BOOKSHELF: WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
The New Liberal Menace in America
Stephen Marshall
DISINFORMATION COMPANY - Stephen Marshall, Sundance-award winning director and co-founder of Guerrilla News Network, hits the road and travels from the front lines of the Iraq War, through the wasteland of the former communist Eastern bloc, into a coke-dusted sex party of Britain's intellectual elite, and into the minds of America's most influential liberal figures. Marshall recounts his meetings and conversations with Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, David Horowitz, Lewis Lapham, John Avlon, the Economist' John Micklethwait, the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger and best-selling authors Todd Gitlin, Paul Berman and John Perkins. He finds that American liberals have dumped the '60s era radicalism of their youth and become complicit in a complex game of bait-and-switch, selling the world a vision of liberal democracy in which they, in fact, no longer believe. Have liberals buckled under the pressure of America's declining fortunes and taken on the role of good cop to the conservatives' bad? ORDER
8 Comments:
I have to say that I find it hard to believe that Lewis Lapham has lost his fervor for liberal causes. His editorials are some of the most powerful writing I have read.
Recently Harper's has made their entire collection available to subscribers (another great reason to get a subscription) and I went back to read some of Lapham's essays in the aftermath of 9/11 and the run up to the Iraq war. He was calling the media out long before Bill Moyers made his excellent documentary on the role of the media in selling the Iraq war.
I was sad to see Lewis going from monthly to bimonthly editorials at the front of Harper's.
Liberal-bashing has become a popular pastime these days, and all too frequently the bashers don't bother to use much discernment; many of them fail to remember (if they ever knew in the first place--which in the case of the younger generation, they probably don't) that may of the freedoms and social benefits they enjoy today were the result of liberals fighting the good fight way back when. It's a really depressing trend, because it's such a powerful, and sadly typical, demonstration of the American tendency to knee-jerk reactionism and jumping aboard the latest trendy bandwagons.
Indeed, the liberal-bashers of today (such as Mairead from the gun control discussion thread) would do well to remember that the word "liberal" in the classic sense means someone who is concerned with a lot of things that today's so-called conservatives champion, such as a market economy based on free private enterprise, the rule of law, and individual rights--including property rights and gun ownership. (Sigh) Does no one make these children read Rousseau and Locke anymore?
I completely agree with Lars, re. his remarks on Lapham.
And Gore Vidal continues on to be one of the most scathing voices in this country today. The lib-bashers would do well to read him.
Of course, as I've noted before (and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's picked up on the contradictions inherent in the likes of Mairead and her ilk's blindness in this regard), most of these people don't read--they react to the trend du jour, in this case trashing liberalism as word and concept, with little or no understanding of what word and concept actually mean.
No, no one does make these children read much of anything anymore, and the results of this are often appallingly evident on this site.
I'd frankly be a little leery of this production, it sounds somewhat reminiscent of "Farenhype 911", the slash and burn film the Right produced to dicredit Michael Moore. I'd have to wonder who provided the funding for this particular production. A film that's throwing Horowitz and Hitchens into the same mix with people like Lapham and Rusbridger, and offering up glimpses inside "coke-dusted sex parties...of intellectual elites" smells a bit fishy to me as to what particular agendas might be behind it.
Regardless of Marshall's prior credentials, I'd be somewhat wary about offering this one up, Sam. It sounds a little like he might have been co-opted by some powerful influences. It's happened before. Look at Chris Hitchens. Recommend this documentary if you must; but I'd say definitely with a caveat emptor attached.
For the record: The book doesn't lump Vidal and Horowitz into the same group. And it about as far from Michael Moore as you can get.
For more see: http://wolvesbook.com
If it doesn't, all to the good, but you wouldn't pick up on that from reading the above piece.
Simple blurbism I wonder, or something shadier?
Agreed. It's a case of bad marketing copy.
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