PUNDIT WATCH
Douglas, Susan
PUNDIT WATCH Susan Douglas Cynicism on Stage Here's my idea: Let's reduce the voting age to eight. That way, instead of listening to the pundits ooh and aah over Elizabeth Dole's ability to ape...
...Most working Americans would be thrilled to quit tomorrow and begin early retirement rather than be subjected to any more TQM training ("Total Quality Management," for those of you who have been spared...
...The book shows how nearly all American workers hate their jobs and think their bosses or "management teams" are complete idiots...
...if they have to attend staff retreats with role-playing exercises...
...Give kids the right to vote, and hand out video cameras to poor kids...
...We showcase wealthy disabled celebrities like Christopher Reeve and Jim Brady, who tug at our heartstrings and allow us to feel so good about how compassionate we are, while our President signs a bill that will exclude the disabled children of low-income families from the most basic forms of federal assistance...
...All we're getting now is voodoo economics redux from one side and orgasms over school uniforms from the other...
...No public-opinion constituency for Clinton here...
...That way, instead of listening to the pundits ooh and aah over Elizabeth Dole's ability to ape Jenny Jones, we might get to see the edifying spectacle of politicians from both parties explaining to a third-grader why she can't have dinner, shoes, or a place to live...
...Having signed this revolting piece of legislation, he will now campaign against it, insisting that he must be reelected in order to make the law more humane...
...the speedup in so many lines of work, including, and often especially, in the professions...
...Meanwhile, one million children lay poised on the downward chute to increased poverty, neglect, and despair— thanks to the collusion of the two parties whose scripted spectacles about helping families were meant to distract us from this reality...
...I hear you" while staring off into space...
...Since they are the ones who are going to suffer, they ought to have the right to record the two candidates who are prattling on about responsibility, empowerment, family values, villages, and ending welfare as we know it...
...Certainly ignorance, prejudice, and repetitive stress syndrome (the stereotyping of welfare recipients as lazy, overweight, promiscuous, black female leeches) all contribute to the welfare backlash...
...At least he was talking about job flight, downsizing, corporate responsibility, and the falling standard of living for manv workers...
...But that's how we stage the future in America...
...Even NPR covered the Democratic convention as if it were primarily theater...
...Most pundits cast his signing of the bill as a "home run" and "right in step" with the desires of the American people, even though 40 percent of those polled didn't know enough about the bill to offer an opinion, and 50 percent would oppose it if Susan Douglas teaches at the University of Michigan...
...The proletarianization of so many jobs...
...Paul Gigot, and other pundits flop around like carp on a slab of Formica...
...But the other answer can be found in one of this summer's best-selling books...
...Clinton has chosen to handle the welfare disaster with the utmost cynicism...
...The production values wouldn't match the hooey we got from San Diego and Chicago, but it would be refreshing—and enlightening—to see the world from the ground up...
...Reduced to being instant-replay theater critics (and we're talking really bad theater), they were forced to say things like, "That cutaway of Clinton didn't really work," or, "Boy, Tipper's photographs in that video were great...
...This is why I wish Buchanan, xeno-phobe that he is, was still in the race...
...Pundits like Morton Kondracke, who acknowledged the bill is dreadful, asserted confidently that the flaws will indeed be fixed...
...it meant throwing more children into poverty...
...only 7.7 percent of voters came from families with incomes under $15,000—and poor children, of course, can't vote...
...Poor people don't vote—in 1994...
...if they have to put up with the "hoteling of cubicles" (making workers play musical offices so they never may individualize their work stations with photos of their kids)—then why should welfare recipients get to stay home and watch reruns of Taxi...
...The best part of the conventions—and they both put Triumph of the Will to shame—was watching Mark Shields...
...So no more of these family-style televised conventions...
...The Dilbert Principle...
...Convention managers, with the compliance of the mainstream media, papered over major dissent within the party...
...Don't hold your breath...
...Her column appears in this space every month...
...the threat of downsizing—all have made work more stressful and infuriating...
...With the Hair song "Let the Sunshine In" playing in the background, NPR cast the demonstrators outside the convention as entertaining but irrelevant throwbacks to 1968...
...People figure if they have to put up with clueless managers who constantly say...
...I kept waiting for them to go to a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach to reviewing each speech...
...Now, I have a theory about public support for cutting welfare...
...There aren't 750,000 copies in print for nothing...
Vol. 60 • October 1996 • No. 10
