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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Henwood busts (?) civilarians

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

“Against civility” is he.  Hear! Hear! Here’s is some of what “Behind the News” broadcaster Doug Henwood said last weekend.

“The horrendous shootings in Tucson have certainly inspired a lot of [civil] drivel from the commentariat. …

“Perhaps most annoying has been the call for a return to civility. … I don’t feel like being civil. I like being rude. The problem with the rudeness in American political discourse is not that it is so rude. It is often so stupid. …

“The idea that politics can be civil is a fantasy for elite technocrats and the well-heeled.

“I’m reminded of something that Adolph Reed once said to me, characterizing a mutual acquaintance as the kind of person who thinks that if you could just get all the smart people together on Martha’s Vineyard, they could solve all our social problems. …

“… [W]hen was this nation ever innocent?

“When we were trading in slaves and killing Indians?

“There’s no way that could be rendered civil. The field of politics is constituted by vast differences in interests and preferences. Much of the time, we don’t talk about those things directly or explicitly. We talk about them in caricature or euphemism, or take it out on scapegoats.

“What act of ‘healing’ will make this nation less divided? The rich and powerful have a lot of money and might and they are not going to give it up easily.…

“Margaret Atwood once wrote that politics is about ‘power: who’s got it, who wants it, how it operates; in a word, who’s allowed to do what to whom, who gets what from whom, who gets away with it and how.’

“… It is not just the mainstream pundit—so too alternapundits. It is not just that these stock phrases grate on the ears.

“Their use is a symptom that their speaker is evading complexities.”

Sources and notes

“Against civility,” Radio commentary posted by Doug Henwood January 15, 2011, http://lbo-news.com/

Doug Henwood edits Left Business Observer (LBO), a newsletter he founded in 1986, Henwood also hosts “Behind the News,” a weekly radio show covering economics and politics on KPFA-Berkeley, that rebroadcasts on several other stations across the United States; it has a worldwide audience via its Internet archive. Henwood is author of the book Wall Street, http://lbo-news.com/about/

Adolph Reed is a University of Pennsylvania Political Science Professor with interests in American and African American politics and political thought, urban politics, and American political development, http://www.polisci.upenn.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=26

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist


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