Quintessentially American

Charles Murray writes a piece this weekend in the Washington Post that, pushes the Tea Party line that modern elites are totally out of touch with "mainstream America."

Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth in the accusation.

This article makes the mistake made by Sarah Palin and many others in elevating niche, regional American subculture(s) to "mainstream America," and then excluding everyone who doesn't participate in the subculture from "real America," even though this really defines the majority of Americans as somehow less than American.

Murray writes:

With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows -- "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago. But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end.

Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.

They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).

They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn't be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.

Here's the thing - The Price is Right gets 5 million viewers a week. Seven million people a year go to Branson. By Murray's own admission, 29 million people read Harlequin romances (worldwide). There are 300 million people - so each of these things that Murray cites as an element of "Mainstream America" is actually only something that a tiny fraction of Americans do. And really - "The Price is Right" Harlequin novels and cruises? It seems like, for Murray, Mainstream America = retired southerner ladies.

On the other hand, I'll submit my experiences and those of my friends and co-workers--urban New Yorkers in their late 20s and 30s who mostly have graduate degrees from "fancy schools". I can tell you that almost all of the guys, and most of the girls, watch the NFL (which averages 16.6 million viewers per regular season game), and we all know the Jimmie Johnson on the Fox pregame show. Most of us have been to Disney World (30 million visitors per year). We watch the same reality TV that the rest of the country does - American Idol, Teen Mom, Top Chef,* and almost everyone I know saw Avatar and Dark Knight.

Murray makes a really bold, and incorrect, claim that certain types of experiences, the kinds that tea-parties have, are "quintessentially American" while others are not:

There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

However, let me rewrite the paragraph above:

There are so many quintessentially American things that few members of the Tea Party have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Bar Association or bought food from a CSA, or lived in a neighborhood where they weren't part of the racial majority. They are unlikely to have used mass transportation (shuttle bus to the rental car lot doesn't count). They are unlikely to have taken a philosophy class (college or grad school does count). They are unlikely to have taught at a school where most of the kids had an income of less than twice the poverty line. They are unlikely to have a close friend who is a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist. They are unlikely to have worked on a trading floor or software design team or know what a derivative or Ruby on Rails is.

At the end of the day, America is a really big place, with room for many types of quintessentially or mainstream American experiences. I'm willing to grant Murray and the Tea Partiers that going to Branson, taking a cruise, joining Kiwanis and watching The Price is Right are authentically American, even though though these are things are niche activities undertaken by relatively small numbers of Americans.

I don't pretend to say that my experiences are like those of everyone else, or even most people, and I don't say that they're necessarily better, but I do think they're just as American, and I'm just as American, as Murray or the Tea Partiers.

*I will note that Murray has a point where scripted TV is concerned. I've never seen an episode of NCIS and have never heard anyone talk about it, and I only saw Two and a Half Men once on a plane (although, to be fair, it was a flight to Milwaukee so I think I should get some "real America" credit for it).