get their voted in proportion to their economic power; there should be an educational standard to voting; etc.

Alan Simpson and Andrew Sullivan were right in pointing out that you don't convince people by insulting them. In an anniversary edition of Time magazine, the editors published an article their predecessors had received in the magazine's early years. A man from the South complained that the magazine persisted in referring to black people as "Mr. so-and-so." This, he felt, was an affront to "southern sensibilities." This was an early example of the "media elite" imposing their "bias" on "regular folks." Now, ridiculing and insulting this man would not have convinced him or any of his neigbhors. Pandering him would have been disingenious and wrong.

The Democrats need to win both the hearts and minds of people in the red states. And to do that, they must start by understanding what makes them so afraid. That's the work ahead for the next four years.