Lear Hits Back at Frum
Thank you for printing my response to the conservative who took exception to my trumpeting the song, “Born Again American” by Keith Carradine. And thank you, too, for your personal reaction to the song itself and to my involvement with it.
Correction: When I started People for the American Way in 1980, it's mission was to counter the roster of TV ministries --Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, et al., that were proliferating across the tube mixing politics and religion. That was made very clear by the television spot that started it all. It featured a factory worker talking about these ministers, concluding with these words: "So there's got to be something wrong when anyone, even a minister, tells you you're a good Christian or a bad one depending on your political point of view. That's not the American Way."
Now, despite the fact that you are a master of modern political history and had to know the truth of People for the American Way’s origins, you chose to write: "Thus, when he (Lear) decided to form a political action committee to support the agenda of the American Civil Liberties Union, he did not call it 'Hollywood Celebrities for a Permissive America,' or 'Gays and Jews United,' 'Get God Out Of The Schools, Inc.' He called it People For The American Way." In a single mischievous fabrication, Mr. Frum, you manage to toss out 6 buzz words, standard bait for the snapping jaws at the extreme right --God, Gays, Jews, Hollywood, Permissive and the ACLU-- while ignoring the truth as to how there came to be a People for the American Way.
As for “Born Again American”, the music video, it isn't, as you described it, just a "young man in a Marines t-shirt" singing about being out of work and his job shipped overseas. That was a genuine United States Marine, newly returned from Iraq telling us that he came back from the desert with a wife and kid to feed only to find his job had been shipped overseas. Suspicious of something dire in the song's construction you then inform us that it takes all of 2 minutes and 15 seconds until the music video "shifts to a non white non male voice." But you figure it all out a paragraph or so later when you happily conclude that the song is primarily targeting "working class Americans who vote Republican." BINGO!
We need to talk to one another across ideological lines, critically if that's the way we're feeling, but sincerely. I sense more mischief than sincerity in the way conservative opinion makers manipulate language and ideas to make a point. I am accused by Mr. Frum of having dedicated three decades to "astutely packaging liberal causes as broad national concerns." What subjects arouse the loudest, angriest of Republican voices these days -- Guns; gay rights; right to life; immigration; taxes; Iraq; whatever. To take my side of the argument surrounding such subjects is, according to David Frum, to espouse a liberal cause. To take his side is to express a broad national concern. Mischief.
Correction: When I started People for the American Way in 1980, it's mission was to counter the roster of TV ministries --Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, et al., that were proliferating across the tube mixing politics and religion. That was made very clear by the television spot that started it all. It featured a factory worker talking about these ministers, concluding with these words: "So there's got to be something wrong when anyone, even a minister, tells you you're a good Christian or a bad one depending on your political point of view. That's not the American Way."
Now, despite the fact that you are a master of modern political history and had to know the truth of People for the American Way’s origins, you chose to write: "Thus, when he (Lear) decided to form a political action committee to support the agenda of the American Civil Liberties Union, he did not call it 'Hollywood Celebrities for a Permissive America,' or 'Gays and Jews United,' 'Get God Out Of The Schools, Inc.' He called it People For The American Way." In a single mischievous fabrication, Mr. Frum, you manage to toss out 6 buzz words, standard bait for the snapping jaws at the extreme right --God, Gays, Jews, Hollywood, Permissive and the ACLU-- while ignoring the truth as to how there came to be a People for the American Way.
As for “Born Again American”, the music video, it isn't, as you described it, just a "young man in a Marines t-shirt" singing about being out of work and his job shipped overseas. That was a genuine United States Marine, newly returned from Iraq telling us that he came back from the desert with a wife and kid to feed only to find his job had been shipped overseas. Suspicious of something dire in the song's construction you then inform us that it takes all of 2 minutes and 15 seconds until the music video "shifts to a non white non male voice." But you figure it all out a paragraph or so later when you happily conclude that the song is primarily targeting "working class Americans who vote Republican." BINGO!
We need to talk to one another across ideological lines, critically if that's the way we're feeling, but sincerely. I sense more mischief than sincerity in the way conservative opinion makers manipulate language and ideas to make a point. I am accused by Mr. Frum of having dedicated three decades to "astutely packaging liberal causes as broad national concerns." What subjects arouse the loudest, angriest of Republican voices these days -- Guns; gay rights; right to life; immigration; taxes; Iraq; whatever. To take my side of the argument surrounding such subjects is, according to David Frum, to espouse a liberal cause. To take his side is to express a broad national concern. Mischief.