From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Cultural Elite?
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 14:00:13 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1992Aug28.162850.42637@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <BtnCJM.5K2@apollo.hp.com>, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>> In article <1992Aug27.083015.42592@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>>In article <92239.170834DART@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>, DART@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (415) writes:
>>>> 
>>>> So who are the 'Cultural Elite' Bush & Quayle are so fond of
>>>> warning us about anyway?
>
>    The "media" market in the US is the finest example of 
>>   a free market on earth!   People with cable have, perhaps, *60*
>>   TV channels to choose from.  There are *dozens* of radio stations 
>>   within the range of most people, and *hundreds* of newspapers,
>>   magazines, and other printed publications.  So there is astounding
>>   *choice*.  Moreover the nature of a media market, unlike a durable
>>   goods market, or even, say, a "market" for political candidates,
>>   is that this choice can be expressed easily and almost instantaneously;
>>   again, perfect conditions for a free market to function.   
>
>Yep.  But Rush Limbaugh doesn't have more than a high school
>education, so who's going to listen to him when they can have the
>*high culture* of PBS and Pacifica, complete with great stuff like Car
>Talk, Garrison Keillor, folk music and intellectuals from the local
>university?

  I can't tell to what extent this is tongue-in-cheek.  Car Talk seems
  pretty apolitical, and as a member of the Folk Song Society of Greater
  Boston for about 15 years I can say that folk music seems consistently
  liberal, if not out-and-out-leftist, at least around here (why is this?).
  Garrison Keillor is just a lot of smug nonsense for the Volvos-and-gourmet
  pasta-set.
 
> Remember I started out by claiming that some people have a disproportionate
> access to *educated* public opinion.

  I'm not denying this; I'm just saying that it is a matter of free choice:
  a free market in ideas (or "media") working its magic.  There's no reason
  why you can't have classical music and nature shows and two goofy guys
  dispensing car repair advice and TV auctions and similar things that "public
  broadcasting" is famous for, only with a conservative slant, if that's 
  what their major viewers and contributors wanted.


>Time outsells National Review because National Review is aimed at
>educated people and educated people have "learned" in high school and
>college that Conservatives are either dangerous or stupid or
>(paradoxically) both.

  Why are educated people more likely to have learned this than anyone
  else?  This still seems to be the old "brainwashing theory"; the idea
  that you and I can think for ourselves and see through the smoke and
  mirrors but everybody else is brainwashed.  *I* certainly wouldn't
  acknowledged that I am not a free thinker; and I'm sure tou wouldn't
  either.  But then again, neither would most Time or, say, Utne Reader
  readers.  


>Once we get beyond the educated sector of the public, your free market
>thesis collapses, because if the public as a whole were liberal or
>Liberal, they wouldn't have elected Reagan and Bush.

  You're assuming people are "consistent".   This is the biggest flaw with 
  terms like "liberal" or "conservative"; they aren't really strongly 
  predictive because they oversimplify.  Diving the world that way, or even
  into a 4-quadrant Nolan Chart is like the ancients thinking there were
  4 elements (earth, air, fire, water).  The same people who voted for 
  Reagan and Bush have repeatedly strongly favored national health insurance
  in every major poll taken in the last half-decade.   And many districts
  which elected Reagan for president, elected liberal congressmen.  Are 
  these people hypocritical or inconsistent?   No; they're just not con-
  sistent with simplistic concepts like "liberal" and "conservative" that
  we try to impose on them in these discussuions.

 
> Every time a>conservative candidate wins, it has special significance
> because it happens in spite of cultural pressure from academe, media,
> and hollywood.

  I disagree.  Everytime *any* candidate wins these days he does so 
  through successfully exploiting sound bites, symbols, attitude, and
  marketing techniques pioneered by Hollywood and the media.  Ronald
  Reagan owes as much of his success to this as any major political
  figure.  Today an ugly, soft-spoken, thoughful candidate like Abraham
  Lincoln could never be elected, at least not without *major* re-
  productizing by media experts.   Neither Bill Clinton *nor* George
  Bush are running against Hollywood or the media: by their very tech-
  niques they are both vindicating Hollywood and the media at every turn.

  And my other point still stands: the entertainment industry is a free
  market; it it's liberal then this is because that what the public is 
  willing to support with its money.


---peter


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