Last week, several of us schlepped Uptown to a small-ish indie-ish bookstore to hear Dan Savage read from his latest book. Honestly, I’m not much of a fan–his work is nice and forthright, though it doesn’t really do much for me–but everyone else wanted to go, and I was the only one with a car, so we went.
In person, Mr. Savage was, of course, charming and cute and well-versed in his subject matter. He was also clever–in the mildly deprecating, vaguely envious British sense of the word–and occasionally glib. In fact, although he was discussing topics of wider import than his usual sex column fare, his tone remained the same.
Which led me to wonder: is this why the anti-intellectual Right doesn’t take liberal logic seriously? Can Lefty, iconoclastic authors like Mr. Savage ever compete in the national dialogue with vehement adherents of conservative values like Ann Coulter? Is this why we’re always fighting an uphill battle–because it’s so much harder to “think outside the box” (a phrase I despise) and develop new paradigms than it is to stick to the status quo?
Not that I want to lay blame for the failure of liberal ideology squarely on Mr. Savage’s shoulders. I mean, the Louisiana governor’s race demonstrates all too clearly the inability of Democrats (i.e. today’s liberals) to articulate new political and social strategies–all while conservatives simply trot out the same old chestnuts they’ve been harping on for the past 20 years.
Clinton represented a great middle ground: a thoughtful intellectual and an affable good ol’ boy. Who’s next?
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