Salon Newsreal | The whole world is watching -- again

A L S O+T O D A Y

Peace, the movie
By Daryl Lindsey
Clinton's 3-day visit to the Middle East was full of symbols and photo ops, but precious little in the way of content
(12/16/98)
Here comes the judge
By Jeff Stein
Chief Justice William Rehnquist's writings on impeachment contain good news for President Clinton
(12/16/98)

[ IVORY TOWER ]
God save the president?
By Jackie Stevens
An anti-impeachment gathering of New York's intellectual hotshots may not do much for the country, but at least it made them feel good about themselves
(12/16/98)

T A B L E+T A L K
To impeach, or not to impeach: Debate the question in the Politics area of Table Talk

___________________
Bone up on impeachment at BarnesandNoble.com
___________________

R E C E N T L Y
City of self-hate
By Greg Critser
Why Los Angeles elites love being bashed by Mike Davis
(12/15/98)
A kinder, gentler lynch mob
By Gary Kamiya
The GOP confirms the most brain-dead radical stereotypes from the '60s
(12/15/98)
Off the cliff?
By Harry Jaffe
The White House tries lobbying, "scorched-earth" threats and one more speech to sway fence-sitting Republicans
(12/11/98)
Clinton's real crime
By Mollie Dickenson
The president's cagey testimony in the Paula Jones case shows he's guilty of sexual selfishness, but not perjury
(12/11/98)
"Real America?"
By Joan Walsh
Alan Dershowitz blasts Clinton critic Rep. Bob Barr for a speech to white supremacists
(12/11/98)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Browse the
Newsreal Archives
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

spacer

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING -- AGAIN | PAGE 1, 2
- - - - - - - - - -
A certain exultance was pardonable, though sobriety quickly took over as the crowd disbanded. This was probably the fastest-organized rally since the Cambodia and Laos invasions of 1970-71. It was also the slowest in coming. Which raises the question: Why the months of public inertia? Why have polls been permitted to stand in for political action? Why the long-running inactivity of the activists? These are questions to absorb the attention of what is laughably called the left during the long nights to come. Among the thoughts in circulation were these:
Disbelief triumphed, and triumphed, and triumphed again. First came months of Lewinsky drip. Yes, the right rode high, unhinged as they were. But public opinion remained staunchly unaffected by months upon months of leaks, barking heads, Starr chamber sessions, exercises in televisual humiliation and, lately, the injudicious theater of idiocy orchestrated by the House Judiciary Committee. So the coup seemed to have failed, right? So said the off-year elections, right? Newt was disgraced, right? Who would have thought the Grand Old Party would have so much blood in't? Who thought they could keep their Frankenstein monster humming after the repudiation of Nov. 3?
Even the White House was not sure they would. The press treated the turn against the Republicans as a victory for the Democrats and for Clinton, little noting that in a nation with 36 percent turnout, Congress has cut loose from the popular will as surely as the space shuttle pulls away from the gravity of Earth. Rep. Nadler didn't anticipate things coming to this pass. He told me this was the first protest event he'd been invited to. "I don't think anyone thought that impeachment was really going to happen," said Jill Steinberg, an NYU graduate student in media ecology.
But more deeply, Clinton had long estranged the activist networks that call themselves progressive. They were disaffected from him, or preoccupied with their issues -- which came to the same thing -- and barely if at all impressed by him in the first place. Just as the Republicans hated Clinton for, among other things, pirating part of their program, so did Democrats of the left hate him for NAFTA and for welfare, or for Iraqi sanctions, or the pharmaceutical raid in Khartoum, or all of the above. They had independently arrived at the Republican line that Clinton is only incidentally a twice-elected president lowly accused of high crimes.
The absolutists of the left have no dog in this fight. Not for them such bourgeois questions as that of constitutional justice. Not for them such tawdry questions as whether the poor would be better off if Clinton were deposed. They sneer at those reformist words "better off." They can live with the likes of Henry Hyde and Bob Barr, revealing the true (white, male) face of imperialism.
Even activist Democrats have been late to rouse themselves. Debra Cooper, executive vice president of the Upper West Side Ansonia Independent Democrats, who was leafletting the NYU rally with phone and fax numbers of coy Republicans, told me that at this late date, the state Democratic Party still hasn't been heard from. Parties don't dirty their hands except with money, these days.
And then, what of the uses, and seductions, of electronic politicking? An old friend of mine, with whom I marched on many a picket line in a bygone decade, whose name begins with "S," wrote me that his stepdaughter was e-mailing her local congressman, who is one of the Republican wafflers. Then he put this question: "Remember when we used to demonstrate, not send e-mail?" My friend is not a nostalgia buff. He is intellectually active on many issues in the palpably here-and-now. He is not a demonstration freak. Still, questions do come to mind: How virtual is a virtual demonstration? An online petition campaign?
But e-mail, requiring little effort from its deployers, has its uses, partly for that very reason. As the MoveOn.org campaign shows, it can get protesters charged up, confirm them in the sense that they're in good company. For instance, longtime human rights campaigner Cathy Fitzpatrick took it upon herself Sunday night to send out a multirecipient e-mail that is striking in this respect. Fitzpatrick wrote, in her private capacity, that for months she had found the impeachment juggernaut an annoyance, but a sideshow to her main interest. Annoyance, however, turned to impediment. She had been trying to work with the White House on a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The White House had sounded cooperative, but as the Dec. 10 date drew closer, its staff pulled away. All attention had turned to impeachment. (A White House ceremony did take place. Notice it? The press didn't.) So she sat down at her keyboard to make the case that President Clinton does matter to human rights. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a major force in the world for the principle that women's rights are human rights. Gregory Craig, the president's lawyer, has taken time off from -- human rights work! So it was time for human rights activists to put some muscle into stopping impeachment. Fitzpatrick appended a list of Republican House members who might be swayed in the days to come. Many other such messages have been crisscrossing cyberspace.
It is hard to avoid the thought that after years of fatalism, ideological blur, specialized politicking, group preoccupation and plain disappointment, much of the left has forgotten, if it ever knew, how heavy is the right wing of American politics, how fierce, how organized, how elected, how capable of obstructing all the projects of the left (and the center) and how capable of acting in unison when they care enough to hate -- as they do Clinton, That Man in the White House. So it took until Monday night, Dec. 14, a mere three days before the House is due to vote on impeachment, before a cross section of the protesting class rallied. Some of the left was coming to life. Too late? Better late.
SALON | Dec. 16, 1998
Todd Gitlin is professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University and the author of "The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars" (Metropolitan/Holt) and "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage" (Bantam), among other books. He wrote "The Clinton/Lewinsky Obsession: How the Press Made a Scandal of Itself" in the December Washington Monthly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Become a Salon member. Click here.

A L S O+T O D A Y Peace, the movie By Daryl Lindsey Clinton's 3-day visit to the Middle East was full of symbols and photo ops, but precious little in the way of content (12/16/98) Here comes the judge By Jeff Stein Chief Justice William Rehnquist's writings on impeachment contain good news for President Clinton (12/16/98) [ IVORY TOWER ] God save the president? By Jackie Stevens An anti-impeachment gathering of New York's intellectual hotshots may not do much for the country, but at least it made them feel good about themselves (12/16/98) T A B L E+T A L K To impeach, or not to impeach: Debate the question in the Politics area of Table Talk ___________________ Bone up on impeachment at BarnesandNoble.com ___________________ R E C E N T L Y City of self-hate By Greg Critser Why Los Angeles elites love being bashed by Mike Davis (12/15/98) A kinder, gentler lynch mob By Gary Kamiya The GOP confirms the most brain-dead radical stereotypes from the '60s (12/15/98) Off the cliff? By Harry Jaffe The White House tries lobbying, "scorched-earth" threats and one more speech to sway fence-sitting Republicans (12/11/98) Clinton's real crime By Mollie Dickenson The president's cagey testimony in the Paula Jones case shows he's guilty of sexual selfishness, but not perjury (12/11/98) "Real America?" By Joan Walsh Alan Dershowitz blasts Clinton critic Rep. Bob Barr for a speech to white supremacists (12/11/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING -- AGAIN \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - A certain exultance was pardonable, though sobriety quickly took over as the crowd disbanded. This was probably the fastest-organized rally since the Cambodia and Laos invasions of 1970-71. It was also the slowest in coming. Which raises the question: Why the months of public inertia? Why have polls been permitted to stand in for political action? Why the long-running inactivity of the activists? These are questions to absorb the attention of what is laughably called the left during the long nights to come. Among the thoughts in circulation were these: Disbelief triumphed, and triumphed, and triumphed again. First came months of Lewinsky drip. Yes, the right rode high, unhinged as they were. But public opinion remained staunchly unaffected by months upon months of leaks, barking heads, Starr chamber sessions, exercises in televisual humiliation and, lately, the injudicious theater of idiocy orchestrated by the House Judiciary Committee. So the coup seemed to have failed, right? So said the off-year elections, right? Newt was disgraced, right? Who would have thought the Grand Old Party would have so much blood in't? Who thought they could keep their Frankenstein monster humming after the repudiation of Nov. 3? Even the White House was not sure they would. The press treated the turn against the Republicans as a victory for the Democrats and for Clinton, little noting that in a nation with 36 percent turnout, Congress has cut loose from the popular will as surely as the space shuttle pulls away from the gravity of Earth. Rep. Nadler didn't anticipate things coming to this pass. He told me this was the first protest event he'd been invited to. "I don't think anyone thought that impeachment was really going to happen," said Jill Steinberg, an NYU graduate student in media ecology. But more deeply, Clinton had long estranged the activist networks that call themselves progressive. They were disaffected from him, or preoccupied with their issues -- which came to the same thing -- and barely if at all impressed by him in the first place. Just as the Republicans hated Clinton for, among other things, pirating part of their program, so did Democrats of the left hate him for NAFTA and for welfare, or for Iraqi sanctions, or the pharmaceutical raid in Khartoum, or all of the above. They had independently arrived at the Republican line that Clinton is only incidentally a twice-elected president lowly accused of high crimes. The absolutists of the left have no dog in this fight. Not for them such bourgeois questions as that of constitutional justice. Not for them such tawdry questions as whether the poor would be better off if Clinton were deposed. They sneer at those reformist words "better off." They can live with the likes of Henry Hyde and Bob Barr, revealing the true (white, male) face of imperialism. Even activist Democrats have been late to rouse themselves. Debra Cooper, executive vice president of the Upper West Side Ansonia Independent Democrats, who was leafletting the NYU rally with phone and fax numbers of coy Republicans, told me that at this late date, the state Democratic Party still hasn't been heard from. Parties don't dirty their hands except with money, these days. And then, what of the uses, and seductions, of electronic politicking? An old friend of mine, with whom I marched on many a picket line in a bygone decade, whose name begins with "S," wrote me that his stepdaughter was e-mailing her local congressman, who is one of the Republican wafflers. Then he put this question: "Remember when we used to demonstrate, not send e-mail?" My friend is not a nostalgia buff. He is intellectually active on many issues in the palpably here-and-now. He is not a demonstration freak. Still, questions do come to mind: How virtual is a virtual demonstration? An online petition campaign? But e-mail, requiring little effort from its deployers, has its uses, partly for that very reason. As the MoveOn.org campaign shows, it can get protesters charged up, confirm them in the sense that they're in good company. For instance, longtime human rights campaigner Cathy Fitzpatrick took it upon herself Sunday night to send out a multirecipient e-mail that is striking in this respect. Fitzpatrick wrote, in her private capacity, that for months she had found the impeachment juggernaut an annoyance, but a sideshow to her main interest. Annoyance, however, turned to impediment. She had been trying to work with the White House on a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The White House had sounded cooperative, but as the Dec. 10 date drew closer, its staff pulled away. All attention had turned to impeachment. (A White House ceremony did take place. Notice it? The press didn't.) So she sat down at her keyboard to make the case that President Clinton does matter to human rights. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a major force in the world for the principle that women's rights are human rights. Gregory Craig, the president's lawyer, has taken time off from -- human rights work! So it was time for human rights activists to put some muscle into stopping impeachment. Fitzpatrick appended a list of Republican House members who might be swayed in the days to come. Many other such messages have been crisscrossing cyberspace. It is hard to avoid the thought that after years of fatalism, ideological blur, specialized politicking, group preoccupation and plain disappointment, much of the left has forgotten, if it ever knew, how heavy is the right wing of American politics, how fierce, how organized, how elected, how capable of obstructing all the projects of the left (and the center) and how capable of acting in unison when they care enough to hate -- as they do Clinton, That Man in the White House. So it took until Monday night, Dec. 14, a mere three days before the House is due to vote on impeachment, before a cross section of the protesting class rallied. Some of the left was coming to life. Too late? Better late. SALON \| Dec. 16, 1998 Todd Gitlin is professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University and the author of "The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars" (Metropolitan/Holt) and "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage" (Bantam), among other books. He wrote "The Clinton/Lewinsky Obsession: How the Press Made a Scandal of Itself" in the December Washington Monthly. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.